From a year of firefighting to a scalable platform in weeks: Hollard Insurance

Sector: Insurance · Observability & performance

Twelve months of treading water on performance issues — worked by a large team of vendors, consultants and third-party staff — was resolved by Avocado in nine. Excluding the seven months needed for a Duck Creek platform upgrade, Avocado found the root cause, fixed the latency and delivered a highly responsive, scalable platform inside two months.

The challenge

Hollard's core platform was struggling with performance and latency, and progress had stalled despite a large group of vendors, consultants and third parties involved in the end-to-end solution. The environment was complex, with many stakeholders each responsible for their own part — and no single view of where the real problems lay.

The approach

Avocado deployed a small team of highly capable consultants, using a modern, AI-powered platform — Dynatrace — across the complex, multi-vendor environment. Just as important as the technology was the way the team worked: aligning every stakeholder with no blame, just focus and progress.

• Identified the root cause and resolved the latency issues, delivering a responsive, scalable platform
• Uplifted monitoring of core solution components and interfaces so Hollard is proactively alerted to issues ahead of customers being impacted
• Used Dynatrace during a data-centre move to gain visibility across all core infrastructure that Hollard had never had before
• Established a base set of dashboards and alerts to catch latency or interruptions early
  
  

The outcome

• A highly responsive and scalable platform, delivered in a fraction of the time
• Proactive alerting across core policy administration — issues caught before customers feel them
• Dynatrace now being rolled out across all core applications for real-time visibility over infrastructure, applications and customers
• Executive-level visibility that Hollard describes as "a game changer" for decision-making

"It was impressive to see the immediate impact Avocado made and how quickly they aligned all stakeholders: no blame, just focus and progress. They didn't stop at scalability — they uplifted our monitoring so we're proactively alerted to issues ahead of customers being impacted. Avocado is now helping roll out Dynatrace across all core applications; that kind of executive visibility will be a game changer for Hollard."

Ian Morgan, Head of Engineering & Architecture, Hollard Insurance

"The Avocado team is extremely knowledgeable, willing to share that knowledge and create solutions that are reusable and maintainable in the future. We're already looking at how we extend the same monitoring capability to other parts of our enterprise."

Aidan Bates, Manager of Monitoring Solutions, Hollard Insurance

When performance is on the line, a small, capable team and the right platform beat a crowded room. Talk to our team about resolving your performance and observability challenges.