The RAC finds new ways to connect to customers

“Prolifics were the people that enabled this to happen. Without them we would not have delivered what we wanted”.

Background

The RAC was founded in 1897 and is best known for its 24/7 breakdown assistance service. It has grown into an automotive services company, still offering its famous roadside assistance to members, but also general insurance and financial services.

The organisation set out to provide a new set of online services, reflecting the wide range of communication channels now used by its customers. The RAC’s IT teams faced the challenge of modernising its core legacy estate of over 60 applications that had over 500 point-to-point connections.

The Solution

Prolifics and RAC took an agile approach, quickly establishing the core platform, and then adding new services to rapidly see return on investment in this new platform.

Prolifics was able to use pre-existing assets and delivery capability in IBM’s MQ and Message Broker in order to de-risk the delivery with RAC. This increased RAC’s confidence that the solution would be delivered on time and on budget.

The Result

The new platform has stopped the proliferation of point-to-point connections that were expensive to maintain. The number of incidents immediately dropped by 90%, freeing up the RAC IT teams from firefighting existing legacy systems.

A key benefit has been re-use of services that connect to the hub The RAC has achieved significant cost savings through this re-use, giving its business greater agility to create new services for its members and partners.