PILOTFISH AND DATAMATICS MIX ON/OFFSHORE RESOURCES

PilotFish Technology's (Wethersfield, CT) NetBusiness Acquisition, which enables the integration of distributors, underwriters and third party administrators involved in the policy administration process, will be combined with the offshore services of Datamatics Ltd. (Mumbai, India), a business process outsourcing provider.

The two parties have signed a partnership agreement that Neil Schappert, president, PilotFish, says will allow for the push of the more manual steps of insurance administration and distribution processes offshore without any time delays, resulting in the reduction of an insurer's operating costs.

"Application entry resources are inexpensive in India," explains Schappert. "The combined solution will allow insurers to fax insurance applications to a local number, and these applications will be presented in India and keyed into NetBusiness Acquisition. They will immediately be available for the next step in the process."

According to Rahul Kanodia, chairman, Datamatics America and managing director and CEO of its parent company Datamatics Ltd., Datamatics has found a strong partner in PilotFish. "PilotFish is very strong in the area of e-solutions and it has a very good front-end for e-procurement," says Kanodia. "PilotFish also has a good solution for the US market."

The combined solution, says Schappert, "will allow insurers to tightly integrate the different parties in insurance administration and distribution and allow them to exploit the competencies of each of those parties." In addition to its NetBusiness Acquisition solution, PilotFish will contribute its knowledge of the insurance vertical, reusable software components and business process re-engineering expertise. Datamatics will bring onshore and offshore technical services, global delivery capability, and IT and business process outsourcing expertise to the alliance.