ACE Travel Insurance has deployed the first of a series of new online travel insurance points of sale powered by Open Text's web content management system, Vignette Content Management 8.

The ability to quickly develop and deploy new points of sale on behalf of its business partners is critical to ACE Travel Insurance. In many cases, the online point of sale is separately branded and must reflect the look-and-feel of the specific partner.

The decision to replace its existing in-house-developed web solution with Vignette Content Management 8 was driven by the need to facilitate faster deployment of new websites, better flexibility and the scalability necessary to support the company's rapidly growing business.

Vignette Content Management 8 was selected following a competitive product review in January 2010 and deployment was completed in two months.

“Open Text has given us a marketing edge as well as a tool to facilitate efficiency in operations and sales. We have the ability to deploy new websites quickly, shortening the time to market, and we can also create demonstrations and mock-ups of the proposed website within days rather than months when pitching for new business opportunities. This is a powerful marketing tool that allows us to put the full range of our capabilities on display,” said Glenn Crippa, Global Director of IT for ACE Travel Insurance.

Vignette Content Management 8 also enables the ACE Travel team to manage content via a single, central repository before it is served across multiple websites.

Enterprise content management specialist, StoneBridge Systems, managed the implementation and online strategy consultants, Boomworks, provided design and usability expertise.

“StoneBridge Systems was well versed with the Vignette Content Management 8 platform’s functionality and how we could best harness it. Boomworks lent their web usability expertise to the project and helped us to create a cutting-edge online user experience” Crippa added.

Development was carried out by Stonebridge Systems in Sydney, following which the software was deployed into the ACE Travel Insurance Central Reservations System (ACE CRS), a newly commissioned IT platform that powers ACE’s travel insurance technology and connectivity worldwide.

The first ACE Travel Insurance website to be developed with the Open Text solution replaced an existing website for a major ACE partner, and went live in early May.

“Compared to the previous static version, the revamped website exhibits a sharpened level of usability and accessibility. Within the first week of operation, before we even began marketing the website, we saw a significant upsurge in the number of policies we sold,” Crippa concluded.