1. Nationwide’s Smarter Process Journey with IBM
Operational Decision Management and BPM
Jamie Hardy
Nationwide Director, IT Applications
Renee Gallion
Nationwide Manager, IT App Development
IBM InterConnect 2015

2. Agenda
•Nationwide Overview
•Nationwide Life before ODM
A look at Nationwide’s challenges prior to implementing ODM
•Nationwide Life with ODM
The advantages gained through implementing ODM
Fun facts around ODM processing
Current and Future Accomplishments
•Nationwide Finance before BPM
•Nationwide Finance with BPM
The advantages gained through implementing BPM
Lessons Learned
Key accomplishments
•Nationwide ODM with BPM
Automation of some tasks
•Fun facts around BPM
•Current and Future BPM Accomplishments
IBM InterConnect 2015

3. Nationwide Overview
Nationwide is one of the largest insurance and financial services
companies in the world, focusing on domestic property and
casualty insurance, life insurance and retirement savings, asset
management and strategic investments
The last 80 years Nationwide® has gone from a small auto insurer
for Ohio farmers, to one of the largest insurance and financial
services companies in the world with more than $183 billion in
statutory assets
IBM InterConnect 2015

4. Nationwide Life before ODM
Technical Challenges
• Rules implemented in multiple systems
• Rules implemented in various technologies
• Different release cycles across the Enterprise
IBM InterConnect 2015
Finance IT contained volatile business rules spread across these technologies:
Informatica, PeopleSoft, Teradata, Hyperion, Oracle, Shell Scripting, PERL

5. Nationwide Life before ODM
Business Challenges
• Rules were not shareable across technologies
• Lack of single set of standards for rules
• Inconsistent business processes for rule changes
• Heavy dependence on IT in business process
• Required system analysts to determine changes
• Application developers to affect changes
IBM InterConnect 2015

6. Implementing a Solution
Business Standards
• Enterprise wide data
dimensionality
requirements
• Centralized policy &
standards ownership
• Regular meetings with
Business Partners to identify
and understand upcoming
changes
IT Standards
• Centralized tool for
managing business rules
• Uniform naming to allow
rules to be shared
• Governance for rule
changes
IBM InterConnect 2015
Partnership between Business & IT

7. IBM InterConnect 2015
Projects at Nationwide
Global-
Rules
Segment-
Global-
Rules
Segment-
NF-Rules
Segment-
PCIO-Rules
…
Segment-
OOI-Rules
…
Mapping-
Outbound-
Rules
Critical-
Global-
Rules
Pre-Critical-
Rules
Post-
Critical-
Rules

8. Standardized Vocabulary
• Naming standards allowed for rule
sharing across different data
layouts
• Custom tool would evaluate all
layouts and place fields that are
the same name and type higher up
in the class hierarchy
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9. Standardized Ruleflow
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• No rule flow maintenance
• Easily understood

10. Standardized – Rule Packages
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• Top level rule packages correlate to rule flow tasks
• Where to place rules in a rule package is intuitive… Knowing where it will execute is not
buried in a rule flow

11. Concept of Operation
Information
Modeling
Application
Architecture
Rule
Organization
Rule Model
IT Cycle Business Cycle
Rule
Designer
Decision
Center
Rule Authoring is essentially a Business Activity
Rule Analysis
Rule
Authoring
GovernanceTesting
Deployment

12. Roles at Nationwide
Business Data Steward
‒Responsible for source system output data
Configuration Manager
‒Responsible for ruleapp deployment and baselines
management
Rule Author
‒Responsible for analyzing rules for extraction from on
boarding systems and authoring of business rules
IT
‒Responsible for BOM/XOM development and any helper
logic that may be needed within ODM
IBM InterConnect 2015

13. Rule Authoring at Nationwide
Change Management Process & Governance
13

14. Key Accomplishments
•Centralized business rule management
•Over 400 interfaces integrated into our Financial Integration Layer
(FIL) Application Suite
•SLA monitoring tool
•Future capacity
•Repeatable process
•Improved IT & Business capabilities
Rule criticality
Rule analysis in the hand of the business versus IT
Separation of concerns
Alignment of duties
•10-day close
IBM InterConnect 2015

15. Finance & the Close Process - Success
IBM InterConnect 2015
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
28
18
16
12
10
2
12
14
18
20
Days to Close
Analysis
• Dramatic reduction in
processing time allows
business to provide earlier
analytics, which provides
greater flexibility
• Less complexity reduces audit
time, saving money
• Knowing where we are
financially & technically
throughout the process

16. • Nationwide Finance IT processes around 3445 source system files thru ODM
each month
 Files with a few records to 30+ million
 Up to 680 million records per month and growing
 Up to 30,032 recs/sec – depends on ratio, size of records, # fields
• Over 426 interfaces and counting (229 layouts)
 200,000+ Rules, 225 Rulesets
 51 rule projects
• 45-50 Change Requests / 500 to 1500 rule changes per month
IBM InterConnect 2015
Fun Facts about our Processing

17. Most Recent Key Accomplishments
•Shared Data Usage
Sources sending duplicate data to multiple applications
Introduced risk without ability to ensure same data was being consumed
Ability to reuse the rules
•Shared infrastructure for separate instances of ODM
Saves the company money
•ODM chosen as the Enterprise Standard Solution
Established framework and best practices for BMRS
Shared Application Area is standing up an instance for other LOBs to
utilize
•ODM Upgrade to 8.5.1
IBM InterConnect 2015

18. Future Accomplishments
•Expose rule service so other areas can setup process to run against
rules
•Upgrade 8.6
•Continuous Improvement
Ongoing review of how we can further leverage the product to
standardize processes within the department
IBM InterConnect 2015

19. Nationwide Finance before BPM
•Requests to change Financial Reference Data were manual
Business Rules
Allocation Rules
Reference Data
Other back office data
•Manual “work flow”
•Many versions of the change form
•Hand off were e-mails, phone calls, IM’s, drive by’s, etc
•Changes were manually implemented
•Changes were manually tracked in a Database
•Tools and methods to validate data were outside the system of
record
•Multiple resources to complete the above tasks
IBM InterConnect 2015

20. BPM Project
•Utilized the Quick win pilot
•Decided on an Agile approach
Issues resolved timely by team
Communication with daily scrum
Business users were present for review, feedback, and validation
Collaborative work space was beneficial
•Nationwide Developers were trained in BPM before the project
and then were dedicated 100% during the project.
•Configuration expertise was readily available from our centralized
BPM infrastructure team
•Frequent playbacks were held to demonstrate functionality
IBM InterConnect 2015

21. Lessons learned
•Making BPM successful at a large company
Required an organizational shift/change in culture; agile project team in
an environment geared toward waterfall
Having to coordinate and get buy in across the organization (Security,
Infrastructure, SQA, and business partner)
•Shared resources across connecting projects
•Business needs to be allocated 100% to the project much like the
developers
•Have everyone on the team trained in Agile prior to the project
including the management team and project sponsors
•Put substantial thought into naming the application- something
catchy to help drive change
•Uplift process before automation
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22. Nationwide Finance after BPM adoption
•Fully integrated streamlined workflow
•Drastically reduced cycle time for a change
•Reduction of manual work
•Functionality placed in the hands of end users
•Elimination of Data Errors
•Process visibility
•Streamlined Reporting
•Nationwide BPM application expertise
•Continually evolving
Touch points held with the business for feedback
IBM InterConnect 2015

23. BPM Key Accomplishments
•First Implementation of BPM at Nationwide
•Standardized Project life cycle
BPM developer expertise
Ease of use to set up new projects
•Upgraded to 8.0
Converted from heritage coaches to next generation coaches
Utilized new coach validation frame work
•Created more sophisticated error handling
•Ability to use API calls for external systems of record
•All financial reference data is managed in one application
•Integrated BPM with ODM business process
•BPM chosen as the Enterprise Standard Solution
Established framework and best practices
IBM InterConnect 2015

24. Nationwide utilizing ODM with BPM
•Beginning process was built for some business tasks
•Swivel chair process
•Multiple Databases used to track tasks
•Process did not include other area’s tasks
Development, testing, and other key area’s
•No constant flow for process
•Business was trying to create their own process with
spreadsheets to track tasks.
•Business resistant to change
IBM InterConnect 2015
Challenges:

25. Nationwide ODM with BPM
•One single process that encompasses all impacted resources
•Some things still swivel chair but automated some processes
Communication (important documents, test results, outage notices)
Notification for migration
•Retired access Db’s along with manual spreadsheet tracking of
tasks
•Developed an IT Process that is driven by the data generated from
the business process
•Built in approval processes for audits
•Utilized out of the box key dashboard reports
IBM InterConnect 2015
Accomplishments:

26. Fun Facts on BPM
•Reduction of cycle time for a request
•8,935 request received since inception (multiple tasks)
22,669 request items/tasks completed
30 monthly cycles (8/2012)
756 request items/tasks completed per month
•Business given longer to submit the change before cut off
Disbursement Code went from the 17th of the month to BD-6 (around the 23rd
of the month)
IBM InterConnect 2015

27. BPM Future Accomplishments
•Continuous Improvement
Ongoing review of how we can further leverage the product to
standardize processes within the department
•Automate current swivel chair processes
•How can we do things better on past projects
Automate more with ODM
Change to transaction based rather than incremental
When to reuse or break away
•Upgrade to 8.5.5
IBM InterConnect 2015

28. Questions ?
IBM InterConnect 2015