Case Study: Desjardins Insurance saves $10 million with Cincom VisualWorks upgrade

Desjardins Saves $10 Million with Cincom® VisualWorks Upgrade

Desjardins General Insurance Group, a major Canadian insurer serving 1.6 million customers, faced a risky, twelve-year-old claims application built on Smalltalk with unstable in-house workarounds, daily synchronization issues, and compatibility gaps with newer technologies. Replacing or rebuilding the system was estimated to cost up to $10 million, so the goal was to modernize the existing application without that expense.

Desjardins engaged Cincom Professional Services to upgrade the application to VisualWorks 7.7, enabling support for .NET, modern operating systems, network protocols and web services while preserving the current claims system. The upgrade was completed quickly with developer training, produced a smooth user transition (including small usability improvements like mouse-wheel scrolling), and saved Desjardins at least $10 million while improving maintainability and ROI.

Desjardins Insurance

Charles Brochu

Technical Project Leade