A prominent African financial services provider, headquartered in Cape Town, South Africa, was running its Employee Benefits (EB) division on a legacy multi-value PICK application. With business expansion on the horizon and the declining availability of PICK developers, the insurer recognized the need for a future-proof digital transformation strategy. The goal: to migrate the core business logic of the existing platform to a modern, scalable, and maintainable architecture—without disrupting mission-critical operations.
While the PICK system had served the organization reliably over the years—managing pension funds, group life insurance, disability, funeral claims, and more—it had become a bottleneck for growth and innovation.
Key limitations included:
- Diminishing talent pool for PICK BASIC development
- Incompatibility with modern systems and databases
- Integration roadblocks with new technologies
- Limited scalability and data constraints
- Rising maintenance costs and slower time-to-market
- Vendor ambiguity around the product’s future roadmap
With core business logic deeply embedded in the system, a full rewrite or off-the-shelf replacement posed high risk. The company needed a partner who could deliver seamless modernization with minimal business disruption.
After evaluating three options—complete rewrite, packaged software, and code migration—the company opted for a migration-first approach. This preserved existing business logic while upgrading the technology stack.
A SWOT analysis revealed that Bangalore Softsell Ltd offered the ideal partnership due to our deep expertise in legacy modernization, robust automation framework, and proven methodology.
We leveraged our proprietary platform—LeMiT (Legacy Migration Technology)—to modernize the legacy system with precision and efficiency. Our solution ensured minimal user involvement while retaining 100% functional accuracy during the migration.
Key transformation components:
Migrated the multi-value PICK database to a relational DB2 system.
Replaced green-screen interfaces with browser-based GUI.
Transformed legacy logic to a modern Enterprise Java environment
Used LeMiT’s knowledge mining tools to reverse-engineer logic and automate conversion
Used template-based mapping to translate CRUD operations from System Builder+ to Java.
Re-engineered the hierarchical PICK structure into a relational schema with full business rule enforcement.
Built on a flexible framework that supports both Java and .NET for future adaptability.
Customer retained complete freedom in choosing vendors and future tools.
The migration to Java delivered transformative benefits for the Employee Benefits division:
- Enhanced Maintainability: Access to a wider talent pool and industry-standard development tools.
- Increased Scalability: Support for growing datasets and business operations.
- Improved Time-to-Market: Rapid development using Java containers and streamlined lifecycle management.
- Data Integrity & Governance: Robust DB2 database enforcing business rules previously hidden in legacy code.
- Future-Proof Architecture: Flexibility to integrate with modern platforms and deploy innovative insurance products.
With the legacy platform now modernized, the Customer is well-positioned to scale operations, adapt to market demands, and lead with digital-first insurance offerings across Africa.
LeMiT™, IBM DB2, Java, System Builder+, Raining Data D3
LeMiT is a trademark of Bangalore Softsell Ltd. Java is a trademark of Sun Microsystems, Inc. This case study highlights one of many successful implementations by Bangalore Softsell Ltd. Results may vary based on organizational context.
