BUPA UK Membership selects Thunderhead to generate enterprise-wide Customer Communications

London, UK. Monday 11th September, 2006.

Thunderhead, the leading provider of enterprise communications technology, today announced that BUPA, the international health and care company with bases on three continents and more than eight million customers, has selected the Thunderhead platform to generate all communications to members, groups and providers for its UK Membership Insurance business.

UK Membership was seeking a document generation solution that would deliver greater automation and control of its business processes for creating and managing organisational correspondence.  Of critical importance to them in the selection process was identifying a platform that could be directly managed by its business users and would address fully automated batch documentation, such as standard letters, policies and statements, as well as ad hoc correspondence, including claims letters.

Along with Thunderhead’s core platform, UK Membership has also selected Thunderhead’s Correspondence Framework for ad hoc communications. This will enable them to rationalize their existing systems and consolidate the production and management of all communications, both ad hoc and batch, onto a single, open standards-based platform.

“Ensuring we have a central document generation platform which we could deploy enterprise-wide was essential for UK Membership’s strategy. The Thunderhead solution will allow us to bring new products and services to market more quickly, reduce our costs and operational risk, and produce timely and accurate communications via any delivery channel our customers may require.  After undertaking a detailed evaluation of available document generation solutions and considering in-house development, we selected Thunderhead for its usability, services-oriented infrastructure and proven enterprise scalability.  Efficient document generation is critical to our ability to provide the highest level of service to our customers.” said Jeremy Maycock, Application Program Manager, BUPA Group Information Systems.

With Thunderhead, UK Membership’s business users are able to develop, test, generate and edit documents quickly and easily, without needing to rely on IT resources.  This reduces the cost of document production and accelerates the speed-to-market for new documentation.  BUPA’s compliance with regulatory and internal audit controls will be assured by Thunderhead’s comprehensive audit trail capabilities.  Further, Thunderhead’s ability to output communications to any delivery channel will enable them to move to a multi-channel document generation strategy without the need for additional technologies or investment.

“We are delighted BUPA’s UK Membership has selected Thunderhead as its enterprise solution for document generation.  This is yet another testament to our proven track record in delivering solutions that address the operational challenges which companies in the Health Insurance industry face every day,” commented Glen Manchester, CEO, Thunderhead.