MCE is a highly ambitious call centre business with a loyal and ever expanding customer base. To further their presence in the personal lines market, they were keen to redevelop their website using Open GI's complete web integration service.

The company's existing site was attracting a good level of new business but there was room for improvement in terms of overall user experience. Data capture could be simplified and integration with the Open GI back-office would make processing converted business faster. What MCE wanted was a fully interactive online quote and payment facility for a wide range of standard and non-standard bike and car insurance, with linkage to aggregators.

According to Director, Julian Edwards, the web is a key part of MCE's future distribution strategy. He said: "As a major personal lines broker competing with some of the biggest names in the market, we need to make sure that our web presence is as dominant as possible via successful marketing, but more importantly that the technology underpinning the site makes the user experience seamless.

He said: "We benchmarked the easyJet website for car and motorcycle insurance i.e. a quick to use, easy to navigate site with good facilities for incepting and amending policies. When we heard that Open GI was offering a complete solution we were keen to talk to them about what they could do for us. We were previously working with a separate web integrator but were not satisfied with the results. The advantage of Open GI is that they could offer a one-stop-shop for all of our web design and integration needs."

The results have been impressive for MCE: The site has had an immediate impact on new business - generating a 44% increase in the first month of going live, and over 15% in the following three months with no additional marketing spend. MCE acquisition costs have reduced significantly.

Web new business now equates to 23% of MCE's overall new business. With the Open GI service, this is forecast to increase to 40% in 2008. MCE has created a market leading quote and buy website with Open GI without having to take on any new in house IT people. According to Julian Edwards, the site is now much slicker and easier to navigate and integration with Open GI's e-Quotes engines means quotes are available 24/7 from over 20 providers. HTML messages can be sent to customers in real time, following quote and policy inception, and the site is built on XML technology and web services to handle large quote volumes.

"Internet projects are extremely technical so you need a good level of support, particularly when it comes to web integration. Working in partnership with Open GI has allowed us to achieve what is a robust and fully interactive e-commerce solution for our customers. We have been particularly impressed with the input and dedication of Open GI's web development team. The fact that the site has the ability to link to aggregators and is fully hosted by Open GI is extremely important for MCE."