Navigator continues to be hit by problems

Despite launching in a blaze of publicity three months ago, Norwich Union has admitted that its master trust, Navigator, has been beset with problems and was still two months away from being fully operational.

Navigator managing director Marc Mengler says the new version of Navigator, which the group says cost $40 million to create over a period of three years, is operational but the company wanted to iron out the last few bugs in the run-up to Christmas with the remaining operating problems solved by January.

“There are a number of things that need fine-tuning between now and Christmas, but planners will come back in the New Year to a real-time fully integrated system. We always knew there would be some technical issues, and we need to do some further testing in this period,” Mengler says.

Navigator has been beset plagued with problems since its official relaunch in August and became worse in October when the system slowed down and obtaining client data almost stopped.

Mengler admits October was the worst month as the data from the old system was switched across and there were teething problems.

“We had to transfer 27 million bits of data, which was a significant exercise spread over a weekend. Where we had problems was with the interfaces and this slowed the system down for advisers from mid-October to early November,” he says.

Mengler also attributes part of the slowing of the process to staff learning how to operate the new system. This in turn resulted in the Navigator call centre handling an extra 1000 phone calls a week as advisers and clients sought information about what was happening with the system.

“The confirmation certificates for clients were delayed by up to three weeks during this period, although we have caught now and are delivering the certificates much faster,” Mengler says.

However he says the events of September 11 also added to the influx of calls and there was no way Norwich could have prepared for that situation.

As part of the tweaking of Navigator, Mengler says Norwich has boosted the speeds at which the volume of traffic passes though Navigator, especially in the modules which handle the web based information.

Since its launch Navigator has also attracted some flak from advisers who raised questions about the margin lending calculators and some of the Department of Social Secuirty (DSS) information on the system. Mengler says all calculators on the system are now performing to full operational capacity and the DSS issue was solved with the latest version of Navigator’s planit program, which went to advisers in October.