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Case Study

Clarity Over Complexity – The Key to Successful Application Maintenance

“A phased modernization is necessary. Transparency in legacy code plays a central role in this process – and we are succeeding in attracting and empowering new professionals for this purpose as well. IT modernization requires both technical expertise and a willingness to embrace organizational change.”

Daniel Saltmann Head of Life Insurance Application Development VOLKSWOHL BUND

The Company:

VOLKSWOHL BUND Insurance

The VOLKSWOHL BUND Group includes VOLKSWOHL BUND Lebensversicherung a.G., VOLKSWOHL BUND Sachversicherung AG, Dortmunder Lebensversicherung AG, and prokundo GmbH. Our headquarters are located in Dortmund.

VOLKSWOHL BUND offers insurance cover­age for private households and small and medium-sized businesses. VOLKSWOHL BUND Insurance helps you weather difficult times and make adequate financial provi­sions for retirement.

Today, VOLKSWOHL BUND has annual premium income of nearly 1.7 billion euros. Approximately two million custom­ers throughout Germany place their trust in VOLKSWOHL BUND. The company suc­cessfully invests more than 17 billion euros on the capital market on behalf of its poli­cyholders. With its forward-looking invest­ment management, speed and efficiency in product development, and excellent sales and service, VOLKSWOHL BUND is today regarded as one of Germany’s leading broker-based insurers.


For more information, visit
www.volkswohl-bund.de

How Volkswohl Bund is modernizing its applications through code analysis and finding its way out of the legacy jungle: with eXplain from PKS.

Volkswohl Bund is a mid-sized insurance company with a legacy application environment that has evolved over time on the IBM Z platform. The applications are getting old (with a lot of COBOL). Young talent is accustomed to other programming languages and environments and needs to be motivated and guided to work with the legacy programs.


The Volkswohl Bund faces the challenge of adapting its existing IT infrastructure to meet future needs.

The challenge:

At Volkswohl Bund, the so-called “legacy jungle” was a key driver of the IT modernization strategy. New employees had to familiarize themselves with legacy applications that were difficult to understand – this was both a time and a skills issue. Added to this were external factors, such as the phasing out of standard software, changing market conditions, and the need to meet the requirements of new products with a more flexible IT infrastructure.
Documentation is incomplete, outdated, or missing entirely. The applications are complex and closely intertwined. This makes it difficult to identify and mitigate (hidden) risks, including those related to regulatory requirements (DORA). It is time-consuming and laborious to understand the business logic based solely on the source code.

Specifically, eXplain helps the company with the following areas:

  • Clean up dead code

  • Visualize call paths and dependencies, track dynamic variables

  • Subject-based structuring using clustering

  • Automated Documentation (BaFin-compliant)

  • Preservation of expertise, knowledge base, and knowledge transfer

  • Easy access to the application logic for new employees

The applications are to be modernized step by step. But where do you find the “seams” in this tangled ball of yarn to extract specific modules and migrate them to more modern software stacks?
The challenge lies not in the syntax of COBOL, but in understanding and getting a grasp of the business logic.

The solution:

Volkswohl Bund has had positive experiences with modern code analysis and uses PKS’s eXplain code analysis platform for this purpose. This gives the insurer greater transparency and control over its applications.


This makes it possible to gradually enhance the applications and eventually phase them out. eXplain is extremely helpful in this regard: It not only aids in understanding individual programs, but also in the structural analysis of interfaces and entire work areas, with their multitude of programs, jobs, and data flows that are not always intuitive.

We’ve already accomplished a lot today:

Today, the insurance company can take targeted steps to make its system landscape easier to maintain, better integrate it with other applications, and evolve it toward a more modular architecture. A key goal here is to make IT attractive to young developers as well – with modern technologies, a contemporary look and feel, and clearly presented contexts. Especially in the mainframe environment, enthusiasm should be sparked by creating transparency and making it easier to get started using professional analysis tools such as eXplain.

It is important to recognize that IT modernization is not a “big bang” project and requires extensive involvement from subject matter experts. In fact, many modernization projects fail because they are too ambitious when the current state of the system is not sufficiently understood. This is how to find your way through the jungle – the truth often lies in the code! Documentation is often incomplete or outdated. eXplain enables automatic documentation that is always up-to-date, based on the current code!


IT projects fail when people aren’t on board. In particular, it is important to develop skills and get young people excited about the legacy systems and IT at Volkswohl Bund, while equipping them with innovative tools like eXplain. Since the company has an extensive IBM Z environment – which was previously unknown to many – this plays a key role in making the field more appealing. This should not be underestimated, especially in modernization projects.

Volkswohl Bund has a fact-based modernization plan – and the path “out of the jungle” is being pursued step by step:

The insurance company will gradually modernize its legacy core applications – with clear priorities and based on in-depth analyses conducted using eXplain.

“The key is to gain transparency and control over existing applications. This is the only way to mitigate risks and capitalize on opportunities for sustainable modernization.”

Natalia Hauber Team Lead Sales PKS Software GmbH

Vorteile: 

Facts, facts, facts!

Decisions are made based on the code, and documentation is generated automatically

More fun at work:

An intuitive graphical interface and clear visualizations facilitate communication between subject matter

Safety:

Transparency and control over existing applications ensure that all modernization options are available

Innovation:

eXplain uses innovative parsing technology and is customized to meet specific cus¬tomer requirements – serving as a bridge between different modernization paths

The Conclusion: A clear path through the Legacy Jungle

Volkswohl Bund is steering its IT modernization with foresight and data-driven insights. With eXplain from PKS, the company achieves full transparency, safeguards valuable expertise, and makes even complex applications manageable.

This ensures that modernization efforts are well-founded and risk-free – and that IT is ready for new technologies, new talent, and the future.

Feel free to contact me

Take advantage of our experts’ many years of experience. We look forward to working with you!

We’d be happy to put you in direct contact with our reference clients upon request. Direct communication – it’s that simple.

Natalia Hauber
Team Lead Sales PKS Software GmbH
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