10x faster access to information thanks to SAP archive migration

"With Doxis we were able to speed up access to documents by a factor of 10," says Manfred Wolf. As SAP team lead at Techniker Krankenkasse (TK), his goal is to maintain state-of-the-art IT infrastructure while keeping an eye on efficiency and profitability.

And as the response from the around 10.8 million customers confirms: it's paying off. Not only is TK Germany's largest health insurance provider, in 2021 Focus-Money rated it Germany's Best Health Insurance Provider for the 15th time in succession. TK wants to maintain this leading position and consistently works to modernize its IT landscape — including SAP archiving.

Techniker Krankenkasse continually optimizes its IT infrastructure to ensure the best value for money — and not only for policyholders. With Doxis, the insurance provider now archives information from SAP more efficiently and retrieves it measurably faster.

"We continually overhaul our entire infrastructure as part of our IT strategy and have done for many years now," explains Manfred Wolf, adding: "When we looked at our SAP data archiving, it was obvious that, technically speaking, our intermediate archive no longer aligned with the strategy and was extremely cost intensive besides. Needless to say, we wanted to act quickly and find a new solution."

TK has been using a Dell system to store its data for several years. The archive spans dozens of terabytes of data in the form of invoices, contracts, personnel files, travel expenses and all manner of other documents required for administrative processes. Added to this are documents which are no longer actively used or are subject to retention requirements but have been moved from sub-systems to disburden the databases.

But, as Manfred Wolf explains, the existing storage system was strategically selected for its price-performance ratio, which means it's not so easy to archive data from SAP modules like HR, FiCo, MM and Insurance: "We cannot link them directly for technical reasons and, anyway, it wouldn't make sense. It's a highly scalable conventional storage system, but it has no content-based indexing. If we want to continue archiving and accessing information in our existing solution, we need a bridge system that integrates with the storage system and uses certified SAP interfaces. We also want fast access to archived information — no more than three seconds for three megabytes." TK put out a call for tenders specifying these top three criteria before selecting the SER Group and Doxis from a shortlist of 15 vendors. "The combination proposed by the SER Group was simply the best offer on the table," says Manfred Wolf.

The Doxis solution and the Doxis SmartBridge for SAP connector delivered exactly the bridge between its systems that TK was searching for. But before it could roll out the bridge solution, the insurance provider had 5 TB of data to migrate from the legacy intermediate archive and storage system.

For support with the migration itself, TK turned to HAVI Solutions as a highly experienced migration partner with numerous legacy system-to-Doxis migration projects to its name. "How do we export our data from the legacy system? How do we correctly import it into Doxis and confirm that everything has run as it should? At TK, we did not have the know-how required to perform a migration on this scale," recalls Manfred Wolf.

The migration itself ran quickly and smoothly thanks to HAVI's help with the concept and operational implementation: two months for the concept, two months of testing, and six weeks for the migration itself. "Our employees didn't even notice anything was going on and the migration went without a hitch," says TK's project lead, Dr. Carsten Flotow.

Hey Doxi, what gives you the competitive advantage?

Compliance was a further driving force behind TK's decision to migrate its data. With Doxis, it fulfills the requirements of Book 5 of the Social Code (SGB V) applicable to statutory health insurance providers, as well as the EU GDPR's rules on auditability. Doxis also strictly controls and documents who can access which information, and offers automatic management of retention periods and data deletion.

"Our legacy system had no way of managing data deletion. We had to invest on top of our original outlay to add this function in a complex retrofit solution. With Doxis we now have a future-ready platform that is easy to maintain, fulfills our compliance requirements and slots perfectly into our IT strategy in all respects," says Dr. Carsten Flotow.