​Business Situation
Confused.com is a fast growing insurance price comparison website. Since its launch in 2002, the company has been using Java® and Microsoft Visual Basic® 6 technology to develop its website and the tools that enable it to offer great prices from a range of insurance companies

However, as the company has grown its needs have
changed and expanded. It moved beyond car insurance into
home insurance and utility suppliers, and grew overseas with sites in Spain, France and Italy. By 2009, the company
found itself issuing 15 million customer quotations and two
billion partner quote requests to 60,000 daily visitors.

This growth soon revealed that the company had outgrown its original application development environment. The development team itself had doubled to 150 people.

Solution
Confused.com chose Avanade to help review and optimise the application lifecycle management. It made this decision because of the quality of the Avanade people, development expertise, industry knowledge and close relationship with Microsoft’s Visual Studio product team.

Confused.com’s objectives sought to put sound software development principles in place, such as automated testing, and to ensure that Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server were properly configured. This meant deploying an enterprise-class application lifestyle management (ALM) platform based on Visual Studio 2010 technology.

Avanade’s lead consultant used Microsoft Application Platform Optimisation, along with extensive interviews within the organisation, to prepare a detailed ALM report and presentation with a checklist of improvements and recommendations based on real-world benchmarking data.

Results
With Microsoft Visual Studio® 2010 and their industry knowledge, development expertise and close links with Microsoft, Avanade helped them overhaul their existing system. As a result, Confused.com’s 150 coders can build new online applications more efficiently and the company can innovate faster and deliver a better customer experience.