Medibank's troubled IT overhaul is starting to stabilise

Health insurer Medibank expects to exit "hyper-care" of its new SAP-based core platform in the next few months as it stabilises the system following a difficult implementation.

Medibank has been working to embed its new, single software suite for customer, policy, premium and product management systems with the help of IBM since data migration issues arose last July.

'Project DelPHI' is the final and core component of Medibank's $150 million overhaul of its policy and customer relationship management systems.

Last July's implementation issues meant most of the insurer's customers didn't get their annual tax statements by Medibank's July 15 deadline.

The insurer has continued to struggle with the platform's implementation since, but insisted it would be fully operational in 2017.

In its first half FY17 results today, Medibank claimed Project DelPHI remained "on track" and would likely move out of hyper-care within the next three to six months.

It said work done on the system since last year's technical issues had resulted in a 75 percent drop in high priority incidents, a 48 percent drop in the number of open issues, and a 51 percent improvement in load times on the member services portal.

The insurer said it had been working on "strengthening relationships with key suppliers" to "expedite" the project's progress, and had introduced "clearer priorities and stronger governance" within the business to get the project back on track.

Medibank claimed the platform's increasing stability was evident in its improved customer experience.

"As a result of improved stability in the platform, there have been fewer customer problems and fewer customer complaints related to IT issues," Medibank CEO Craig Drummond said.

The insurer said it had fixed 85 percent of 50 high priority customer pain points, and its average speed of response to customers was down from six minutes to three.

The results are due in part to the addition of 60 new workers to the Medibank contact centre, expansion of operating hours to Saturdays, as well as 24/7 web chat.

Medibank's focus now is on 'settling' DelPHI to get it fully operational this calendar year.

The insurer has now started to amortise the SAP platform.