Chris Haines, assistant vice president of technical operationsat Buckeye State Mutual, is putting the finishing touches on one oftwo projects that have defined his career at this regionalproperty/casualty insurance company.

By the end of this year, Buckeye, headquartered in Piqua, Ohio,plans to complete the rollout of an online rating, quoting, andendorsement system for homeowner policies for its independentagencies. A version for auto transactions was completed in2004.

The Web-based rating system, developed by Buckeye with help fromInteractive Business Systems, comes on the heels of a major policyadministration conversion system that changed the way Buckeyeoperates.
Were doing things now we could only dream about doing five yearsago, Haines says.

Back in 1999, Buckeye decided to replace its homegrown legacymainframe system with Applied Systems client-server Diamond System.At the time, Haines and his staff were spending too much time andmoney patching the past, as he puts it. It also was becomingincreasingly difficult to hire employees with the right skill setsand to train new users.

Converting its policies to Diamond (which is maintained byInsuresoft LLC, formerly a division of Applied Systems) helpedBuckeye reduce costs, increase productivity, and improve staffefficiency. The three-tiered product has a Visual Basic front endand a SQL server on the back end. The middle tier, or businesslayer, was developed in a way that allows interaction not onlybetween Diamond and its proprietary client but also with companyWeb sites, as well.

When we first went into this proj-ect, we only wanted to migrateour system, Haines explains. The Web was just a big dream. Butbecause of all the things Diamond has done for us, we were able tomove ahead with our Web plans much quicker than we expected.

As they began working on the online rating system, Haines andhis team had just one goal in mindease of use for Buckeyesagencies. We are not the first company to do online rating, Hainesadmits. But five years from now, when all the companies are doingit, we want ours to be the easiest to use for our agencies. It isntgoing to be the fanciest, but it is going to be the mostuser-friendly.

To that end, the interface, nicknamed the Wizard, was developedjointly by IT and underwriting. Too many failed IT projects are theresult of IT departments not receiving any input from anyone else,Haines points out. The success of this project was due to theinteraction between IT and other departments that know what theagencies need better than we do.

Buckeye, which employs 70 people, sells insurance through 150agencies in five midwestern states. During one week in March, thecompany processed close to 800 auto transactions through the Web, anumber Haines calls phenomenal for a company Buckeyes size. Lastyear, Buckeyes written premium was nearly $51 million.

Haines, who joined Buckeye in 1998, has been interested incomputers since he was younghe wrote his first large computerprogram (with 400-plus lines) when he was in fourth grade. Whilegrowing up, he also spent a lot of time at Buckeye, where hisfather worked. R. Douglas Haines now is the companys president andchief executive officer.

I grew up as part of the Buckeye family, Haines says. But thelast thing I wanted to do when I got older was work in insurance orwork at Buckeye.

With that in mind, Haines originally majored in art at WrightState University in Dayton. He eventually switched to computers andgraduated with a bachelors degree in business, with a concentrationin management information systems.

As time went on, Haines attitude about working at Buckeyechanged. In 1998, while finishing up his degree, he was hired as anetwork analyst. Haines soon became a business analyst, working onIT projects and helping the company streamline processes. Shortlythereafter, he was asked to manage the two-person mailroom.

In 2001, Haines was promoted to manager of technical operationsand continued working on the migration to the new policyadministration system. He was promoted to assistant vice presidentin 2004 and currently oversees 11 full-time employees and onepart-timer.

With two major IT projects almost complete, Haines plans tofocus on improving Internet security and strengthening BuckeyeOnline, the companys agency portal. We have no large projects onthe horizon right now, he adds, but you never know in our industrywhats going to happen.

is a freelance business writer based in Charlotte, N.C.