For Robert Norris, CIO at Pinnacol Assurance, being involvedin strategic business decisions is more than a component of hisrole as the company's IT leader — it's also part of his jobtitle.

Norris, who's served as Pinnacol's CIO for 13 years, added thetitle vice president of strategic development about five years ago.The two roles are a natural fit for someone who considers hisaffinity for planning a key skill.

“The principle function of my strategic development role is tofacilitate strategic planning throughout the organization, whichgives me a pretty deep understanding of where the company is going,how we're going to get there, and what challenges we might facealong the way,” Norris says. “I use that deep understanding todrive IT strategy, so everything we do in IT is explicitly anddirectly linked to business strategy.”

Headquartered in Denver, Pinnacol is Colorado's leading providerof workers' compensation insurance. The company provides coverageto more than 55,000 Colorado businesses, garnering about 55 percentof the state's market. Pinnacol employs about 600 people, withclose to 85 employees working in the IT department.

Norris joined the carrier in 1997 after working at State FundMutual Insurance in Minneapolis, where he was vice president ofinformation services for five years. A graduate of Regis Universitywith a degree in business administration, he had previously held avariety of positions developing and marketing software to severalindustries, including insurance.

Throughout his tenure at Pinnacol, Norris has seen IT'sinfluence on the company's overall business strategy steadilyincrease.

“When I look at what IT is doing today and the accomplishmentswe've made over the past several years, there's definitely astrategic orientation to everything we've done,” he says. “IT'sfingerprints are all over Pinnacol's strategic plan and what thebusiness has achieved in the past decade.”

Part of that influence, according to Norris, can be seen oncustomer satisfaction survey results, where Pinnacol isconsistently receiving high marks in areas IT is directly involvedwith, including Web sites and telephone service.

During the next 12 to 18 months, Norris says his department'sinfluence will continue through IT initiatives that focus onWeb-based applications, product pricing tools, and business processefficiency.

For example, IT is currently building a Web portal to allowinjured workers to better communicate with Pinnacol and check thestatus of workers' comp payments and reimbursement checks. Theportal is currently in the design phase and scheduled to go live inmid-2011.

Norris and his team also are working onincremental improvements to the company's customer, agent, andbusiness partner Web sites to make them more user-friendly.

“In the old days, just having a Web portal for customers oragents was somewhat of a competitive differentiator in insurance,but that's no longer the case,” Norris says. “Today, the customer'sexperience with Pinnacol over the Web is not being evaluatedagainst another insurance company, it's being evaluated againstAmazon.com or some other leading Web site. So we need to make ourcustomers' experience online—and the usability of our Web site—asgood as some of the leading consumer sites, which is a pretty tallorder.”

As for longer-term IT projects, Norris and his team plan torewrite all the company's client-server applications to operate ina more Web-based environment, as well as provide mobile devices andapplications to more employees, customers, and businesspartners.

Norris is also looking into how cloud computing can benefitPinnacol.

“I don't want to be so leading-edge that we're the ones thatfall off the cliff, but I do want to be aggressive in movingapplications that aren't part of our core business into the cloud,”he says. “The data center and our entire application environmentare becoming exceedingly complex and with that complexity comescost and risk. It would be nice to simplify our platforms in a waythat allows our IT professionals to focus primarily on the businessof insurance, and not the business of running an e-mail server ornetwork switch.”

Whether he's considering cloud computing or focusing on customerservice, Norris contends that all IT initiatives are part ofPinnacol's overall strategy to continue to improve businessperformance and sustain long-term growth.

“Our CEO has directed us to become the best workers'compensation insurance company in the nation, and that's a prettyaudacious goal,” Norris says. “I feel like we're getting close andthat's both a blessing and a curse because that's where the realchallenge lies for IT. What are we going to do next?”