Sometimes you dont realize youre digging a big hole until youfind yourself looking up and wondering how you got so deep. Whenthey get there, some companies will keep diggingmaybe hoping toreach China or some other global market. Smarter companies taketime out to examine why the hole got so deep and how theyre goingto climb out of it.
In this case, the smart company was AmerisureThe AmerisureCompanies, actuallya regional property and casualty insurerprimarily involved in workers compensation. Over the years, it hadbrought in a variety of disparate systems and spent extensive timetrying to connect them all, according to Frank Petersmark, vicepresident of information technology for Amerisure.
Then, three years ago, the company drew a line in the sand,Petersmark said. The company formed a strategic planning committee,and out of it came a long-term blueprint for technology atAmerisure. Included were an enterprise-wide data model and a planto implement solutions that lived up to that model.
Having developed a model, Amerisure could then approach softwarevendors to see how the model would work with each vendors system.We didnt expect to find anything that completely matched,Petersmark said.
But to the companys surprise, Taliant Software did submit aproduct, PowerComp, that offered a close enough matchPetersmarkestimates between 75 and 80 percent of functionalityand Amerisuresat up and took notice. That was a pretty high match, Petersmarkadmitted.
Taliant designed PowerComp as a workers comp processing system, butAmerisure wanted it to do more. Although workers comp makes upapproximately 60 percent of Amerisures business, it did not want tolimit itself to a single-line operating system. The company sawsomething in PowerComp, believing it could be adopted for all itslines of business. The two companies agreed to partner in theproject
To make sure that Amerisure was in fact on a new pathone away fromthose disparate systemsPetersmark preached patience, and that iswhat the company is giving the project. Taliant licensed theproduct to Amerisure in May 2001, but the product will not goonline until this July, according to Petersmark.
Taliant was willing to let us drive where the system would go,Petersmark said. They also seemed to speak our language. They knowinsurance terminology and what the word coverage means. Thats notalways true with other vendors.
The PowerComp package offers five modules: Policyholder Services,Claims Management, Work Management, Shared Tools, andAdministration Tools. Over the next few years, the two will beexpanding the products uses.
While there are a lot of antsy people at Amerisure who are waitingto get online with PowerComp, Petersmark likes to remind them: Ittook 20 years to get into this position, so its going to take alittle while to get out of it. We needed time to do this right. Ittakes a little longer up front, but it will take less time for theother products as we go on.
Amerisures people will be doing their jobs in a whole new way oncethis is complete, and that always causes some trepidation. Theywill come to like it eventually, because it will bring moreinformation and more functionality to their fingertips, Petersmarksaid. There will be a significant training curve with the PowerCompproduct. We are using a train the trainer approach, Petersmarksaid, that will swing into full gear this month, four months beforeit goes online.
The partnership with Taliant brought together quality people fromboth companies and that opened a tremendous line of communicationbetween the two. ROBERT REGIS HYLE

THE PROBLEM: A HOST OF DISSIMILAR SYSTEMS, AND AN URGENT NEEDFOR A LONG-TERM STRATEGY.

THE COMPANY: THE AMERISURE COMPANIES
LINES: P&C, FOCUSING ON WORKERS COMP
PREMIUMS EARNED: $252 MILLION
WEB SITE: www.amerisure.com

THE SOFTWARE: POWERCOMP FROM
TALIANT SOFTWARE
WEB SITE: www.taliantsoftware.com