Late last year, months after going live with a document management project, Janet Cochrane, COO of Renaissance Group, had a conversation with her husband, Bruce, who is the CEO of Renaissance. "He told me years from now, when we look back on this project, we may realize this is one of the smartest tech decisions we've made," says the COO. "We're reaping benefits from it almost immediately. We've dumped millions of dollars in technology in the past that either hasn't panned out for us or seemed to take forever to return our investment, so this is one [project] we can feel good about."

The project Cochrane is referring to is the .NET platform from ImageRight that Renaissance, a Massachusetts-based insurance aggregator, has had in service for just more than a year now. "We were growing dynamically, and we realized many of the processes we were performing on a day-to-day basis had slipped in terms of the timeliness and accuracy of some of the core services we provide," she says.

The challenges Renaissance was experiencing were due to the company's growth, Cochrane indicates. When company officials examined the situation they realized it was the volume of work that had created the problem and the solution didn't lie in hiring additional staff.