When Chris Spring took over as senior vice president of businessoperations/CIO at Meadowbrook Insurance Group five years ago, hedrew upon his 30-plus years of experience to help the company alignits business and IT strategies. For an organization that has grownrapidly through acquisitions, he saw such coordination as key toits success.

“One of the first things I did was to make sure I knew what thebusiness strategies were so I could start aligning applications andother technologies to those strategies,” he says.

Based in Southfield, Mich., Meadowbrook is a full-service riskmanagement organization that operates six different insurancecompanies and has four agencies, a wholesale brokerage, and severalinsurance subsidiaries. Net written premiums for 2008 were $375million. Spring, who joined the company in 1999, oversees an ITdepartment of about 85 people.

Once Spring understood Meadowbrook's business strategies, hemoved quickly to align IT to those strategies. His first task wasto streamline servers, networks, and phone systems. “Within 18months, we had consistency and standards in place throughout ourinfrastructure,” he says.

The next step? Upgrade the company's systems and applications.“Meadowbrook is really a hybrid of product offerings,” Spring says.“There's not just one solution that is applicable for eachdepartment. So, we divided the business into buckets and beganimplementing applications that were appropriate for each area.”

For example, for its commercial lines business, the companyimplemented INSTEC's QuickSolver to improve rate quoting and policyissuance. For its self-insurance groups and public-entity programs,Meadowbrook installed ConceptOne, a policy issuance and claimssystem from Epic-Premier Insurance Solutions. The company alsoupgraded its data repository and billing system.

To improve claims processing throughout the company, Spring andhis team replaced three legacy systems with CS STARS, a claimssystem developed by Marsh Client Technologies.

To address integration issues, the company implemented AdeptiaBPM Server, a business process management system that combinesdisparate data and software applications within the company andacross business partners. Such integration will be particularlybeneficial as Spring and his team begin combining Meadowbrook'ssystems with those from Columbus, Ohio-based ProCenturyCorporation, which the company acquired in 2008.

“Every acquisition brings its own set of legacy systems,” Springsays. “We won't use the systems we've implemented at Meadowbrookexclusively; we'll use what makes the most sense.”

For example, Spring plans to implement ProCentury's front-endportal as well as its data warehouse and ImageRight applicationsthroughout the company. Other older, home-grown systems fromProCentury will be phased out in favor of Meadowbrook's systems.Spring expects the entire IT integration process to take severalyears.

In addition to working on integration projects, Spring and histeam will continue to implement thin-client technology throughoutthe organization to help lower costs and improve efficiency. About85 percent of Meadowbrook's PCs will be replaced with thin-clientdevices by the third quarter. So far, Spring says thisenvironmentally friendly and progressive technology has helped thecompany decrease the number of help-desk calls by 80 percent andlower electricity bills in some departments by 35 percent.

The IT department also will finish converting Meadowbrook'snetwork infrastructure to a VoIP system by the end of this year aswell as revamp the company's intranet.

In 1987, Spring moved to the Boston area and held managementpositions at American Mutual Insurance Companies and ISI Systems,Inc.

In the early 1990s, he and two colleagues founded TPAAssociates, Inc., a program administration company for workers'compensation self-insurance groups. Meadowbrook acquired thecompany in 1999, and Spring stayed on to help with the integration.In 2004, he was promoted to his current position.

“Of my 33 years in the insurance business, running an ITdepartment is by far the most challenging experience because thereare so many demands from so many different realms,” Spring says.“You have to look at everything–from hardware needs to newtechnologies. And you have to be flexible and know how to solveproblems quickly.”