An insurance carrier that writes approximately $150 million inpremium is by no means considered a large insurer, but companies ofthat size—including Pennsylvania Lumbermens Mutual InsuranceCompany (PLM)—often operate in niche markets.

PLM insures lumberyards and building material dealers, writingall commercial lines products in all 50 states.

"Trying to keep up with the ISO content with the forms and rateswas a huge issue for us," says Joseph M. McGurrin, Jr., vicepresident information technology for PLM. "Everything was donesomewhat manually. We had a COBOL-based mainframe system and weneeded to move away from that."

PLM used Insurance Writer for quoting its casualty business anda spreadsheet to quote the property business because they wereunable to use ISO in that line of business. The quoting system,according to McGurrin, was green screen and it was not going to bemaintained in the future.

"There was a lot of dual entry because what was entered into thequoting system could not be carried over into the existing policysystem, which was COBOL-based," he says. "We had some bigproblems."

The issue of a new policy administration system had been on theback burner at PLM for a decade, according to McGurrin. Duringthose years, McGurrin kept his eyes open, particularly at tradeshows.

"We needed all commercial lines, all states, ISO, a companythat's been around for a while as well as newer technology," hesays. "The list of vendors got shorter when we began to getserious. It got narrowed down very quickly."

Instec eventually rose to the top of PLM's list, according toMcGurrin.

"Our president and I visited their high-level folks and we hitit off well," he says.

Relationships are important in vendor deals, explains McGurrin,particularly for a carrier such as PLM, which considers itself arelationship company.

"I don't think having a great relationship was critical," hesays. "If [the meeting] had gone really bad we wouldn't have gonewith them. It didn't have to go excellent, but it went really well.He wanted them to know how critical this project was. We don't dothis often so we had to get it right. To invest this kind of moneywe had to work with someone who is in for the long run. We leftfeeling good about it."

The installation of Instec's Quicksolver was done in sprints,according to McGurrin. The insurer and the vendor each dedicated aproject leader to the installation.

"We installed Quicksolver with the first piece of customizationand almost every month after that we would install another sprintwith more changes so the users were able to adapt to that at afairly slow pace and get used to the system," he says. "We also hada dedicated test team here—a user group in underwriting. We setthem up with separate desks so they would be away from their dailywork."

Lengthy projects such as this one often end up with the scopegetting out of control, points out McGurrin.

"I drilled into our business users when we were doingrequirement definitions that we need to let Instec knoweverything," he says.

As PLM started accepting and installing the system, though,McGurrin realized that scope-creep was edging in.

"We knew from the beginning that this was going to cost morethan the original quote," he says. "We stayed on top of that verytight, but the things that needed to be changed were important. Imade sure everything that was changed was necessary. We startedwith eight sprints and we ended up with 15. Some were small towardthe end."

Efficiency for PLM was the key factor in the project, accordingto McGurrin.

"The larger strategy was to move off of COBOL so this fitnicely," he says. "Our product was not easily changed. It wouldtake six months to make any changes on the old system because itwas COBOL-based. We can now get a quote out much quicker and we canissue the policy quicker because it doesn't have to be re-enteredinto the system from the spreadsheets or the older quotingsystem."

Because of the niche PLM operates in—and the large size of thepolicies—most of the brokers the carrier works with have just oneor two accounts. Those brokers aren't looking to get into theQuicksolver system, according to McGurrin.

"It's not like they are going to quick quote," he says.

PLM has received positive feedback from the broker communitywith the proposals the carrier is able to offer.

"That went from a sprinted spreadsheet to a nice three-colorprinted piece with all the information," he says. "That's ourselling point. We want our proposal to look good. We told Instecall the fields we wanted on the proposal and we did the back-endmarketing. That came out as a nice product. The brokers are able topresent their insured with a state-of-the-art marketing piece."

The old system required PLM to have a processing departmentwhere workers would re-enter the data once PLM decided to write aparticular policy. With Quicksolver, PLM was able to re-integratethose workers into other areas of the operation.

PLM chose to use the new system for new business and renewals.Since many of the company's policies are for two-year periods, thecarrier continues to use the old system. PLM began installation inthe spring of 2011 and went live in March of 2012, so some of thepolicies will remain on the old system for another year.