I like counting things, says Chris Garson, who heads up all IT that affects Progressives independent agents, and in the course of conversation over the next hour, he proved it.
For example: We have a goal of 99.9 percent availability for our critical, outfacing systems that agents touch. Twenty-six of our 40 primary production systems are included in that goal. That allows me only 526 minutes of downtime for the entire year, including scheduled maintenance. Thats only eight and a half hours for the entire year. How can that be achieved? So far this year, those systems have been up 99.7 percent of the time. Weve had 134 documented outages, and 104 of them had zero customer impact because our built-in redundancy worked properly and the systems never went down.
Garson has a lot to count. Progressive is the countrys largest writer of auto insurance through 30,000 independent agencies. It writes more than $9 billion per year of premium, about 70 percent of which is written by those agencies. Most of that is private passenger auto insurance. Progressive also writes small commercial fleets of 40 or fewer vehicles, and it has a specialty division that writes specialty lines, such as motorcycles, ATVs, boats, RVs, or such things as the new Segway human transporters. If its written by independent agents, Garson is responsible for it.
Officially, his title is Agent IT Business Leader. Im probably the only one in the whole country who has that title, he laughs. I dont care what they call me. He obviously cares about what he does, though, and it shows. Seventy percent of all agent transactions now are handled on our For Agents Only.com [FAO], he tosses out, and 80 percent of those were handled in five minutes or less. FAO is Progressives secure, password-protected, agent- and broker-dedicated Web site.
Although hes a true techie now, Garson didnt start off that way. After growing up in ClevelandProgressives home turfGarson spent four years at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, graduating with a bachelor of arts in psychology and sociology. Returning home and drawing on a family history in insuranceI have insurance in my bloodhe attempted to join Progressive in the marketing department. The company gave him an aptitude test and hired him into what was then the MIS department. I was the assistant to the tape librarian in the computer room, he says, describing what he says was his less-than-glamorous first job. In essence, I was replaced by a robot.
A robot certainly couldnt handle what Garson, his six really talented direct reports, and 500-person department currently do. He rattled off his primary responsibilities: All quoting platforms (the DOS-based platform is gone; the Windows-based system still will be around for a while, but the Web-based system included in FAO is the main one); product design, enhancement, development, and rollout; the FAO Web site (We get one million page hits per day on FAO.); and download.
Ive got more, he continues. Hes also responsible for the mainframe policy issuance systems, a 100-person call center (that supports FAO and the older Windows agent software), a dozen data warehouses, and the sales force automation for the Progressive territory sales managers who call on agents. There are probably another 50 or so smaller systems that arent worth mentioning, he concludes.
Personally, Garson is quite the automated executive. He carries the smallest, lightest Dell Latitude notebook because I travel so extensively, he says. At home, he regularly rebuilds his machine, loading and reloading systems and changing configurations. Im fearless about downloading from the Internet and periodically pay the price for it. He also is a big jam band fan, having downloaded over 50 gigabytes of music from artist-supported sites. (Ninety-seven percent of it is the Grateful Dead.) Mostly I use it for my novel, he says, describing a personal project hes always wanted to do and now is in the midst ofwriting a novel he describes as an epic battle between good and evil.
The biggest transformation under Garsons watch at the office is a major and highly noticeable change in the way the Progressive IT area relates to the rest of the industry. Before Garson, there was minimal involvement with organizations such as ACORD and virtually none with agency management systems, rating vendors, etc. Garson altered all that. Today, Progressive is an involved participant in industry affairs. Garson and his key lieutenants actively participate in numerous committees, attend major user group meetings, and keep in touch with key leaders at the various vendors. Im very proud of that, he says.
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