BY SHARON BAKER
Working as a CIO for an insurance company was not even on Clark Sykes radar screen when he first entered the work force 25 years ago after earning three degrees in anthropology. But studying how humans interact and the cultural issues they face along with learning how to think critically have more than served him well in his second career in technology.
I had to do a lot of analysis when I was an anthropologist and think through things critically, says Sykes, now vice president of IT at Merchants Insurance Group in Buffalo, N.Y. I wouldnt say I use my anthropology background every day, but it has helped me understand what works to motivate people and how people respond to different situations.
Sykes course in life changed in the early 1980s. At the time, he was teaching anthropology at Boston University, after earning a bachelors degree in the subject at Florida State University and a masters and doctorate from the University of Toronto. During those years, the Boston/Cambridge area was a hotbed of technology growth. A friend who was starting a software company called Adelie Corp. persuaded Sykes to join him as manager of a development group.
Adelie had some very bright and highly technical software engineers. While I had direct technical responsibilities, the unique perspective I brought to the table was an ability to translate technical jargon into laymans terms and vice versa, Sykes says.
Adelie eventually grew to about 70 employees before AT&T bought it out. From there, Sykes joined IBMs consulting group in 1987, working primarily with Fortune 500 financial services and insurance companies in the Boston area. In 1991, he transferred to Buffalo.
While still with IBM, Sykes helped Merchants Insurance Group conduct a comprehensive project review and redirect its IT efforts after an unsuccessful internal technology project. We encouraged Mer-chants to focus on its insurance operations and align its IT strategy with its business strategy, rather than to try to be at the cutting-edge with technology, he recalls.
After helping the company complete a business-requirements study, interview vendors, and select WINS, an AS/400-based COBOL packaged solution, Sykes joined Merchants as CIO in 1993.
Once Sykes came on board, he spent four years helping Merchants through a massive operational change as it customized the WINS solution to meet its business needs and optimized many core processes. The project included partnering with Insurity to integrate WINS with Insuritys commercial rating engine to provide Merchants with a totally integrated system.
This was a colossal project, involving many of my IT and business colleagues in a truly collaborative effort, Sykes says. We took WINS out of the box, but what we ended up with was something totally different. The project was a tremendous success, and our internal operations now are highly automated and extremely efficient.
In the late 1990s, Merchants extended its WINS capabilities to the Web using tools from software developer LANSA to create Web-based claims, policy, and billing inquiry systems as well as commercial lines policy quoting and issue solutions for its agents. Merchants Web initiatives coincided with an overall business strategy shift to focus more on commercial lines for small businesses.
Weve put a lot of tools into the hands of our agents to optimize their interaction with Merchants and improve our customer service, Sykes says.
Linc Software supports Merchants Web development work offshore in India. We partnered with Linc initially because our staff didnt have sufficient LANSA [toolset] skills, Sykes says. But over time, our own skills have grown, and weve added some LANSA programmers, so its more of a shared responsibility now.
The next large IT project on Sykes agenda involves automated workflow and imaging. Merchants currently uses IBMs Content Manager for document and workflow management in its claims and personal lines underwriting departments and may extend that solution to its commercial lines departments in remote offices.
Although working on large technology projects seemed an unlikely possibility to Sykes years ago, he contends changing ones career is not so unusual.
I rarely meet a person who didnt have a prior career of some sort, he says. Everybody has something they started out in, and now theyre doing something entirely different. Its what keeps life fresh and interesting.
is a freelance business writer based in Charlotte, N.C.
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