Application Solutions
How do you keep track of hundreds of sub-contractors insurance credentials and paperwork on multiple projects that last for years at a time?

When Arthur J. Gallagher & Company (Gallagher), one of the largest insurance brokerage firms in the United States, was faced with a hardening insurance market and a need to grow the wrap-up segment of its business, they concluded that the ad-hoc processes that were currently in place would not support their desire to centralize management of their wrap-up business and limit the growth of the personnel and overhead expense required by those processes.
 
Insource Technology Corporation helped Gallagher design and build a new enterprise wrap-up application that ultimately improved the way the National Wrap-Up unit within Gallagher’s Brokerage Services Division did business.

Client Profile
Arthur J. Gallagher & Company (NYSE: AJG), the fourth largest insurance brokerage and risk management services firm in the United States, plans, designs, and administers a full array of customized, cost-effective property/casualty, risk management, and employee benefits programs. Gallagher has operations in nine countries and does business in more than 100 countries through a network of correspondent brokers and consultants.

Business Requirements
Gallagher markets and administers a complex insurance offering known as a wrap-up, a unique program through which an owner or general contractor for a large construction project provides Workers Compensation and/or General Liability to all participants on the project. The National Wrap-Up Unit within Gallagher's Brokerage Services Division designs wrap-up programs for their clients and then provides services to administer these programs.
 
Although Gallagher had previously developed a custom, Web-based application for wrap-up administration, this application suffered from a number of basic design flaws and did not address many of the wrap-up business requirements, resulting in very limited usage and lack of acceptance by most of the regional offices, who continued to use locally-developed, manually-intensive work processes based on spreadsheets.
 
Gallagher undertook a study of their internal work processes involving wrap-ups. This study recommended centralization of the wrap-up function and development of a new enterprise application that would address all aspects of the wrap-up business process. After interviewing a number of development firms and hiring a National Director to lead the centralized business unit, Gallagher selected Insource Technology to design and build the enterprise wrap-up application.

The Insource Solution
A combined team of Gallagher personnel and Insource consultants worked on a plan to meet Gallagher’s objectives. Dubbed CIPWORKS, the new wrap-up application was divided into two phases:

• Phase 1 was the initial Analysis/Requirements phase of the project, during which the team defined the high-level specifications, data requirements, architecture, and development work plan for the enterprise wrap-up application.
  
• Phase 2 was the Technical Design phase, during which the detailed design specifications, physical data model, technical architecture, and a visual prototype were produced. The new wrap-up application was then built, tested, and deployed to production as scheduled.

• Increased wrap-up revenues by enhancing the value Gallagher's service offerings to its clients;
  
• Reduced administrative expenses per dollar generated
  
• Significantly reduced time spent capturing and recording information, eliminating redundant data entry;
  
• Standardized processes for managing wrap-ups;
  
• Enabled better validation and tracking of data received from contractors;
  
• Enabled centralized management and oversight of national wrap-up operations; and
  
• Improved coordination of account management between Gallagher branches.