Apostle Preaches New Gospel

Without leaving his desk, Paul Apostle started a new career. He was vice president, IT, at Medical Mutual of Ohio (MMOH, Cleveland) until early in 2001 when the health insurance provider spun off all its IT assets into a subsidiary company, Antares Management Solutions, headquartered in Westlake, OH. Apostle is now vice president, information systems development, for the solutions provider firm, but he still occupies the same office.

His perspective has changed, however. "One of the things that gets increased emphasis in my life day to day now is the realization that the customer is always right and I need to be persuasive with the customer," he says.

Apostle spends his days now persuading customers of the value of Antares' solutions. "We offer small and mid-sized health insurance companies an opportunity to take advantage of systems and technologies that the medium to large insurers have," Apostle says. "For a number of our customers, we walk in and become their sole IT outsourcer, both from a hardware and development viewpoint."

Antares also works on an ASP model, and provides consulting staff to implement specialized solutions for companies wishing to retain their development and claims processing staffs. Additionally, it markets a suite of Internet products to insurers to provide Internet access to policy information and certain transactions. "We tailor it to their needs," Apostle says.

Anthony O'Donnell has covered technology in the insurance industry since 2000, when he joined the editorial staff of Insurance & Technology. As an editor and reporter for I&T and the InformationWeek Financial Services of TechWeb he has written on all areas of information ... View Full Bio