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Zurich US's Enterprise Risk Division focuses on Web-based service, not sales.

Colletti ran the risk solutions support group during his tenure in the IT department. The group runs customized reports for customers from a loss-estimating system. ""Because the unit was constantly talking to the customers, it got a lot of feedback from them,"" he says. Colletti is using the knowledge he gained from that feedback and his IT experiences to his advantage in his new position.

""As a result, I have a close relationship with the IT side,"" adds Colletti. ""Because business and IT are tied at the hip, we bring a business and technical plan to the table when we deal with vendors."" Colletti's experience in IT helped develop guidelines for the Information Exchange. ""We wanted to make the Information Exchange as easy as attaching a document to e-mail. It is a drag-and-drop, cut-and-paste technology. It lets non-technical people put things on the Web.""

Colletti and the IT team saw demos from a number of vendors before deciding on the product that would power Information Exchange. ""We had a lot of vendors come in and not many of them showed us what they claimed they could do,"" Colletti explains. ""One vendor demoed a system that would take 25 steps to place information in the site.""

Finally, Colletti found what he was looking for from New York-based InStranet, Inc., a content management solutions provider. ""Out of the blue, a rep from InStranet called and the product he claimed the company had sounded like the product I wanted,"" reflects Colletti. ""It was one of the only times that the people demo-ing the product were able to show me exactly what I asked.""

Zurich chose InStranet's InStranet 2000, a content management and operational publishing software that uses multi-dimensional database technology to organize Web content and simplify Web publishing-or posting of information-and content retrieval. Incidentally, four individuals who left Business Objects, a San Jose, CA-based business intelligence solutions provider, started InStranet. Zurich has had a ""close relationship"" with Business Objects since 1997, says Colletti, and that is one of the reasons why the insurer decided to give InStranet a try. Consulting services representatives from PricewaterhouseCoopers (New York) assisted Colletti's team on the project.

Greg MacSweeney is editorial director of InformationWeek Financial Services, whose brands include Wall Street & Technology, Bank Systems & Technology, Advanced Trading, and Insurance & Technology. View Full Bio

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