Zurich North America Commercial, the North American arm of insurance giant Zurich Financial Group, expects to save $2.5 million from a workstation that is helping to improve productivity of the risk engineers who inspect sites being considered for underwriting, and speed the information flow between risk engineers and underwriters.

 Zurich’s Risk Engineering Group had a workflow system for its risk engineers, but as the group’s annual volume of activities grew from a few thousand a few years ago to more than 75,000, it needed a system that would be faster and more robust. An efficient field reporting solution is important because underwriters who set rates and policy terms depend on timely and accurate reports from risk engineers in the field, and risk engineers require timely updates from underwriters so they can know the status of sites they are to visit.

Working in partnership with Microsoft Gold Certified Partners RDA and Magenic, it developed a Risk Engineering Workstation, based on SQL Server 2005 that streamlines data capture, reporting and analysis.

Zurich first engaged RDA to design the Risk Engineering Workstation, which was originally based on SQL Server 2000, and then enlisted Magenic to upgrade the system to SQL Server 2005. The workstation uses a .NET WinForms application, which integrates with Microsoft Office 2003 applications, to support flexible data capture. The forms-based screens map directly to the database. Updating the solution to SQL Server 2005 on the back end and SQL Server 2005 Express on the client side, provided substantially faster data replication.

SQL Server 2005 Merge Replication lets Zurich risk engineers work while disconnected from the network, and automatically replicate data when they go online. Merge Replication automatically resolves potential data conflicts.

Using .NET Remoting, Windows Scheduled Tasks and Web Services, the system integrates well with various underwriting and other line of business applications.

SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services is used to generate about 20 standard reports and to create custom reports. Its ease of use has encouraged the company to create reports that provide new insights into the business.

The solution is currently being used by 550 risk engineers, and by another 50 people working from desktop computers at headquarters and regional offices. Whenever Zurich risk engineers go online, data is available on demand for replication between the SQL Server 2005 Express Edition database on the client side and the SQL Server 2005 database at Zurich headquarters. Replication includes updating assignments and customer notes to the risk engineer, and uploading new data, including digitized photographs, to the master database at headquarters.

In total, Zurich now has replication that is 20 times faster, and estimates a $25 million benefit over the next five years from enhanced productivity, a better view into the business and greater ability to predict workflow.