With a young family, though, it turned out to be not as good a locale as the United States, Singh says, so he jumped at the chance to join Peoria, Ill.-based RLI when he was recruited in 1994. RLI showed me the cornfields that were similar to the sugar-cane fields in Jamaica, but I forgot to look for comparable beaches, he quips. While leaving a yearlong summery location for one with a sometimes harsher climate held some challenges, he asserts raising a family in the heartland of America was worth it.

At $800 million in premium, RLI is one of the better-known and more successful carriers in a small, unique cadrea niche-market, product-focused insurance company. RLI got its start as Replacement Lens Insurance Company, but we dont write that product anymore, notes Singh. Still, the company has remained true to that original specialty focus, always looking for niche areas. Today, RLI writes various products, such as in-home business packages and individual umbrellas, through both retail independent agents and wholesale managing general agents. IT is centralized in Peoria, but the underwriting is decentralized throughout the country with 16 physical locations stretching from Honolulu, Hawaii, to Glastonbury, Conn. Singh is responsible for 68 of RLIs 600 employees, who are organized into three distinct divisionssystems development, enterprise technology support, and enterprise computing servicebecause of the different skills and focuses involved.

Among other initiatives, Singh is spearheading RLIs Six Sigma methodology. Our pilot projects currently are going on, he says, and we already can see tremendous benefits. Once the pilots are completed, we plan to extend it to the company, carefully choosing the areas of focus. He describes Six Sigma as being a statistical measure of quality, and what it brings to an organization is a focus on delivering value at an optimal cost to the customerboth internal and external. We have a customer focus and a business process focus, and this will help us improve both by taking inefficiencies out of the companys business processes.

RLI takes a hard-nosed, practical approach to IT, Singh says, avoiding undertakings that may be nice but not necessarywhat he calls airline magazine projectsunless there is a real business need for them. He cites two examples: Wireless technology would be fun to do, he says, but there isnt any cost justification for it in RLIs business environment. Another is the popular 24/7 approach to IT. While many of our systems are, in fact, up 24/7, our goal is to have the highest possible reliability for our core 16/5 [6 a.m. to 10 p.m., CST, Monday to Friday], when the majority of our business gets done, he adds.

Singh has four major goals:

Single point of entry. Regardless of where data first is entered into any system, it then is carried seamlessly to any other system, so there is no duplicate data entry.
Single user interface. Users always get the same Web-based intuitive interface, regardless of the systems being utilized under the covers.
Single source of information. Data from various systems are integrated into data warehouses for consistent and better business intelligence.
Single source of document repository. Documentsnot just claims documentsare imaged for better electronic backup and faster retrieval.
When asked about percentage completion on the above, he considers it to be a journey and not a destination. In the current business environment, he explains, things constantly are on the move, and IT continuously is working in partnership to be in step with the business environment changes.

Does he miss the heady days of consulting and world travel? Consultants tend to come in, work on a project, and leave, he points out. They dont see the whole company, before the project or afterward. Working in the real world is much more satisfying.