Six months into Joel Matthies' new job as vice president of IT at Jewelers Mutual Insurance Company, the carrier faced a difficult decision. A two-year systems conversion project for its commercial line of business was scheduled to go live in January 2006. But despite the overtime and extra effort put forth by the project leadership team, the business support staff, and Matthies' 20-member IT team, it was becoming apparent the technology initiative would not be ready by the scheduled due date.

The project to convert Jewelers Mutual's systems from AS400 to a Windows-based platform was under way long before Matthies arrived in August 2005. In fact, the project's first phase–converting the systems supporting the company's personal jewelry insurance product line–was completed on time in January 2003. The second phase, however, was more complicated and involved a larger component of the company's business, which meant a decision had to be made: Should Matthies roll out the project to stay on schedule or delay delivery in favor of a higher-quality product?

"Our project team has been wonderful in terms of trying to deliver this on time. However, after meaningful discussions with the executive team, we recognized it's not worth putting out a project that does not meet the quality Jewelers Mutual expects or has delivered throughout its history," Matthies says. "We made the tough decision to delay the project until it meets the quality we put out across all our products."