Winner Profile: StoneRiver

StoneRiver Values Customer Input

Dori Luke

Offering an intuitive and easy-to-install financial accounting solution is paying dividends for StoneRiver in terms of customer praise.

A winner of a RAVE Award in the back-office category, StoneRiver's PTE Financial solutions are designed to handle cash, statutory, and GAAP reporting requirements. The insurance-specific applications offer user-defined ledgers and unlimited consolidations as well as budgeting, forecasting, and reporting capabilities. The platform is compatible with a variety of desktop operating systems, network servers, and LAN/WAN environments.

Headquartered in Oakland, Calif., StoneRiver was founded in 1986. It first introduced its PTE Financial solutions to the marketplace in 1992.

Dori Luke, StoneRiver's senior vice president of financial and compliance solutions, attributes the system's rave reviews from customers to its ease of use and focus on insurance accounting needs.

“The core system is very robust and often has been referred to as a workhorse by our clients,” she says. “But it's also a system that doesn't require a strong IT staff to maintain. For our small customers that may be using the product in a desktop environment to clients with multiple locations using a network environment, it's not intensive from an IT perspective.”

Customer Quote:
StoneRiver PTE Financial

They are very efficient when helping with questions or problems. They have online help that is answered very quickly, or you may phone them.

The company also has been effective in partnering with clients to make sure the product fits their needs, Luke says. “We meet with our clients formally four times a year and really listen to what they're telling us they need in the product,” she says. “We continue to enhance it more and more each year. About 60 percent of our development effort is geared around client requests and requirements, with the other 40 percent related to compliance needs.”

As a result, PTE Financial addresses specific needs of insurance companies, Luke indicates. “We fit the entire spectrum of the needs of insurers, whether it be front office, claims, underwriting, rating, billing, or compliance solutions,” she says. “Our product meets our clients' unique needs as they relate to reporting and having to track not only GAAP but statutory requirements, as well. It really simplifies the filing process for them.”

Honorable Mention: SunGard iWorks Enterprise Accounting System

Our product allows insurance companies to configure their general ledger to analyze results in a very flexible way. They can group and report on each of their individual business units rather than on the corporation overall. –Michelle Dennis, vice president of strategic operations

Customer Quote:
SunGard iWorks EAS

Upgrades to the software are responsive to client comments and client comments are sought.