Based in West Des Moines, Iowa, GuideOne specializes in servicing churches, private schools, colleges, senior living communities, and individuals. The company, which employs about 750 people, posted $565 million in net written premium in 2009. Fischer, who reports directly to the CEO, manages a $15 million IT budget and oversees 105 full-time employees.

Fischer contends GuideOne's niche market offers unique challenges for IT. “We don't cover your standard office building,” he says. “Churches are unique buildings, with steeples, organs, and stained-glass windows that add to your risk exposure.”

As a result, Fischer says, GuideOne has deviated from ISO standards in the past to better serve its clients, which creates challenges when trying to install new systems such as AQS Access.

“Over the years, we've built up a legacy of changes,” he explains. “We started with base ISO and have built on it from there. Now, we need to go back into our legacy systems to make sure we capture all the changes we've made and carry them over to our new policy admin system.”

GuideOne, which is licensed in all 50 states, hopes to roll out the new system in Missouri by early 2011. Once that rollout is complete, other states will follow. Eventually, the policy admin system also could service personal lines.

In addition to the AQS project, GuideOne recently launched SafeChurch.com, an extensive risk management tool created exclusively for churches. The Web site, intended to help differentiate the company from its competitors, allows members to access numerous risk management resources on transportation and facility safety, emergency preparedness, and financial safeguards. The site also offers online training modules and provides an avenue for churches to conduct background checks on employees and volunteers.

Other IT projects include a continued focus on enterprise content management and data warehousing. This year, Fischer and his team plan to provide advanced workflow and imaging to commercial lines and take the company's ongoing data warehouse initiative to the next level.

“This is an effort that never really ends,” he says. “We're finally at the point where we have a really good warehouse of information. Now, we want to get that information into the hands of the right people in a format they can really use.”

GuideOne also is working with a vendor to develop dashboards and scorecards. “We hope to have some level of dashboarding available to members of management, so they can access quickly and easily the information they need,” Fischer says. “Our goal is to have consistent information across the organization, so everyone's looking at the same data.”

Fischer, who holds a bachelor's degree in applied computer science from Grand View College and an MBA from the University of Iowa, says his fascination with computers began when he took a programming class in high school. “I fell in love with the possibilities and with the problem-solving that comes from using computers,” he says. “It's a hobby for me now in addition to my work.”

After college, Fischer joined Massey Ferguson, an agricultural equipment manufacturer, as a programmer. From there, he went to Pioneer Hi-Bred International, where he held a variety of positions from programmer/analyst to project management to manager of international IT operations.

In 2000, Fischer joined GuideOne as manager of agency automation and Internet development, eager to work for a smaller organization where he could make a larger impact. He moved into various management positions before being promoted to CIO in 2007.