“One of a risk manager's biggest challenges is e-mailing and tracking information among all of his contacts,” says Glenn Peake, marketing manager for Aon eSolutions. “It amazes me that most businesses still collect all their risk-management data in spreadsheet form. Consider what that means for a Fortune 500 company with 300 U.S. locations—each of which must update Liability & Casualty figures and claims histories.”

Any organizational source approved by the client worldwide can enter data into the system, and that information can be represented in foreign currencies that are aggregated into the currency of the client's central location.

Aon's RMIS integrates administrative, analytical and reporting functions in more than 20 standard modules that can be added according to client need, including ones devoted to risk financing, incident reporting, litigation management, insurer ratings, product recall, logistics management and environmental liability.

But the key element in Aon's software, says Tom Wimberly, vice president of product management and product marketing at Aon eSolutions, is its flexibility. A specialist will work with an account closely throughout the implementation process.

“Most of our clients come to us because [managing risk] is so complex,” says Wimberly. “Our staffers have postgraduate degrees or have worked as claims managers and can guide individuals through the installation process.”

Aon's team stays with the client past the initial implementation phase, assigning an expert staffer to maintain knowledge of the company's business requirements and the areas with which they need continued assistance, such as report writing, data conversion, business analysis or project management.

“The result of this approach is that each aspect of your project is placed in the hands of a group of individuals who have deep, daily client experience producing similar solutions in a specific aspect of delivery,” says Wimberly.

One of Aon's RiskConsole clients is Mosaic Co., a leading producer and distributor of concentrated phosphate and potash crop nutrients.

“Our Environmental, Health and Safety Group needed to replace a legacy system they used to track safety incidents,” explains Mike Bishop, Mosaic's director of risk management. “We considered building an in-house tool but ultimately selected Risk Console to track 14 types of incidents that the group analyzes. It has also become a tool used by our operations group at our plants, helping to document incidents and root out causes of safety issues.”

Mosaic also uses RiskConsole to automate its data-gathering and exposure-analysis processes. The company's risk-management team used to manually gather renewals data from 49 global locations—almost half the corporate total—a process that took eight weeks to complete. By using RiskConsole, it has trimmed six weeks from the process—and it has experienced significant savings.

“This has been a big win for us in that we were able to cut costs and turnaround time in gathering broader underwriting data from over 100 locations in eight countries,” says Bishop. “This helped to reduce department and broker costs while expanding the data available to underwriters, driving down insurance-premium costs.”

Indeed, the more-detailed data the tool has helped deliver enabled Mosaic to earn a 10.7 percent reduction in Excess Liability premium from its carrier.

Aon's RMIS also helped craft Mosaic's general ERM strategy by generating reports on employee, automobile and fleet data, hazardous chemical accountability, factory profiles and cargo risks.

Going forward, Bishop's team is considering using RiskConsole for its debt-compliance reporting, property loss control and asset management.

BENCHMARKING STAR

Clients of Stars Enterprise, the RMIS offering from CS Stars, a business unit of Marsh, can measure their performance against their peers via a database of 14 million Liability, Property and Workers' Compensation claim records from about 500 organizations across a variety of industries (the database is updated quarterly). CS Stars' data experts process information for more than 800 client organizations and from most major carriers and third-party administrators (TPAs).

Enterprise clients can compare their organization against others by selecting company attributes such as revenue, size, industry and geography. Users also can select and filter data based on claim attributes including loss date range, coverage and state.

Customized screens and dashboard alerts help claims-handlers uphold regulatory compliance by providing a library of updated injury-reporting forms from all 50 states, and the system can translate claims data into the reporting formats of various unbundled policies maintained by a TPA.

It ensures that claim forms are filled out on schedule and alerts the user if there has been a filing delay. If the tardy filer is a TPA, the risk manager can automatically request that compliance managers hold payments to the company until the certificates are completed.

Its arsenal of claims tools includes an indemnity-benefits calculator; a lost-time tracker; and medical-bill-review integration.

The program also boasts a geospatial analysis feature, called Risk Goggles, to monitor weather and geological events against asset locations using real-time feeds on weather and catastrophes that could affect them. Risk Goggles also provides a visual chart of the claims metrics, safety, compliance data and other performance indicators of each of a company's locations.

And Risk Goggles provides a set of intelligence tools like a summary of Key Performance Indicator data that measure an asset's progress toward risk, safety and compliance goals, and it even identifies variables like news of civil unrest in the area of a business location.

Enterprise monitors how the client's assets and liabilities can affect its risk profile via Construction/Occupancy/Protection/Exposure (COPE) property analysis and loss-control information; and it tracks exposure data using templates, allowing users to drill down to the finest financial detail.

When it's time for an organization's exposure values to be collected, Enterprise sends surveys to those responsible for reporting the data at each location. Those surveys help compare the organization's exposure to prior-year values; it also asks for comment if the annual difference in exposure value exceeds a certain set threshold (for example, 10 percent).

Packaging-manufacturer Bemis Co. purchased Stars Enterprise six years ago after a recommendation from its broker. Bemis' four-person risk staff uses the system and has extended it to include information input from end users at its various factories. It uses the data to provide dashboard reports at regular board and officer meetings.

“At first we were looking for claims-capture and reporting information,” says Brent Pickens, Bemis' director of enterprise risk management. “What we were ultimately hoping and able to do with the Stars team was to leverage [the software] into an empowerment tool that adds value to our business process.

“Many would think of claims procedure as a [cost] control, but it also has the ability to get the fastest medical treatment to an employee, assure that care is being administered, and shows the executive team that they are getting the desired result,” he adds.

GOOD CARMA

Whether risk managers are insured or self-insured, or have bundled or unbundled programs, Travelers' RMIS system, known as e-CARMA, can help clients manage loss costs.

The tool allows users to submit claims online and monitor their progress from filing to resolution; it aids in Occupational Health & Safety Administration recordkeeping by automatically populating all OSHA forms online using user data; it allows online access to policy details such as coverage and endorsements; it records detailed information on payment activity; provides access to white papers on risk control; and its “My Diary” option allows users to create and track all their risk-management activities.

e-CARMA offers a number of customizable dashboards, including the Performance dashboard with which clients can measure their organizational results against current Travelers customers within their own industry; they can also review claim-outcome trends, conduct frequency/severity analyses and access “company-at-a-glance” financials.

The e-CARMA Risk Analyzer enhancement, introduced last year, utilizes drop-down menus that are customized around the client's organization and allow for easy drill-down to investigate, for example, the rate of injuries—as specific as back sprains among a company's employees.

Risk managers also can use the system to keep an eye on emerging trends such as an aging workforce or the rate of accidents among new employees, allowing them to consider solutions, says Michael Strietelmeier, vice president of risk-management information services at Travelers and one of e-CARMA's original developers.