Ventiv Technology

3 4 | 360º Aon eSolutions e safety of the children in its care is critically important for the Learning Care Group, which operates nearly 1,000 schools in the United States and is North America's second-largest for-profit provider of early childhood education. According to Jeff Gehrke, Vice President, Risk Management, with Learning Care Group, "Everything we do has to be about the safety of the children in our care, their families, our employees and the public. If an activity compromises safety, we simply will not do it." Gehrke joined the company when it moved its risk management center from Chicago to Novi, Michigan, and hired a new risk management staff. Soon after his arrival, he identified a clear need for a RMIS: "We had so many different data sources from which we were pulling information that it was very difficult to do any sort of meaning ful reporting on a timely basis to underwriters or to company management. Claims were coming from as many as nine different insurance carrier and TPA data systems as well as state workers' compensation funds. We needed to be able to consolidate data in order to compare information between states, between years, between operational areas of the company, among other needs. We didn't have the ability to do that very effectively with our manual system." "I knew we could use a RMIS to convert data into information that would tell a story on its own and be actionable by employees at all levels," Gehrke recalls. "I knew it would give us an opportunity to get out in front of risk, for example, by taking the loss information along with the fleet data to understand more fully where we have vehicles, who is operating them and what the impact of those operations is on insured cost; to understand where our properties are and how they are exposed to risk and protected in terms of sprinkler and alarm systems. It would also let us enhance our safety programs in all phases of operations" ROI PROMINENT IN SELECTION PROCESS According to Gehrke, "When I went to my boss, Robert VanHees, the chief financial officer, to discuss a RMIS, he was extremely supportive, but he challenged me to pay for the cost of a RMIS with savings that it would generate immediately, largely either in claim reductions, premium reductions or both." A key part of the company's RMIS selection process was challenging potential providers to demonstrate their system's ability to reduce expense— primarily by being able to better demonstrate to insurance underwriters that the company had a good handle on all of its risks and the metrics surrounding those risks and, finally, the ability to take action based on those metrics. A key to the selection process was involving a representative from each department that would have an interest in the output from the RMIS. "It wasn't just the risk management department involved in selection," Gehrke recalls. "ere were nine parties involved, representing all of the key stakeholders, including a wide cross-section of departments like Urgent Issues, finance, human resources, legal, and operations. Everyone had a seat at the table and a vote in the final selection decision." RAPID DEPLOYMENT. "WILDLY CUSTOMIZABLE" "We began the implementation of the RMIS in late-August of 2009 and were up and running and producing meaning ful management reports by December of that year," according to Gehrke. "at was about 60 days faster than I thought would be possible and quite fast according to what I hear from my fellow risk managers at other organizations." Moreover, Gehrke appreciates the adaptability of the system: "I like to describe the system as 'wildly customizable.' We've been able to customize the system to speak our language. A lot of other systems we looked at weren't nearly as customizable. It's valuable for us to be able to insert meaning ful data fields, remove fields that aren't necessary, and, perhaps most important of all, load the system with our terminology and make our risk lexicon consistent in the system so the reports and other output speaks our language as opposed to terminology that might be appropriate for an aluminum smelter or an airline or some other industry." In what might be the ultimate customization, Gehrke and his team have internally branded RiskConsole by giving it the name DataStar, complete with its own logo. "Part of the logo for the Learning Care Group is a star, and we incorporated that in naming our RMIS and giving it a visual identity through "Iknewwecouldusea RMIStoconvertdatainto informationthatwould tellastoryonitsownand beactionablebyemployees atalllevels." JEFF GEHRKE *

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