How York Insurance Services Group is gearing up for growth

CIO joins the company’s strategic planning committee

Executive Summary: Henry Eckstein, senior vice president and CIO of York Insurance Services Group, is shifting roles in his 25-person IT department to accommodate the rapid expansion plans of a new owner.

Henry Eckstein earned his seat at the table last year, when he was appointed to the Strategic Planning Committee for York Insurance Services Group. The committee consists of nine people, including the CEO and the COO, Eckstein’s boss.

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Executive Summary: Henry Eckstein, senior vice president and CIO of York Insurance Services Group, is shifting roles in his 25-person IT department to accommodate the rapid expansion plans of a new owner.

Henry Eckstein earned his seat at the table last year, when he was appointed to the Strategic Planning Committee for York Insurance Services Group. The committee consists of nine people, including the CEO and the COO, Eckstein’s boss.

Click to see: Henry Eckstein, senior vice president and CIO of York Insurance Services Group

Eckstein’s appointment is a sign that the IT department will play a more significant role as York Insurance Services plans for aggressive growth.

"A year ago, the controlling interest in our company was purchased by Odyssey Investment Partners, and their formula for when they purchase companies is growth through acquisition,’’ Eckstein explains. "The size of the company is expected to double or triple over the next few years. Since they’ve purchased us, we’ve practically doubled to over 1,000 employees.’’

York Insurance Services is a privately held company that had $130 million in revenues in 2006, an increase from $72 million in 2005. Fourteen years ago, the company’s revenues were $5 million.

"Since I joined the company 14 years ago, we’ve had constant growth,’’ Eckstein says. ``I don’t think there was one year where it went the other way.’’

To support this growth, Eckstein has divided the IT staff into two main areas:

* The production area includes networks, servers, help desk and everything that supports day-to-day operations. A CTO runs the production area, and he reports to Eckstein. Reporting to the CTO are the heads of the network, data center and help desk departments. The production department has 17 employees.

* The development area supports software development and meeting reporting requirements. The head of life-cycle development reports to Eckstein. Development of the company’s proprietary claim system is kept in-house because it is considered a competitive advantage. The development area has eight programmers.

York Insurance Services Group’s IT department is spread across multiple offices, with several staff at the company’s Parsippany, N.J., headquarters. Others are located in New York City, California and Florida.

"Every reorganization gives me more time to focus on the strategic planning of the future of the company as it relates to IT, as opposed to the day-to-day issues,’’ Eckstein says. "As we’ve grown, I keep having to step back and start entrusting operations to other people.’’

A big step for Eckstein was being asked to join the company’s Strategic Planning Committee.

"The culture is very technology friendly,’’ Eckstein says. "The CEO is looking at the potential for the technology to drive the strategy of the company. That’s why he decided to include me on the Strategic Planning Committee. IT is so integral to every part of the organization that he believed it would be foolhardy not to include IT in strategic planning.’’

York Insurance Services benefits from a leading-edge network that features Multi Protocol Label Switching and runs VoIP.  The company’s call centers, phone systems, fax servers and videoconferencing applications all run over IP.