James Ruther Email & Phone Number

Cincinnati, Oh, Us

Cincinnati, Ohio

Responsible for all Corporate and Financial Applications that support our many Property & Casualty lines of business. The Financial systems support over $4B of Agent/Insured Billing, Collections, and Commissioning; a $40B Investment Portfolio for AFG; General Ledger and Accounts Payable functions; Budget, Planning, and Allocations processes; Reinsurance Administration; etc. The Corporate systems support HR functions; Payroll; Time Reporting; Compensation Planning; Expense Reporting; and many other COTS applications, including Underwriting Risk Analysis and Catastrophe Modeling. In many cases, we run 3rd-party packaged software, including products from Guidewire, Oracle/PeopleSoft, Hyperion, StoneRiver, Ultimate, and RMS.

The organization is responsible for all Infrastructure services for the Property & Casualty lines of business, as well as providing shared services to other critical business units across the AFG/Great American Insurance Group enterprise. These services include Voice & Data network support; Desktop and Mobile device management; Application Server & Storage provisioning, hosting, and backup; Data Center and Disaster Recovery services; Customer Care functions; etc.

Crop Insurance Division

Directed the activities of a diverse, 17-person group that was responsible for Local and Remote Technical Support, as well as the development and enhancement of several business applications within the Crop Insurance Division's application portfolio. In addition, developed and maintained the Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Plans, and all SOX/Audit processes and compliance.

While reporting to the Vice President of IT, direct the activities of a 20-person team (Project Managers, Developers, Analysts, DBA, and Decision-Support Specialists) with $5M capital/expense budget, developing solutions for the Business Markets LOB and Finance/Accounting organizations.

Managed Help Desk, Data Center Operations, Operations Management, and Security & Contingency Planning function with 23-person staff and $2.5M budget.

Managed technical support services for the corporate data center and distributed systems at domestic mill locations with 27-person staff, $2.4M expense budget, and $6.7M hardware/software budget.

Managed 15-person, cross-functional, applications group supporting all order management and product tracking functions for the Printing & Writing and Publications business units.

Excelled in several roles with new challenges and ever-increasing responsibility. Promoted from initial position as Developer to a Systems Analyst, Senior Analyst, Project Manager, and Manager of Application Development supporting the Paper Manufacturing and Distribution businesses.