Minet Insurance Services

A subsidiary of St. Paul Insurance

My first foray into the corporate world, back when I still had dreams of a real career like in the old days. I like to fantasize that I would still be at Minet today had St. Paul not pulled the plug on the whole operation. Three thousand people let go.

I worked for the North American division of Minet and I travelled extensively between our offices in Manhattan, Chicago, Atlanta, Houston, Los Angeles, San Jose, Calgary, and Montreal. There was also an international operation based out of London that we worked with closely. I started out as the IT manager at the Houston office and was quickly promoted to a junior executive with corporate-wide responsibilities.

Assistant Vice President, 1994 to 1995

Here is what I did:

  • Analysis and Design of large scale in house applications. Built infrastructure to support North America distributed database (Lotus Notes) environment. Supervised development staff.
  • Appointed to North America IT Senior Management team
  • Developed and implemented a distributed application to track projects, daily work logs, support logs, travel plans, and resources for the IT department worldwide
  • Developed and implemented a distributed database application to automate the Miller Heiman Sales Process for all North American business units. The application was customized for each business unit’s unique business processes but the core engine tracked prospects through the sales cycle and consolidated sales forecasts and activities from all North America offices in near real-time. Based on licensed material from the Miller Heiman sales methodology, this application was one of the first enterprise level, distributed sales force automation tools ever built
  • Managed administration for all distributed infrastructure as well as application development for North America. Provided technical support to London based UK Notes administration team
  • Developed an Executive Information System using Visual Basic and Lotus HiTest Tools that provided senior management with “one-click” access to reports and graphs generated from the Sales Management System data. I know it doesn’t sound like much now, but this was a long time ago
  • Led task force that developed worldwide policies, procedures and standards for application development, infrastructure, server administration, and database administration

Information Systems Manager, 1993 to 1994

Here is what I did:

  • Administrator for Novell Netware 3.11 network
  • Developed a claim management application in Paradox for Windows for one of Minet’s largest clients. Highly visible effort was highly successful from both the technical and business perspective
  • Developed a prospect tracking system for the Houston office in Paradox for Windows. The success of this local effort led to the development of distributed applications and supporting infrastructure corporate wide
  • Supervised move of network into new office space. Managed cable plant installation. Designed new computer/telecommunications room
  • Installed a cc:Mail post office and router attached to WAN. Established a dial-in procedure for remote cc:Mail access. Performed all cc:Mail administration for Houston Post Office
  • Responsible for keeping communications systems on-line, including WAN connections and an asynchronous terminal hub
  • Coordinated and documented all out-sourced IS services
  • Help Desk Manager


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