Staffers at the Florida Surplus Lines Service Office take pride in doing more with less. As Jim Day, Database/Network Administrator explains, "There are stamping offices in other states that are two times bigger than us, and yet we still maintain the same amount of business being filed as they do and provide more services." FSLSO's modus operandi¸ Day continues "is to get things running and keep them simple."

FSLSO Admin FSLSO has an easily recognized mission focused on protecting consumers and state revenues and serving as a source of information and advice regarding Florida's surplus lines insurance marketplace. Daily activities bring staffers in contact with consumers, surplus lines insurance agents and insurers, and government agencies.

"We are a small office," Day notes. "We have 17 full-time employees. One reason we can stay small is because we use tools; much of our work is automated."

Day is an enthusiastic user of Ecora's Enterprise Auditor-so much so that he now uses the product for much more than he had originally intended. "The main reason we bought this product," Day says, "was to help us prepare disaster recovery documentation."

Auditor saves Day tremendous amounts of time in preparing that documentation. He set the system to update documentation at least once a month, whereas previously the firm would grapple with the task only once a year. Now, Day reports, he simply writes the documentation to a CD and sticks the CD in FSLSO's Disaster Recovery manual.

Before: Drudgery

Compare such a stress-free sequence with the way office system administrators used to prepare documentation: they would begin by creating screen shots of server settings, then print the screen shots and insert those prints into a manual. "We did this for every server," Day explains, "by application, and by disk and network configuration. When programs such as Microsoft Exchange, IIS, or Windows changed, for example, we would need new screen shots to document the new settings. At the beginning, it took months to get it done, and we went through the process manually for two or three years."

With Auditor, Day has automated the entire process. He now keeps the information on his local workstation and sends it to an intranet when necessary.

After: Speed on Demand

The speed with which Auditor works also helps FSLSO meet some site-specific mandates. Because of the potential for hurricanes in Florida, the office has guidelines established so that when the probability of a storm hitting is greater than 40 percent, Day and his team send notifications, run Enterprise Auditor, back the system up and shut it down. Then, if need be, they have a complete and accurate record of all system configurations at the time of shutdown.

But there's more! That same procedure-create a screen shot, print it, and store the image in a binder-applies to the way FSLSO documents applications as well. "Now we automatically generate reports and save them to a CD," Day says. "I don't spend time generating reports any more for things like Windows server, Exchange, IIS, Unix, or Oracle."

Day adds that Auditor has been particularly helpful in preparing change reports. "It has saved us a bunch of grief," he says, especially with Oracle. "We'll run a comparison, month-to-month, and get a quick look at what's happening-growth of objects, database metrics, space consumed by indexes and tables." He monitors the system closely. "We keep the system ready for growth, but don't allocate too much space in the present," Day explains.

As far as the future is concerned, Day admits that he hasn't used everything available in Auditor. He's looking forward to learning new features and capabilities and applying these to help reduce the time and effort it takes to produce fast and detailed documentation.

Note: The FSLSO was created by the Florida Legislature as a self-regulating, not-for-profit association to promote a stable, efficient and financially strong surplus lines' insurance market in Florida. All Florida risk surplus lines insurance transactions are filed with the FSLSO, and are electronically checked to ensure proper filing for data integrity and the generation of various reports. For more information about the FSLSO, visit their website at www.fslso.com.