Business Insurance RMIS Article

"Risk Management Reference Materials Presented in a User-Friendly Fashion"

November 4, 2002

By Rodd Zolkos

NEW YORK -- For a Dallas-based publisher of risk management and insurance reference materials, its move onto the Web was a natural, if challenging, step.

"We started out in the old days in print, and we had to evolve as everybody else did,'' said Jack Gibson, president of the International Risk Management Institute Inc.

"We had developed probably the largest reference library-something along the lines of 23,000 pages in print-of reference material for the risk management community,'' Mr. Gibson said. "Essentially, our customers were telling us they would like to be able to get access to that information on the Web.''

While the objective was clear, the challenge was to present that information on the Web in an easily accessed, well-indexed fashion, Mr. Gibson said. IRMI launched the site, www.irmi-online.com, in April, and its success has earned it a Best of Show award in the Educational category in Business Insurance's second Best of the Web competition.

"It's getting great response,'' Mr. Gibson said. "The customers that we have using IRMI Online love it, and they tell us that it is exactly what they were looking for. It's easy to use, and it presents the information in a great format.''

The site was developed over two years by a team of seven IRMI staffers.

"The site has a search form that allows various kinds of sophisticated searches, including Boolean searching,'' Mr. Gibson said. But an "advanced search'' feature provides a variety of other options, such as keyword searches, searches for items excluding certain words and exact-phrase searches, he said.

"It's got the flexibility, but it's presented in a very user-friendly way, so you don't have to learn all those things about doing a Boolean search,'' Mr. Gibson said.

Another key element of the IRMI Online site is its user guide. "Somebody can go through that and in about 15 minutes be a real expert at using the site,'' he said. And with the site's table of contents feature, a user can drill down into a topic to find the specific document he or she is looking for.

The IRMI site also divides the online library into various "publications,'' such as liability, property and risk finance, so IRMI Online subscribers can customize their versions of the library. Doing so allows users to pay only for what they need. In contrast, many reference sites "will have a database of information, but you have to buy all or none,'' Mr. Gibson said.