Heinz Tomato Ketchup. Lea & Perrins Worcestershire Sauce. Ore-Ida potatoes. These are just a few of the world-class, iconic brands owned and marketed worldwide by H.J. Heinz Company. The most international of all United States–based food companies, it holds the No. 1 and No. 2 market positions in more than 50 countries, with global annual sales of US$8.6 billion—50 percent of which is derived from countries outside the U.S. The company employs more than 36,000 people worldwide and has property assets of almost US$10 billion, including 800 manufacturing, warehouse and office facilities located in the U.S. and abroad.

THE CHALLENGE: PROPER REPORTING TO UNDERWRITERS

Heinz needed to better manage its property inspections and recommendations, but the procedures and systems in place were manual and varied from year to year. Ed Aiello, vice president of global insurance for Heinz, wanted a solution that would help the company better manage its global property and casualty risk data.

He selected Aon RiskConsole because of its Web-based architecture, multi-currency capabilities and its ability to be configured to match their specific needs. We spoke with Jerry Fleckenstein, manager of global insurance for Heinz, and Anne Sherwin, the Heinz relationship manager at Aon Risk Services, to discuss how Heinz implemented RiskConsole to facilitate its risk data collection for property and casualty renewals and property recommendation tracking.

Prior to using RiskConsole, Heinz approached property data collection as many companies do, spending countless man-hours purging and e-mailing spreadsheets, then assimilating the data back into a consolidated picture to present to its underwriters. Now, more than 100 Heinz employees throughout the world have been given access to RiskConsole's property module, changing the data-collection process considerably.

Using RiskConsole's security, each Heinz user has access to COPE (construction, occupancy, protection, exposure) information, along with specific hazard data related to windstorm, earthquake and flood for their locations. Values are captured in local currency and reported in U.S. dollars.

"RiskConsole has helped Heinz's affiliates take ownership of the values for the properties they are responsible for," Fleckenstein says. "The values weren't bad before in the aggregate, but they're so much better now. We're also in a better position to provide our affiliates with guidance on how to report values in a way that is more efficient and clear. For example, we want to ensure that we are properly reporting values to the underwriters. Our insurance contract provides for recovery on net cost of sales for damaged inventories. The subsidiaries were reporting inventory values based on cost of production. To ensure we're no longer underreporting our inventory values, we've provided our subsidiaries with instructions and the formula to calculate the values within RiskConsole."

RiskConsole reporting allows effective scrutiny of data

Heinz uses ACE for risk control services, property inspections and making recommendations based on its observations. The inspection reports are attached to the corresponding property record and recommendations are loaded via a data load from ACE into RiskConsole.

An e-mail is generated to the people at Heinz responsible for managing the recommendation, alerting them of the new entry.

"By running a query or report in RiskConsole, we can see what percentage of recommendations have been completed," Fleckenstein says. "We can actually break it down into a format where we can easily identify recommendations that need some capital appropriation. What we're looking for is a high percentage of recommendations that generally don't involve a lot of expense to be completed, but that have a significant impact. We have advised the affiliates that if a recommendation costs less than $10,000, then they are required to do it.