Working alongside Progressive Insurance business leaders, CIO Raymond Voelker's team developed an application -- called "Name Your Price" -- which flips the online auto-insurance quoting practice inside out. Instead of entering the features you want and getting a price, you can use the apps sliding bar to select a price and see what kind of insurance you can get.You can read more about Voelker, one of our InformationWeek 500 elite, here.

And you can watch our video interview with him directly below.

Voelker says it is the first application of its kind in the auto insurance space, and it's one small example of the customer focus today's CIO needs to lock in on. Some of the metrics behind the program (aren't there always metrics?) include improving the "finish to start ratio." Insurance processes are laden with forms that are the death of far too many customer engagements. Beyond just getting them to finish, of course, is getting them to buy, and getting them to spend increasing amounts when they do.

Voekler also has his own internal blog (he wouldn't let us see it; we asked), which he uses to reach out beyond his IT team, across the entire company and to share details behind initiatives . . . and to get feedback, both good and bad. His top priorities include continuing to come up with more services to engage potential customers, and to streamline the company's infrastructure to drive agility.

Fritz Nelson is an Executive Editor at InformationWeek and the Executive Producer of TechWebTV. Fritz writes about startups and established companies alike, but likes to exploit multiple forms of media into his writing.

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