Crawford & Company Earns Spot on InformationWeek 500 List for Second Year USA - English

ATLANTA and MONARCH BEACH, Calif., Sept. 15 /PRNewswire/ -- For the second consecutive year, Crawford & Company (NYSE: CRDA; CRDB), the world's largest independent provider of claims management solutions, has placed among the InformationWeek 500, an annual listing of the nation's most innovative users of business technology.

The 2010 list was revealed last night at a gala awards ceremony at the exclusive InformationWeek 500 Conference, taking place at the St. Regis Monarch Beach Resorts, Dana Point, Calif. Crawford, which first made the list in its inaugural entry in 2009, ranked 124th out of the 500 companies recognized this year.

Crawford outlined the development and successes of the Company's global systems roadmap in its InformationWeek 500 nomination. The roadmap unifies business intelligence, social networking, business process management and global data warehouse technologies into a standard global enterprise portal. It also lays out a phased approach to investing in technology by retiring costly legacy systems, aggressively negotiating vendor contracts, eliminating waste and establishing a campaign to resolve root causes of application issues that once dominated technology resources.

"Those activities have allowed our technology team to reduce spending by 18 percent and realign resources to focus on building the future, rather than maintaining the past," said Jeffrey T. Bowman, Crawford president and chief executive officer. "Our efforts are resulting in better systems and, most important, better service to clients, and we are gratified to be recognized once again by InformationWeek."

Significant technology advances in recent months include Crawford's revolutionary Command Center, designed to further improve service to clients by providing up-to-the-minute information on claims status and key performance indicators. The Company also has implemented RiskTech(TM), a new claims system, and Dmitri(SM), a new risk information management system, for its workers compensation clients. In addition, also released in 2010 was a global, cloud-based Enterprise 2.0 social networking program branded "Crawford Innovates," which allows employees to brainstorm solutions to issues.

"With Crawford Innovates, challenges become opportunities," said Brian S. Flynn, Crawford's global chief information officer. "All our brainstorming campaigns are designed to engage our employees, crowdsource ideas and improve our ability to serve clients. Ultimately, we're creating a culture of innovation in which each employee is encouraged to challenge the status quo."

"For 22 years, the InformationWeek 500 has honored the most innovative users of business technology," said InformationWeek Editor In Chief Rob Preston. "As we start to emerge from the worst recession in decades, the IT focus is now on driving growth—new sources of revenue, new relationships with customers, even new business models. This year's ranking placed special emphasis on those companies and business technology executives leading that charge."

InformationWeek identifies and honors the nation's most innovative users of information technology with its annual 500 listing and also tracks the technology, strategies, investments and administrative practices of America's best-known companies.  Top winners have included:  CME Group, Conway, National Semiconductor, Kimberly-Clark, Hilton Hotels and Unum.  The InformationWeek 500 rankings are unique among corporate rankings as it spotlights the power of innovation in information technology, rather than simply identifying the biggest IT spenders.  

Additional details on the InformationWeek 500 can be found online at www.informationweek.com/iw500/.  

About Crawford

Based in Atlanta, Ga., Crawford & Company (www.crawfordandcompany.com) is the world's largest independent provider of claims management solutions to the risk management and insurance industry as well as self-insured entities, with a global network of more than 700 locations in 63 countries. The Crawford System of Claims Solutions(SM) offers comprehensive, integrated claims services, business process outsourcing and consulting services for major product lines including property and casualty claims management, workers compensation claims and medical management, and legal settlement administration. The Company's shares are traded on the NYSE under the symbols CRDA and CRDB.

About InformationWeek Business Technology Network (http://www.informationweek.com/)

The InformationWeek Business Technology Network provides IT executives with unique analysis and tools that parallel their work flow – from defining and framing objectives through to the evaluation and recommendation of solutions. Anchored by InformationWeek, the multimedia powerhouse that looks across the enterprise, the network scales across the most critical technology categories with online properties like DarkReading.com (security), IntelligentEnterprise.com (application architecture), NetworkComputing.com (networking and communications) and PlugintotheCloud.com (cloud computing). The network also provides focused content for key IT audiences, such as CIOs, developers, SMBs and IT Support Managers via InformationWeek Global CIO, Dr. Dobb's, InformationWeek SMB, and HDI respectively, as well as vital vertical industries with InformationWeek Financial Services, Government and Healthcare sites. Content is at the nucleus of our information distribution strategy, and the network provides a deep and rich portfolio of decision-making tools and peer based research through InformationWeek Analytics, the leading service for peer-based IT research and analysis. IT professionals turn to our experts and communities to stay informed, get advice and research technologies to make strategic business decisions.  The InformationWeek Business Technology Network is part of UBM TechWeb.

SOURCE Crawford & Company