Razorfish, Inc., the global digital solutions provider, in conjunction with Universal Underwriters Group (UUG), provider of insurance and financial services to dealerships and automotive-related businesses, has announced the launch of a business-to-business Website that will be used for the online sale of vehicle service contracts.

Razorfish teamed with UUG to develop and launch the eVSC B2B website for the company's leading finance and insurance product, vehicle service contracts. eVSC will be used by automobile dealerships, aftermarket suppliers, automobile associations, insurance companies, and other companies dealing in the automotive industry.

eVSC will be available to these partners to sell contracts or mechanical breakdown insurance to their clients in the U.S. and Canada. The introduction of the site will help UUG simplify their current business processes, save time and money, and create more value for their customers, according to Mark Kissick, vice president of e-commerce at UUG. By adding the Internet as a key component of UUG's strategy, the company will simplify the way their partners do business with them and streamline product introduction and distribution, according to Kissick.

"We are extremely pleased with the work Razorfish has done on this project," Kissick said. "They have been a valuable collaborator and trusted advisor to us throughout this engagement, and their expertise in technology, strategy and design have allowed us to meet the needs of our customers."

eVSC is the first step in a multi-phase project to completely migrate UUG's current VSC application from a legacy-based mainframe to a web-based application. The legacy system was heavily paper-based and required substantial manual effort to support. By moving to the web-based environment, UUG has eliminated many of the manual processes as well as a substantial amount of paper -- saving both time and money. according to Kissick.

The site incorporates a sophisticated rating engine that eliminates the time consuming and costly process of developing rates and rate books for the partners. In addition, the eVSC system offers UUG's partners personalized features such as providing sales tools and training to assist in closing business.

In addition to developing the digital strategy, visual design and information architecture, and implementing the overall VSC site strategy, Razorfish used a combination of technologies including EJBs, Websphere, JSP, and Java Script, to achieve the site's functionality. Enterprise Java Beans were used to produce a robust and flexible architecture that allows scalability, reusability and portability. Since the code was written in Java it was completely portable to any platform, any application server, and web server backend.

"Because of our collaborative work with UUG, they are now able to expand their marketing and sales channels," said Richard Gagnon, client partner for Razorfish. "The addition of aftermarket suppliers and other non-dealership type partners is a major evolution from the conventional sales channels UUG has supported. It is expected that the addition of these partners will increase UUG's market share -- positioning it as the unequivocal leader in the vehicle service contract market and substantially differentiate UUG from their competitors. Razorfish helped UUG form a solution that will simplify the way their partners do business with them and streamline product introduction and distribution."

For more information about Razorfish, visit www.razorfish.com.

About Universal Underwriters Group

Universal Underwriters Group is a member of the Zurich Financial Services Group and the nation's largest insurer of automotive dealerships, with more than one billion dollars in assets.

In business for 78 years, Universal specializes in insurance products and services for automobile, truck, equipment and motorcycle dealers, and automotive aftermarket suppliers. The company is rated A+ by A.M. Best, an independent insurance rating service. With 35 million customers worldwide, the Zurich Financial Services Group is one of the global leaders in the financial services industry, providing customers with products and solutions in the areas of financial protection and asset accumulation.