agency management system
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How Much Time Can Our Agency Management System Save You?

There are three key factors that will play a huge role in establishing how much time your specific agency will gain back by using our agency management systems. They are …

1) The System You’re Currently On Prior to Switching To Our System

It’s a fact you need to accept … the system you’re on will establish how productive you can become! And depending on what system you’re coming from will determine how much time you will save with our systems. Here’s why …

Management systems are not created equal. Let me give you an example …

  • Some are extremely feature driven and have no concept of workflows, while …
    • Others have an understanding of workflows and offer some additional automation to help process your work.
  • Some are extremely heavy in double entry forcing the CSR to re-enter information already in the system back into the system in a different area, while …
    • Others are more single-entry. Because of how important being single-entry is, traditionally we find the more single-entry a system the more expensive it is.
  • Some system offer just basic features that simply allow you to enter client and policy information, while…
    • Others offer additional features that help you more effectively automate a function.

These are just a few examples.

As a consultant, from my vast experience of working with so many of the systems I could tell you how much of a drop in workload you could expect to gain base upon what system you currently are using in your agency. (Having this knowledge, by the way, made it very difficult to watch agencies make buying decisions based upon price when the reality is the system’s ability to increase their productivity played a much larger role in how profitable the agency would become.)

Let’s take this a step further. A factor to consider is all systems have a cap as to how productive a CSR can be. Some will allow, for example, the ability to manage 1100 policies per CSR, another may max out at 1500 while yet another can allow a CSR to manage up to 2100 policies. Putting it this way, can you see why a more productive system will increase your profitability?

The more productive you are the longer it takes before you hit that “agency crossroad” where you need to hire another CSR, whether that’s at 1100 policies per CSR, 1500 or 2100 or more.  The more policies a CSR can manage the longer you can go before needing to hire another CSR and, thus, the more profitable you’ll be! Over the years I’ve helped agencies increase their productivity by up to 70%.

We built the Desktop CSR based upon this and 25 years of knowledge. We clearly understand productivity strategies, workflows and how to use automation to maximize your results.

2) The Amount and Quality of Training You Receive

When it comes to dropping your workload, next to choosing the right management system, training is the next most important part to achieving high levels of productivity! Why?

Because there are right ways and better ways to do things. Spend 1 hour with a consultant who specializes in helping agencies increase their productivity and you’ll understand how important this piece is.

The problem is, most vendors charge an arm and a leg for training and then don’t even offer the “right kind of training” that would allow you to achieve those high levels of productivity.

So what is the “right” kind of training?

Learning a new system starts with Product Knowledge training. This is a pre-requisite to any additional or advanced training you’d get!  That’s because this type of training teaches you how to do something like ‘how to add a record’, ‘how to add a note’, ‘how to add a policy’, etc.

Product Knowledge training is primarily the only training vendors offer. To get the more advanced training, agencies hire consultants to help them take their automation and using their system to the next level.

The training that creates the greatest results is “workflow training”. Workflow training is how to process and handle a task … how to submit a new application, handling renewals, cancellations, endorsements, claims, etc.

Just remember, you can’t do workflow training unless you’ve first done product knowledge training. You need to first know how to use the different parts of the system and how to add data to the system. It’s after you’ve learned this that you’ll then move on to the more advanced “workflow training” courses.

We know how important “product knowledge” training is. That’s why we’ve revolutionized this type of training bringing another first to the industry. Actually, we are introducing TWO specialized training courses to help you more effectively learn the system and to get to being “proficient” on the system faster.

Both of these courses are amazingly low cost and they’re available 24/7 so you always have current, up-to-date information at your staff’s fingertips. The idea is to make absolute sure you know how to use the system, and get you there quickly, and teach it to your staff cost effectively so we can move on to the more advanced courses where you’ll really see the profits in your agency grow!

It’s the workflow courses and our specially designed Productivity Courses that’s going to have you smiling all the way to the bank. This is where the rubber hits the road and where you see the massive drops in your workload.

We know you need to have product knowledge training, but you also need productivity workflow training which is also called “task” training which is teaching you how to handle a task. We provide Product Knowledge Training, Workflow/Task Training and Productivity Training!

3) How Easy The System Is To Learn and Use

Believe it or not, there are a few systems on the market that take up to 9 months for a CSR to become proficient on. 9 months! That’s just down right crazy.

Easy-to-use is one of the top request agencies want when reviewing management systems, and rightfully so! That’s because the longer it takes to get a staff member to efficiently use the system…

  • The less policies and clients that CSR will be able to manage
  • It will take longer for that CSR to go from being a liability to the agency to being an asset
  • It forces others in the agency to help carry that CSR’s weight
  • It can hinder an agencies growth because they’re maxed out and just not able to bring on new clients
  • It can cause serious delays in servicing clients
  • It can cause serious delays in doing all of the steps of turning a prospect into a client
  • It can cost the agency a lot of money in a lot of different ways (a few mentioned above) along with costing the agency by needing to purchase training from the vendor. And, the harder the system is to use the more training the agency will need to purchase!

And the list goes on and on.

That’s why we were meticulous in designing a system that is easy to learn and that has a common-sense layout. Plus, with features like our My Activities Hub, your staff will get their work done faster and more efficiently while also protecting the agency from E & O exposures.

Summary

As you can see, from just the three points we’ve shared in this article, the right system backed by the right kind of training can make a dramatic impact in how productive you are.

There are other factors that can affect how much time you’ll save such as a commercial lines agency using a management system that’s weak in commercial lines management. It’s been our experience that the lower end systems really missed the boat when it comes to managing the commercial lines policy and it’s many sections. It’s a whole different ball game from managing a mono-line personal lines policy.

As insurance automation consultants, we’ve worked with many of the systems on the market, including some no longer available. With a core objective of helping our clients increase their productivity we quickly experienced the many design flaws of the systems they were on. This played a very important role in our designing our system by showing us what not to do. 

Instead, with a blank canvas, we completely re-engineered the agency management system to make it workflow driven and to support an agency in helping them to increase their productivity. We couldn’t mimic any of the systems on the market because none of them were designed this way, which is why it has taken us longer to get this system out to the market.

Be sure to read our other articles to learn more about the product and company.