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Insurance Agency Management Systems Serve An Important Role… Handling Your Day To Day Work In An Efficient Way!
Automating your agency is one of the best investments you can make for your agency and one of the best things you can do to insure your clients receive quick service.
Having client information at your fingertips simply makes servicing them faster and easier. Proper automation also increases your productivity which increases your profitability.
Insurance agency management systems is far from being some simple database program. Instead, the insurance agency management system is a complex, multi-facet system that handles many different tasks required in an agency and captures a lot of different information. It’s also been said that the management system is multiple programs all tied together into one program.
Regardless to how you describe an insurance agency management software system, it’s a very important advanced piece of software every agency needs to have!
Management Systems Have Evolved Over The Years…
Insurance Agency Management Systems have been designed to do more than just maintain information about your clients and their policies. They also help you process your work like helping you process and manage endorsements, renewals, claims, etc. The fact that it’s also suppose to help in the processing of your work takes the management system to a whole new level of software.
Keep in mind the evolution of the management system. Prior to the 1980’s it was predominately an accounting system to keep track of billings to the insured since most policies were Agency Billed, not Direct Billed which is now dominate today.
Then in the early 80’s we saw our first major overhaul of the management system when client and policy management was added to it.
This was an exciting time because this new approach to agency automation opened up so many more doors for agencies and gave agencies the ability to work more closely with their clients in a more efficient ‘time saving’ way.
Over the years we watched more features being added to the agency management system to help you do your job. Things like imaging to go paperless and T-History to do T-Filing, and downloading with carriers to reduce data-entry. These were all important advancements in the agency management system to help agencies become even more efficient.
Today we talk in terms of “going paperless”, SEMCI, Real Time and other terms/phrases to symbolize creating a more efficient, productive and therefore, a more automated and profitable agency.
Learning Workflows With Your Management System Is Where You’ll See Your Greatest Increase In Productivity!
As a consultant I would work with the agency on how to process their work with the system they were on. Agencies committed to increasing their productivity found learning proper workflows to process a task to be the most important thing they could do to increase their productivity.
The problem is, the insurance agency management systems on the market were not designed to be process driven which made teaching CSRs how to process a task a difficult job. I’m sure you can relate with this.
Most agencies who are committed to increased productivity will create workflow manuals so their CSRs know the proper steps to processing a task. These workflow manuals could become quite large when you consider all of the tasks that a CSR needs to process and the differences between Lines Of Business and carriers.
It’s been a constant battle of teaching staff proper workflows and making sure everyone’s doing it the same way to protect the agency from E&O exposures. This is why the “workflow manual” and “workflow courses” has been just as important as the management system itself!
Clearly, agency management systems are not created equal! Bluntly, it’s how the system allows you to process your work that establishes how efficient and productive your agency will be. And considering productivity is a huge factor in your profitability, creating a productive agency is very important when striving to create a profitable agency.
On top of this, all systems have what I consider the core features to an agency management system. This includes notes, follow ups, correspondence, attachments and ACORD forms as the main features consistent from management system to management system.
However, while they may all have these “core features” it’s …
- The functionality of each beyond their basic functionality;
- How well they’re integrated within the system;
- How effective data flows to them;
- All of the places and ways you can access them; and
- How they’re integrated in your workflows so they’re readily available as you process your work;
… that separate the different systems.
What we haven’t seen yet in the evolution of the management system is a system built from the ground floor up with workflows and tools to help you process your work in less steps and less work as an integral part of the system. That is until now with the creation of the CP Manager.
The Many Uses Of The Agency Management System
The most common reasons an agency would purchase an agency management system is…
- Better client management
- To more effectively stay on top of your clients policy
- To know the policy information of your clients
- To process tasks like renewals, endorsements, etc in a more efficient way
- To interface with your carriers
- To handle client service functions
- To protect the agency from E&O exposures
- For marketing
- To make sure tasks get done
- To handle the agency accounting to include producer commissions, company payables and the other accounting needs of an agency
There are a lot of uses for the multi-facet agency management system which makes the process of purchasing one a very individual process with each agency owner having their own ideas of what they want to accomplish with the system in their agency. What we’ve shared here is just some core general uses.
Having Your Insurance Management System Hosted On the Internet Or Installed On Your Network…
This has become a very controversial topic. However, being focused on your needs and developing systems that will easily run in both environments, we don’t care which way you want to run your agency management system. What we do care about is that you’re making the choice based upon facts and what’s in your agency’s best interest.
To help you determine which is best for your individual agency there’s a really good website available that addresses this very topic. If you’re wondering which makes the most since for your agency or you’re being pushed by a vendor toward one, you definitely want to read what is shared at this website! Go to http://www.agencymanagementsystems.com/agency-management-systems/hosted-agency-management-systems for more information.
In addition, our well trained Account Managers can help you determine which is best for your agency. And because we really don’t care which you choose we will be unbiased in our discussions with you on this topic.
Check Out The Agency Management System We’re Bringing To The Industry
Jump back to our home page and see the insurance agency management systems we’re creating to provide you with a much better solution to increase your productivity and provide you with the information you need to do your job a whole lot faster and better, along with providing you with a system that meets your automation needs.
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