Experts argue that if clients want to communicate via text, agencies had best get on board.

Pat Alexander’s article The Reality of Texting For Insurance Agencies, recently published by Agents Council for Technology (ACT), addresses agent concerns, puts forth a set of best practices and offers specific instructions for forwarding texts to email, sending texts from email and implementing an agency text address.

Best practices she lists are as follows:

•  Do you want to be relevant to your client base? If so, then you must embrace this technology.
• Set standards and best practices. These really are no different than handling face-to-face conversations, phone calls, emails, etc. Your standard should be that all conversations with the client or with others about the client’s account are to be documented in the agency management system or the system which you are using to collect client data.
• Be pro-active and determine how to best receive texts at the agency level and educate your staff and clients.
• If your client and someone in your agency are friends, inevitably there will be a text on a person phone. Define, train and implement the process to get this moved to an agency level as quickly as possible.

We’d also add, that texts should remain professional. Take care that words are correctly spelled, proper punctuation is used and make sure there are no typos.     Read the full article.

Because Together Everyone Achieves More

An Interview with Kirk Stubblefield

Stubblefield Insurance Agency, LLC - www.stubblefieldinsurance.com
Location: Abilene, Seymour and Olney, TX

A few months ago, Kirk Stubblefield of Stubblefield Insurance Agency in Texas graciously agreed to do an interview with SIS talking about his experiences with the Partner XE agency management system and the service he receives from SIS. The full interview, geared more towards prospects than those already using Partner XE can be found on our website. During that interview Kirk mentioned that one of his favorite aspects of Partner XE is the flexibility it gives him to run reports that really drill down on various aspects of his business. What follows here is a much shorter version, intended to be part of a best practices series for those already using our software.

Can you give me examples of how you use the customized reporting feature to analyze your business?

I can use Partner XE to run a complete list of what each employee has brought into the business at any given time. I can see where they are and give bonuses based on what they are able to bring in without advertising. The reports I have set up will tell me exactly whether an employee has brought in new business, what type of business they brought in and the premium that each one of them is doing. Running and reviewing the reports allows me to get to the point of what I need to work on with each employee. Is it that they aren’t doing anything or is it that they don’t know what to do? I can use the reports to uncover where I need more training.

In addition, I can specify reports based on lines of business, office location (note: Stubblefield has three offices), new policies, lapsed policies, growth, attrition, etc. If I can see one office is growing and another is not, I can step back and figure out what one office is doing that the other is not.

We can also use the reports to adjust our marketing efforts. We can compare clients to clients to uncover which type of companies or lines of business are more profitable – then we can target our marketing efforts using those parameters… Where things are working the best for you that is what you need to expand on.

How often do you look at these reports?

Depending on the report, I look at it daily, weekly, monthly annually. I look at what each office is doing as a whole and know how we are doing as an agency.

Where do you pull the reports?

The searches under clients and policies are the best reports. You can also customize to create your favorite parameters. When you come up with one you like you can save it. You can really build reports to do almost anything you want.

1.) INFORMATION, INFORMATION, INFORMATION

Partner XE has a number of prebuilt reports an agency can run to gain insight to what is happening in their businesses. Don’t see what you want? You can easily create a custom report to get the exact information you are looking for.

Examples of how to use reporting to increase profitability:

• Learn which lines of business are most profitable and adjust your marketing to sell more of those lines.
• Identify common characteristic of your clients and target more people like them.
• Run a Premium by Carrier By Line of Business report to get a good understanding of how you are doing with a certain carrier, where you are selling well, where you are not and if there are other lines of business available that you might be able to focus on.
• Identify cross-sell and upsell opportunities and market accordingly.
• Determine which of your producers are producing and which are not.  Then dig deeper to find out what the high producers are doing that the others are not to teach that throughout your agency
• And much more.

All of these reports can easily be exported to Excel with two clicks of the mouse or you can print letters and envelopes for everyone on the list for direct mail marketing campaigns.

 2.) INCREASE EFFICIENCY WITH COMMERCIAL DOWNLOADS & REAL TIME

We are committed to making the lives of our clients easier and more productive. One way Partner XE does that is through the ability to download commercial lines policies – eliminating the need for manual entry and increasing the amount of time you have to focus on sales and customer service.

In addition, thanks to Real Time, agencies using Partner XE can pass client information already entered in their agency management system directly to the carrier website to pre-fill required information, improving accuracy, saving time and freeing up more time for selling.

 3.) TRACK & MONITOR SALES AND MARKETING EFFORTS WITH TO-DO LISTS

The Marketing To-Do List within your Partner XE agency management system can serve several purposes. Most importantly though, the To-Do List will help you keep track of the different stages of your various sales and marketing campaigns. To keep Producers/CSRs on track for each step or follow up, these To-Do Lists have reminders that can be set to show up on your “desktop reminders list” when a follow up is required or scheduled. Since there are often multiple people involved with a single marketing campaign, the To-Do Lists can also be assigned to multiple users so when one person has accomplished their steps they can assign the To-Do List to the next person so they can take over the marketing workflow. In short, no many how many people you are marketing to, no matter how many people on your team, using the To-Do lists correctly will ensure nothing slips through the cracks and everyone is accountable to their own action items – which ultimately should lead to closing more business!

Partner XE from SIS is an easy to use, online hosted insurance agency management system with logical workflows, exceptional download and comparative rater integration capabilities and best in the business Outlook integration. If you are not already using Partner XE and would like to learn why so many agencies are switching to our system, give us a call at 800-747-9273 or fill out a short contact form and we’ll be in touch. You’ll be glad you did.

In today’s highly mobile business environment with personal data being carried around on laptops and other portable devices and legislation requiring the protection of personally identifiable information, caution not only won’t hurt, it’s critical.

Best Practices for Protecting Insurance Agency Data

 Switch to a fully hosted agency management system like Partner XE

Secure servers housed off-site at an impregnable data center, internet and server firewall data protection, encrypted communication, secure logons and more protect the data that is stored in your agency management system from natural disaster, server failure and people (honorable or not) that don’t have authorized access to the system.

 Go Paperless: Move to an encrypted digital document storage system

While paper files are very difficult to safeguard from theft, prying eyes or natural disaster– in an office environment or on the go – documents scanned and stored within your agency management system have the same security protection as the rest of your data.

Recognize that a laptop or other portable device can be lost, stolen or infringed upon and take measures to protect its contents.

Keep Passwords Secure

Take measures to ensure that passwords are not shared, publicly known or readily accessible by anyone who knows where to look. This may sound simplistic but don’t keep your password in your briefcase, on a “sticky note” on your desktop, in your planner, your desk, your PDA or anywhere else that someone else may find it. The best thing you can do is to commit it to memory. The greatest security risk to your data is a person with the right password.

Keep Partner XE User Permissions Tightly Controlled 

Authorize access only as necessary. Usually you want at least one backup for each role but don’t allow access that is not absolutely needed for a person to do his/her job.

 Remember to Log Out

While the data stored in Partner XE is password protected, if you remain logged into the system when you walk away from the computer, anyone can access it. Best practice then is to always log out of the system when not in use. (We talk Partner XE here because that is what we sell, but this advice would apply to any password-protected system that houses personal information.)

Keep Data in an Encrypted Space

When confidential data is stored directly on the laptop outside of the agency management system it can be susceptible to theft. Examples of things that might fit into this category are completed forms, scanned documents, etc. Best practice then is to save this type of data in encrypted space. To create an encrypted space you can use a program like the very good (and free) TrueCrypt. You can also encrypt your entire hard drive, although that will likely slow the performance of your machine. Encrypted space does not slow performance.

Use Security Software

Yes, when you use the Partner XE agency management system we make sure the data in your system is protected with internet and server firewall data protection, malware protection & anti-virus, weekly security patch updates to Windows and internet and server firewall data protection. This does not, however, impact data saved outside our system. To protect that “external” data, we also recommend that you use one antivirus program, a spyware scanner regularly and keep your PDF reader (usually Adobe Acrobat Reader) updated and on the latest version. Don’t over-do the security software, it often conflicts with other programs and can, if overdone, slow your PC to a crawl.

While the above is true, what many don’t take into consideration is that computers are not infallible. If a machine decides to die on you, there is a possibility that you’ll lose the files for good. What is also true is that messages sent via email can be subpoenaed.

Several years ago in his Rough Notes article entitled E-mail: Risky business? John Chivvis quoted Jon Neiditz, an attorney and risk management expert for the Chicago-based law firm of Lord, Bissell & Brook, as saying, “Some business owners don’t realize that e-mail messages are not the same as spoken words, but in fact are treated by courts and regulators as documents…What’s more, many e-mails are not only documents but business records, too, and therefore subject to record retention requirements.”

If your machine has crashed and you can’t pull up the old files it can lead to big problems. In an industry like insurance, poor archiving can open doors to legal risks.

Risk mitigation with Partner XE

Fortunately for agencies using the Partner XE agency management system from SIS, the Outlook integration feature that comes with it goes a long way to helping them build a permanent, easily accessible paper trail of email communications.

“Emails and protecting them is something that Partner XE can help with in a big way,” said Bryce Lee, National Accounts Manager-Technical Services for SIS.

“When agents use the Outlook integration feature and attach their emails to a client file within the Partner XE system, they are then stored as permanent records and that cannot be deleted or altered.”

Not only does the Outlook integration feature in Partner XE help diminish E&O risk, it also helps with inbox clutter. Once attached to the client file, the email can be deleted from Outlook and Partner XE will still store that email as a permanent record.

Because Partner XE is an online hosted system with redundant backups and secure servers housed off-site at an impregnable data center with around the clock physical security there is no need to worry about your computer crashing or natural disaster striking. Your email messages, along with the rest of your client data, will be safe and secure.

Find out why so many agencies have been switching to the Partner XE insurance agency management system from SIS. Call 800-747-9273 or click here to get in touch with a representative.

But, as Uncle Ben told Peter Parker in Spiderman, “With great power comes great responsibility” – in this case the responsibility for protecting the digital files that contain your clients’ personal information.

Not only are there legal implications and potential fines if a data breach takes place, the negative publicity could potentially destroy your agency’s credibility.

Here are a few steps you can take to responsibly improve data security:

•  If you don’t have a written security plan and program in place, make it happen – soon. For advice on how to do so, read the Applied Council for Technology (ACT) Prototype Agency Information Security Plan that was released several years ago.
• Use Real Time to connect with carriers instead of sending sensitive information via email.
• Secure your email with TLS (Transport Layer Security) email encryption (See Jim Rogers’ Protect Your Clients with Secure Email Using TLS for more information).
• Take advantage of a fully hosted agency management system like Partner XE to get the information off of your easily accessible office server and into a cloud based environment with around the clock physical security, internet and server firewall protection, encrypted communications and secure logons, malware protection and automatic weekly security patch updates.
• Talk to an SIS representative to find out more about the other security benefits of Partner XE.

When you choose Partner XE, SIS’ fully hosted insurance agency management system, you not only enjoy lower more predictable costs, you also get peace of mind knowing you have taken a big step towards responsibly protecting your clients’ confidential information.

Find out why so many agencies have been switching to Partner XE insurance agency management system from SIS. Call 800-747-9273 or click here to get in touch with a representative.

The following are the three points Hoeppner says he found the most eye opening.

• More than 60% of those who responded are not measuring the return on investment of current marketing efforts.
• Close to half of respondents who are not using social media will start to do so within a year.
• Of those who responded, a bit more than 60% do not have a coordinated marketing plan of any kind.

The social media finding corresponded with exactly what we’ve been hearing here at SIS. It is a tool a lot of agencies would like to be using.

Those of you interested in ideas of how to expand your reach with Social Media might be interested in reading one of the following two posts: Creating Brand Awareness Through Facebook and Insurers Put Social Media to Work.

Another finding that matched our research exactly is that a website is the most commonly used marketing tool across both traditional and non-traditional platforms.

While we would agree that the lack of coordinated marketing plans among the independent insurance agencies who responded to the survey is distressing, it is somewhat understandable given the pace of the business. For an agency to grow, however, implementing defined and measured processes (around all areas of the business) should be a priority. For more information, read our recent post Improving Business Processes.

The one thing we did find surprising, however, is how few agencies surveyed are using their agency management system to track and measure results of their marketing efforts. Our Partner XE agency management system has many features that will help you measure and track your marketing efforts. Give us a call at 800-747-9273 to find out how.

Partner XE is an easy to use agency management system designed to streamline workflow and increase productivity for independent insurance agencies of all sizes. Call 800-747-9273 or contact us to schedule a free agency management system assessment and consultation

Because Together Everyone Achieves More

An interview with NASPA Board Member Steve Kramer,

Kramer Insurance Agency, Langhorne, PA.

Length of time on Partner XE: 1 year

Question: How do you use Partner XE to market your business?

CROSS-SELL

You want multiple policies per client because the higher your ratio is per household the higher your retention rate becomes. The Search features within Partner can be used to identify where you are missing out on client business so you can actively cross-sell to them. For example, you can run a sort of clients with auto, but not home coverage and then actively begin pursing their home policies as well. It works the same with commercial lines too. Do they have a business policy, but not commercial auto? Market accordingly.

WIN BACK LOST ACCOUNTS

The other thing we do is when a client becomes inactive… if they left us for one reason or another we do a “win back” campaign. We can run a search in Partner XE to identify these folks, we already have their basic information in the system, so we will go back and call them and say “hey, how can we win back your business.”

RENEW & RETAIN

We use the Partner XE Scheduling tools to set reminders… to keep what we need to do and on what day. Client renewals for example, if a renewal is coming up on the third of February we are calling him on the third of January so we are ahead of the game, not behind.

We also do quarterly contacts with our clients. We schedule in Partner when to call them or when it’s time to reconnect – the system keeps us on a schedule.

The NOTES feature really helps us with customer service. When a client calls in the first thing we are getting into the habit of doing is opening the notes to the last conversation. It helps you from a marketing standpoint. If you have that history in front of you and know that client better when you are talking to them it gives you a more professional position working with the client.

GET NEW BUSINESS

We do a lot of email marketing. We send out an average of 30,000 targeted emails per month. One specific campaign we do is to used car auto dealer. We have six or seven different solutions for them, from liability insurance to odometer insurance. We design the emails and the advertising on a one year campaign, hitting them hard in the beginning then spreading it out over time so that the client isn’t getting hammered with an email every day and getting annoyed. We find that it takes three to four sometimes even six months until we get a bite. We are chumming the waters and waiting for the fish to bite.

We probably get six auto dealers a month calling and out of those six we will close four of them.

We cannot do bulk emails directly out of the Partner XE system (yet… that’s one thing I’d love to see happen!) but we can export our prospect lists out of XE and then import them into our emailing system. Once they come back as leads it is all tracked in Partner XE.

Document where you are now

The first step to improving any process is to gain a full understanding of the way it being done now. Many independent insurance agency owners, caught up in the day to day drama of running a business, find it difficult to make time to document procedures and even more difficult to ensure they are implemented/ enforced.

Borrowing from a lean manufacturing philosophy, the primary goals behind implementing documented systems and processes are to identify inefficiencies, reduce time spent on individual transactions, increase productivity (sales), while executing processes that consistently focus on customer value.

If you have not documented your processes and procedures, the first step you’ll need to take is to identify how things are currently being done and map each process from start to finish.

• Get your team together to review the processes and collectively identify information bottlenecks and areas for improvement that are negatively affecting your bottom line.
• Get input from the entire team on the areas where improvement could most directly affect their ability to sell more.
• Prioritize improvements based on ease of implementation and overall impact.

Once you have documented your processes you can focus on improving them.

As indicated in the Harvard Business Press’ “Pocket Mentor: Improving Business Processes”¹ a business process improvement cycle has six stages. Although complex improvements will take more time at each stage than simple process improvements, the stages apply to both.

Plan

• What is your overall goal driving the need for improvement?

Analyze

• Do you have documented workflows that leverage your technology?
• Are these workflows built into your technology?

Redesign

• Adjust documentation of procedures to reflect new goals/ processes

Acquire Resources

• Is there technology available to improve this process?
• Can I outsource activities ( like marketing) and ultimately improve my bottom line?

Implement

Continually Improve

• Review processes regularly (at least once a year) to insure you are taking advantage of all available resources.

In analyzing your current workflow, you may find that simple, yet effective, adjustments can be made just by getting everyone in the office to uniformly take advantage of tools you already have (like a digital document storage system, Real Time or a uniform to-do list. You may also find that you don’t have the necessary tools or resources to get things done and need to make some adjustments.

Partner XE from SIS – an online hosted, feature rich, affordable, easy to use, scalable agency management system designed to streamline workflow and increase productivity for independent insurance agencies of all sizes gives agencies the tools they need to succeed.

Find out why so many independent insurance agencies are switching to Partner XE. Call 800-747-9273 or click here to schedule a free agency management system assessment and consultation.

Resources

[1] Harvard Business Press. Pocket Mentor: Improving Business Process. Boston: Harvard Business School Publishing, 2010.

As ACT Executive Director, Jeff Yates wrote in AUGIE Survey: Agency Technology Having Big Payback for Many Agencies, “There is a multiplier effect starting to take effect for agencies that implement new technologies consistently and successfully. The biggest benefit seems to be that these efficiencies enable the agency to grow without increasing staff.”

One such opportunity for independent agents, discussed in a previous post, is Real Time. Another is the ability to move to a paperless work environment.

Why paperless makes sense for an independent insurance agency

Consider the following two scenarios: First, imagine having to print each email you receive from your insured, get up and walk over to the filing cabinet, search for the insured’s folder, find the correct spot in the folder to place the printed email. Second, imagine a system that did it all for you – automatically. That is what you get with Partner XE and its Outlook Plug-in feature. In Partner XE the Outlook Plug-in will automatically attach that email to the document section of the customer folder – no additional work required. Even if you only got one email per day this would be a nice feature. When you figure multiple emails per day for multiple employees, the time saving factor is huge. (Not to mention the green aspect of it all!)

In addition, especially with the advent of SaaS, workplaces are increasingly more mobile. To maximize efficiency, agents and customer service reps should ideally have access files and source documents anywhere, anytime. With a paperless system, tied to an online hosted agency management system, it’s a slam dunk.

Best practices for going paperless

1. Implement an agency management system such as Partner XE from SIS that uses an internal transactional filing system (designed to be compliant with existing E&O standards) to manage storage and store all system files and activities.
2. Work with staff to determine the best method to scan and import documents into the system. This may depend on what type of scanning equipment you have in your office. Some agencies have big expensive multiplex scanners. Other agencies have less expensive workstation scanners. If you have a choice, our suggestion is to go with the latter. Overall, we have found that the workstation scanners tend to be the most effective, primarily because they alleviate the constraints posed by a one-scanner system when more than one person needs to scan at once.
3. Determine how you will handle old files. The two main choices here are whether to scan all old files into the system so that ALL documents can be accessed digitally, or to pick a starting date and go digital from that point on. It is important to speak with your service staff to collectively determine what makes the most sense for your agency. Making a big decision like this could lead to frustrations if team members aren’t on board and it’s not all planned out ahead of time.
4. Establish a consistent document naming system. This is critical to be able to find files (no matter who created them) where you need them, when you need them – even several years down the road. Example: Emails should be tagged with “EML” and then the description, ACORD forms with “ACORD,” etc. By doing so, you can easily run a “sort” and group all of your emails / forms, etc. together
5. Create and integrate new workflow procedures and ensure all personnel are properly trained. Make sure all involved understand what documents are attached to what within your agency management system, etc.
6. When best practices are followed, an electronic document management system can go a long way towards helping organizations tackle their operational processes and achieve increased productivity and better customer service.

For more articles on the subject see the following links:

Insurance Journal, Trends for 2012 – Soft Market is Here to Stay

Insurance Journal, How Agency Technology Drives Profitable Growth

IIAA, ACT Says Careful Move to Paperless Environment will Benefit Independent Agency System

About the Partner XE Agency Management System

Partner XE from SIS is an easy to use, online hosted insurance agency management system with logical workflows, exceptional download and comparative rater integration capabilities and best in the business Outlook integration.