A Special Section Sponsored by Alliance for Productive Technology, Inc.

SEMCI NOW

Great strides being made in area of commercial lines SEMCI

By Chris Amrhein, AAI, Vice President, IIAA Industry Affairs

That handy home software, Quicken^TM, certainly lives up to its name.

As a consumer, I--along with thousands of others--have come to rely on this inexpensive program to seamlessly download my banking, investment, 401(k) and credit card information directly onto my desktop over the Internet.

As an insurance professional, I can appreciate the intricacies of applying such real-time, multi-system upload and download interface to the unique world of the independent agency system.

Unfortunately, the average consumer could care less.

All that matters to the general public is that Quicken is fast and cheap. And, as every other product and service in our lives conforms to this demand for efficiency, our industry will be held to the same standards.

Single entry, multiple company interface (SEMCI), that ideological battleground, is a critical component if the independent agency system is to rise to those expectations.

Yet we hear endless debate over proprietary solutions, or whether the Internet renders current technology obsolete.

SEMCI, however, has never been about a specific technology. SEMCI defines the agency business process in terms of industry standards; single entry of data and the ability to use it throughout agent and company systems; and agency ability to operate in a consistent, efficient manner with all of its carriers.

"Delaying valuable improvements while waiting for perfect solutions is a losing game."

There are those who claim SEMCI is still not available on a practical level. Wrong. Concept and capability have met. APT's desktop software has supported AL3 transactions and ACORD Forms for all lines of business--personal and commercial--for several years. Its new webSEMCI product provides the same capabilities in real-time including rating integration, as demonstrated by AMS Rating Services at APT's June SEMCI Conference. And, at the May ACORD Conference, The Hartford and Applied Systems demonstrated the viability of using an agency management system to achieve the rating and issuance of a complete multiline businessowner's policy in real time, using SEMCI. These are remarkable strides in the realization of SEMCI's full potential, particularly in commercial lines--an area in which proprietary interfaces not only proliferate but are often claimed to be unavoidable.

With confirmation of the incredible savings of currently available SEMCI--one carrier confirms it has reduced a 28-day transaction to 10 minutes, and decreased payroll expenses by nearly $1 million--what are we waiting for? And at what cost?

We all know that there is no reward for extra time spent on repeatedly entering data or navigating the intricacies of a company's proprietary system. We need to liberate agents from the busy work so they can spend their time on business--on marketing, sales, building relationships, and fulfilling the customers' needs. And we need to do it now.

Yet when agents approach many of their carriers and vendors to implement SEMCI, rather than encouragement, they are confronted with an abundance of technology choices, all of which offer the potential of expensive investments and disruption to agency personnel and workflow. Since the average agent is already buried in the activities and responsibilities of running a profitable business, lack of a clear direction from the agency's providers leads to inaction, and the savings and efficiencies are delayed yet again.

And adding SEMCI to an agency where the major companies still insist on proprietary interfaces is not a boon but a bane. Look at the ACORD Form adoption process. So long as carriers maintained proprietary systems, using an ACORD application was simply the addition of another step, and not the savings it was intended to be. The true efficiency of the ACORD Forms was finally realized--and demanded--by agents only when their adoption by major carriers made the ACORD Forms an improvement, not a burden, in agency process.

For this reason, while the Internet opens up exciting new opportunities to enhance real-time SEMCI and productivity, it is critical that we avoid a continued proliferation of new Web-based proprietary systems. That is why we are excited about the joint initiative of IIAA's Agents Council for Technology with ACORD to deliver to the industry a standardized vocabulary for XML based on the ACORD ObjX and AL3 standards. Adoption of these XML standards by the companies and the vendors is vital to the continued evolution of SEMCI.

Agents have learned through experience that delaying valuable improvements while waiting for perfect solutions is a losing game. Let's implement what works now. With the savings and efficiency available now, implemented safely within our agencies, we can then look forward to opportunities in technology breakthroughs yet to come--from the Internet or beyond.

IIAA believes APT has an excellent technology built on industry standards to achieve SEMCI. We heartily commend those companies and vendors that have really moved to implement SEMCI within the agency force by using available technology to enhance the productivity of agent transactions.

Keep up and expand those long-term company SEMCI plans and business strategies. By realizing together the savings and opportunities of today, we'll each be leveraged to embrace the technology of tomorrow.

Agents want SEMCI. We will continue telling our members to push hard for SEMCI, and you must work to make it a reality. Let's use the new technology to work through agents, not around them, to benefit that ultimate bottom line--the consumer. And let's do it quickly. *