"It will take consistent communication from the independent agent portion of the industry to companies and vendors for interface improvements to occur."
Agents Council for Technology releases its
"Call to Action" for interface improvements
By John Chivvis
"It will take consistent communication from the independent agent portion of the industry to companies and vendors for interface improvements to occur."
-- Jeff Yates, Executive Director, Agents Council for Technology
When the Independent Insurance Agents & Brokers of America (IIABA) met in New Orleans back in September, one of the significant announcements to come out of the convention was the Agents Council for Technology's (ACT) "Call to Action" for interface improvements. ACT's 37-member panel--representing insurance companies, vendors and agents--codified the next steps for each group to take in streamlining the insurance buying and selling process.
According to ACT Executive Director Jeff Yates, agents play a pivotal role in making agency-company interface improvements happen. While insurance companies and vendors ultimately will be the ones implementing most of the improvements, it is the agents who must continually communicate--clearly and vocally--the interface issues they face with those companies and vendors. Yates says that it will take consistent communication from the independent agent portion of the industry to companies and vendors for interface improvements to occur.
Agent communication may be the catalyst, but the proof will be the steps or actions agents take to back up their call for interface improvements, beginning with maintaining continued technology investment. "It is very important for agents to implement the current versions of their agency management system software so that they are positioned to take advantage of new, real-time company interfaces," says Yates.
With technology needs of differing magnitudes in each agency competing with a host of other issues, many times budgets are set and money is spent on technology issues without fully evaluating how the technology will be used to enhance the agency's business processes and workflows. Yates points out that agency principals must look at their technology investments as part of their strategic business plan. "The most successful agencies are focused on employing technology, new workflows, and improving the alignment of staff responsibilities on an ongoing basis to enhance the value of their firms," he says.
One critical step agents should take is to look at ways to reduce the time spent on inefficient and lengthy processes stemming from the use of proprietary company Web sites. Part of this solution can be found in new technologies being developed by vendors to help bridge the information gap. One such solution is IVANS Transformation Station.
Transformation Station is a data exchange center that allows agents and CSRs to start the insurance transaction from a single and familiar interface--their management system. By inputting data into their management system once, they can have it reformatted as needed to interact with more than 20 insurance companies. With support from AMS Services, Applied Systems and DORIS, Transformation Station is starting to offer a real-time, multi-company experience for agents. "When you can get AMS, Applied and DORIS to agree to support a common interface technology," says Yates, "you create a major opportunity for the industry to finally move toward true SEMCI."
Another part of the solution is for ACT and the agents to encourage companies and vendors to employ new technology solutions to aid agents and CSRs using a company's proprietary Web site. "Company Web sites have provided agents with access to many great real-time tools--inquiry, rating, quoting," says Yates. But he also notes that agents often lose the real-time aspect when responding to customers because of the time it currently takes to log on to the particular site and locate the appropriate page or information or to secure quotes from multiple companies.
"Training agency personnel on the proprietary Web sites of multiple companies is a nightmare for agencies," says Yates, especially when there are multiple passwords to remember, repetitive filling out of data for each company site, and differing workflows for each site. "Just think of the hundreds of thousands of agents and CSRs out there doing these inefficient transactions multiple times each day," he continues. "Think of the opportunity the industry has to free up agency personnel for more productive work."
To cut out some of the multiple entry, Yates and ACT suggest that vendors and companies implement data-prefilling solutions where data would be entered once in the agency system and would then pre-populate fields on the company Web site automatically. "We also want to get Web sites to be as intuitive as possible," says Yates, commenting on the occasional display of information as if it were dumped out of a "green screen." Yates adds that company sites need to be developed "in a way that requires minimal to no training for agents."
Another change Yates and ACT propose for company Web sites relates to the way passwords are used, handled and managed. Every time an agent visits a company Web site, he or she has to log on with a user ID and password. "Agents are going crazy trying to remember all of these passwords," Yates says. "As a result, they write them down on a sticky note or list creating a security issue."
ACT recently recommended a set of guidelines for companies and vendors to follow for password formats. The first is setting password expiration to a minimum of 90 days with reminder messages or warnings to users as to the upcoming expiration. Second, systems would remember a user's last five passwords in order to prevent the same password from being used over and over again. Third, passwords should be limited to between six and eight characters to prevent password cracking.
Yates travels around the United States encouraging agency principals and managers to focus on the importance of technology and business process improvement to their future. He says that "more and more are getting involved with these issues to improve their businesses." A good place for agents to start, he adds, is the ACT/Best Practices "The Best Practices Guide to Agency Business Processes and Workflows" which can be downloaded from the IIABA Web site (www.iiaba.org.). This tool can help agencies when they look at their business processes and implement workflow improvements that will maximize the benefits they derive from their technology.
Besides budgeting and planning for technology, there is also the need for agency principals to talk to their agency employees who are actively using the technology. "Agency principals need to talk to their employees to find out what their current workflow problems are, and then work to correct them, whether internally or by bringing the issue up at their company advisory council or vendor user group meetings," says Yates.
Probably the most important task an agent can undertake is to support those companies that are striving to streamline processes for agents. "Agents need to support companies and company pilot programs even though other companies may or may not be there yet," says Yates. "If agents want to see more SEMCI approaches from the companies, it is critical that they show support for the early adaptors by using the new interfaces." He adds that agents should reward companies with growth when they make the necessary investments to provide agents with the interfaces they have asked for.
Company and vendor solutions are not automatic; they take time. Improvements will occur incrementally. As agents get more proficient with technology, they will not tolerate inefficient solutions from their business partners. "ACT will continue its efforts to help agents communicate a clear and consistent message," says Yates. "We ask agents to lobby their companies and vendors on these business issues with the same aggressiveness they would employ in lobbying their lawmakers on a legislative issue. It is just as important to the future of their business." *
The author
John Chivvis is a Texas-based writer who specializes in topics of technology implementation. His work has appeared in a number of national and regional publications.
With security and sensitive information such a high priority, ACT has made some recommendations for companies and vendors to increase the ease, effectiveness and efficiency of password use on company and vendor Web sites. ACT has also put together some guidelines and helpful hints for managing passwords in the agency. These agency helpful hints will start to become useful to agents after companies and vendors adopt the ACT guidelines for password formats. Agents should encourage such adoption wherever they can.
One helpful hint is for each agency employee to choose a consistent password to use for multiple Web sites. Another is for the agency to set up a single password expiration schedule, bringing all employee password schedules and expirations to one date and adding new employees into the system to coincide with the password changes. A final step to take is to create effective and secure passwords by using six to eight characters, non-repetitive combinations and a mixture of uppercase, lowercase, and numbers--all of which make it difficult for unauthorized persons to guess passwords.
The full set of guidelines for handling multiple passwords can be downloaded by clicking the "Approved Password Guidelines" link on ACT's Web page, which can be found at http://www.iiaba.com/.