TECHNOLOGY
Whether you call it disaster planning and recovery or business continuity, arranging for online access to files enables you to serve clients when they need you most
By Nancy Doucette
This country's definition of disaster was expanded on September 11, 2001. But looking at business continuity from a more narrow perspective, agency owners and managers need to consider the data that constitute the lifeblood of their agencies. With more agencies going paperless, the data that reside in their agency management systems become all the more valuable.
When we take time to think about the unthinkable, earthquakes, fires, tornadoes and hurricanes come to mind most readily. Later in this article we'll learn how a Show Low, Arizona, agent who was evacuated from the town last June--along with the rest of the residents--as wild fires approached, kept his agency open for business. And he didn't serve only his own clients.
As another agent was en route to the IIABA convention in New Orleans last September, a tornado was tearing toward his Indianapolis agency. Although the phone system at the agency was knocked out by the storm, the agent was able to receive information about clients with claims and begin working on them from the New Orleans airport. His disaster plan included a 24/7 solution that combines Internet access to policy information with an agency-branded call center. A third agent whose agency is outside San Francisco--in earthquake country--subscribes to a service provided by his agency management system vendor that backs up the agency's data via the Internet and includes online access to the agency files.
But suppose someone inadvertently overwrites a file, or the sprinkler system malfunctions and douses the agency? What if a virus eats its way through the database or the hard disk crashes? Disasters? You bet. Or suppose your system is down for software updates or hardware modifications.
"Most events that disable an agency aren't natural disasters," reports Shannon Martin, product manager for ancillary products at Applied Systems. "Hardware failures and human errors lead the list of events that contribute to agency downtime. The odds of one of them occurring is pretty good in the lifetime of a business," she notes.
Richard Roy, chairman and CEO of Afni Insurance Services which provides CSR24--a 24/7 customer service solution that combines the Internet with telephony--notes: "So much is on the backbone of technology these days, when it goes down, for whatever reason, your payroll is rendered almost useless."
And AMS Services' Senior Project Manager Darrell Stanley adds: "People typically see a disaster as a hurricane, or 9/11, and they conclude that those things won't happen to them, so they don't plan. But once an agency owner starts focusing on business continuity--disaster recovery and system security--then that individual starts thinking, 'I'm protecting my business so that I can continue serving my clients, supporting my employees, and my family.'"
Research by the University of Texas may help agency owners begin thinking more along those lines, Stanley suggests. According to the research, he says, 90% of the businesses that survive a disaster without having a disaster recovery plan in place go out of business within two years. The business may recover its facility, the employees, and the infrastructure, but the loss of business relationships and the stress on the employees inflicts long-term damage. "The business focus is lost," he explains.
Expecting the unexpected
Maintaining business focus was exactly what Pleasanton, California, agency principal Wayne Rudick had in mind when he agreed to have his agency serve as a beta site for Applied Systems' Data Storage & Recovery (DSR) Services which went into general release for WinTAM customers (version 6.3 and higher) in June 2002. He's in the process of transitioning the agency, which is about 98% commercial lines, to a paperless environment. "It's especially important to have backups when an agency is paperless," he explains. But if some type of disaster were to render his agency equipment inaccessible or unusable, he'd have to buy replacement equipment and have WinTAM installed, then restore his data from his backup tape. So there would be delays, and agency customers wouldn't be receiving the customary level of service.
That made the decision to subscribe to DSR a "no-brainer," according to Rudick. Doing so gives him two ways to recover his data should a disaster occur--the nightly tape backup which he keeps or the weekly electronic transfer of files via the Internet to Applied's secure storage facility. With the latter capability, he and the Pleasanton Valley Insurance staff can access the data from anywhere as long as there's Internet access. So should a major disaster occur and the agency had to temporarily relocate outside the area, agency clients could still be served.
"The Data Storage & Recovery Service is like an insurance policy for our users," says Applied Systems' Shannon Martin. "You hope you never have to use it but you need to be sure you have that extra protection." She explains that one of Applied's primary objectives in creating DSR was to make the process electronic. "We didn't want users to have to make extra copies of their backups," she says. "We wanted to provide seamless integration."
Wayne Rudick says Applied achieved that goal. With one mouse click during the weekly night utility setup, he checks a box and the transmission of his data to Applied's secure storage site begins. But Rudick confesses: "I'm a cautious kind of guy, so I asked Applied to run me through a recovery process." So after being on DSR for several months, he designated a mock disaster day. His mock disaster hit at 8 a.m. Pacific time. He sent some of his employees home so they could dial in once the system was restored. Having different access capabilities--dial up, T1 and DSL--was also part of the test. He called Applied's client solutions department to initiate the recovery process. Six hours later, the system was restored.
With its Data Storage & Recovery Service and its TAMCentral (the ASP version of WinTAM), Applied is eliminating an agency's recovery burden, Martin points out. "We make it so agents don't have to think about what to do next. Just let us know and we'll make your data accessible in a guaranteed timeframe. All you need are workstations with Internet connectivity." If the agency opts to switch to TAMCentral, she says the agency can stay on it for an extended period.
Rudick says his disaster plan is a work in progress. For 2003, he plans on buying several laptops for remote access and possibly setting up an additional PC at his house that would also give him access to the data. "There's always the possibility that we may not be able to access the Internet," he reasons.
Arizona hot spot
Mark Brown and his brother represent the fifth generation of Arizona-based Brown & Associates Insurance which was founded in 1892. Since its beginning, the agency has expanded to four locations in east-central Arizona. Last June, two of those locations--Show Low and Pinetop-Lakeside--were in the path of the largest fire in Arizona history. What came to be known as the Rodeo-Chediski Fire eventually consumed nearly half a million acres. "There were 100-foot flames heading toward Show Low and Pinetop-Lakeside," he recalls. "We had a one-hour notice to evacuate."
But while other agent-evacuees in Show Low were loading their PCs onto pickup trucks, Mark Brown had gone to his office to make sure that last-minute payments were entered, and that property updates were submitted via his AMS AfW Online system. He grabbed some personal things off his desk and headed for nearby Eagar where the agency also had an office. If the fire stayed on its path--and there was no reason to believe it wouldn't--Show Low would be destroyed. Fortunately, the fire was contained before it reached Show Low, but residents weren't allowed back in Show Low for nine days.
Brown recalls that once he arrived in Eagar, he was immediately able to begin assisting his clients who had also relocated there. "Because we were using AfW Online, I didn't have to pack up my computers when the town evacuated. I didn't have to take a backup tape and try to restore. I simply logged in." Clients from Show Low were amazed that Brown had their file information readily available in Eagar. He'd simply print out the client's dec page and walk it over to the carrier's claim rep who was preparing additional living expense checks. People were walking away with checks in hand.
Non-clients who couldn't locate their agents were also coming to Brown for advice and policy interpretation. They would also come to Brown to express their frustrations when they were able to find their agent only to have that agent forward their call to a distant call center which in turn instructed them to save their receipts for later reimbursement. "They weren't given any sort of preferential treatment, but we were able to shine," Brown says. "That's when independent agents shine. When there's a claim." He estimates some 125 people switched from their agent to Brown & Associates as a result of the level of service the agency was able to provide during and after the fire.
Brown says the agency's disaster plan was about 30% complete at the time of the fire. An important part of the plan, though, was data security and because the agency had switched to AfW Online in July 2001, that part of the plan was complete. He explains that the AfW Online data is automatically backed up to secure servers at the AMS data center as well as to AMS's own disaster site some 90 miles away from the data center. "This is a lot more dependable than if I'd taken on the task of backing up and maintaining security," Brown says.
In addition to its Online solutions, AMS is offering a disaster recovery service to its traditional (server-based) AfW and Sagitta Browser customers. AMS's Darrell Stanley explains that subscribing to the disaster recovery service will give customers priority attention in the event of a disaster, for instance, where special, out-of-the-ordinary assistance from AMS would be required. "We'll react immediately to the agencies that subscribe to the disaster recovery service," he says. "Those agencies that don't subscribe will be at a different priority level and they'll have to negotiate and sign the agreement for the Online service. We couldn't bring them onto the Online product without some type of agreement. Signing up ahead of time would simplify that process."
In the event of a disaster, a subscribing agency notifies customer support and express mails its latest backup tape--ideally from the night before--to the College Station, Texas, data center. Stanley says once the agency's backup is received, a database can be restored in four to eight hours, depending on the size of the database.
The disaster recovery service enables an agency to convert to the Online product for 90 days before the agency has to decide whether to stay in the online environment or go back to the traditional environment. If the agency decides to stay in the online environment, AMS would waive the implementation fees and the disaster recovery subscription would cease, Stanley says.
"I'll huff and I'll puff ..."
Kevin Wheeler freely admits he has a "passion for working with computers" which is one of the reasons he opted to keep his Cardinal Insurance Services on a server-based management system, rather than migrate to an online solution. But when the opportunity presented itself to provide Cardinal's clients with 24/7 service, he jumped at it. He's been using CSR24, provided by Afni Insurance Services (formerly idNET), for the past two-and-a-half years. When he made the decision to offer the 24/7 capability to clients, he didn't realize he was also acquiring an important disaster recovery option for his Indianapolis, Indiana-based agency.
Afni's Richard Roy acknowledges that disaster recovery wasn't a primary motivator for developing CSR24, but it's turned out to be an important feature. Each day Afni, which works with several vendor platforms, receives a copy of the subscribing agency's database--typically just after the agency closes in the evening. Afni uses the Microsoft Scheduler so the data transfer is automatic. That data is posted to the CSR24 Web site in Arizona--which has all the appropriate firewalls and levels of security, he explains. That data is available to both the agency and the consumer. "Agents can access their agency management system data from any Internet access point--AOL dial-up to a T1 access--and can continue to perform the typical customer service level functions. The data is as up to date as it was last evening or whenever the data was last copied," Roy says. After-hours calls to the agency are handled by Afni's telephone center in Illinois. There, representatives with insurance background answer calls using the subscribing agency's name and can access the current policy information.
Kevin Wheeler's customers were especially pleased with this service last September when a late-season tornado tore through southern Indianapolis. At the time, Wheeler had just arrived in New Orleans for the IIABA convention.
He'd just arrived at the conference hotel when his cell phone rang and the Afni call center informed him that a tornado had destroyed one of his commercial client's buildings. When Wheeler responded to the client's call, he says the client was thrilled that he could contact him but wondered how Wheeler could call from his office. The process had worked so seamlessly that the client didn't realize that Wheeler was calling from New Orleans. Afni forwarded more claim calls to him while he made his way back to Indianapolis.
When Wheeler arrived at his office the next day, he discovered the phone system had been knocked out by the tornado. But thanks to CSR24, clients were still able to report their claims to the Afni call center where the calls were being answered: "Cardinal Insurance." CSR24 customers have a choice of whether to have Afni file the claim for agency clients or to turn it over to the agency. Wheeler prefers to talk to his client once a claim is reported. He also prefers to contact the contractors who will be doing the work.
Afni customers can customize the contact they receive from the call center with an "escalation protocol" that specifies when the agency principal is to be called, and when an e-mail notification is permissible. Part of Wheeler's protocol specified that he be contacted by phone in the event of serious losses, and went into some detail defining what constitutes a serious loss. So once Wheeler was able to begin accessing e-mails again, he began handling the 20-30 e-mails containing claim information that clients had reported to Afni and which Afni had forwarded to Cardinal as specified in the escalation protocol. Because the e-mails contained all the pertinent details, Wheeler was able to forward them to the carrier disaster teams' e-mail addresses. So Cardinal was able to expedite the claims to the carriers without having to fill out the paperwork. "While carriers like to get an ACORD claim report, when a disaster occurs they become very flexible," Wheeler notes. "They're eager to help the customers."
Wheeler prefers Afni's telephony capability to what a carrier service center can offer because the company service center focuses exclusively on that carrier's products. "If a client calls that service center," he explains, "the service center can't see that the client has a homeowner policy with another carrier, or the commercial account, or the life/health policies. Afni can--and because the telephone center says 'Cardinal Insurance' when their rep answers a call, it gives me branding. As an independent agent, I have to keep my name in the equation for my existence."
Wheeler recalls attending disaster planning seminars during user group meetings years ago. Although CSR24 was a boon following the tornado, he admits his disaster plan needs to be updated and enhanced. So the next time he finds himself in one of those seminars seated next to someone who's only half listening, he says he's going to lean over and say, "Pay attention." *
Research by the University of Texas indicates that 90% of businesses that survive a disaster without having a disaster recovery plan in place go out of business within two years.
--Darrell Stanley, Senior Project Manager, AMS Services
For more information
Afni Insurance Services
Phone: (860) 651-9775
E-mail: marketing@afniinc.com
Web site: www.afniinc.com
AMS
Sales Center
Phone: (800) 444-4813
E-mail: salesinfo@ams-services.com
Web site: www.ams-services.com
Applied Systems
Client Solutions Department
Phone: (800) 999-5368
E-mail: tcave@appliedsystems.com
Web site: www.appliedsystems.com