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Insurance Company Adds $8 mn to Bottom line with "Agency Management @ the desktop"

Industry: Insurance

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A large, well-established insurance company in New England wanted to consolidate data that was stored in multiple formats and locations, spread among a mainframe, various databases, Excel spreadsheets and on paper. The time-consuming system made it difficult for employees to focus on new business development, adequately support its independent insurance agents, and make the business more efficient and profitable.

The company, which writes more than $800 million each year in premiums in 16 eastern states, sought assistance from CellExchange, a leader in collaborative business innovation services that accelerate deployment of enterprise applications, to centralize and standardize customer and company information and automate data collection and analysis.

The insurance company's employees spent an inordinate amount of time trying to retrieve data rather than working with customers. Sometimes, it was impossible for marketing reps to access all they needed to provide information and service to customers. Furthermore, company managers did not have the information and tools to review and manage field-marketing performance.

The inconsistent data and overlapping analytical tools created other problems. Work was duplicated as staff in different regions created their own Excel spreadsheets to analyze data, and administrators had to manually re-enter data for analysis, making information flow and collaboration difficult.

This New Hampshire-based company sought assistance from CellExchange's technology and business experts to establish "Agency Management @ the Desktop" in order to improve information flow and collaboration throughout the company.

CellExchange Solution

The company began the project by participating in CellExchange's renowned Cambridge Executive Workshop (CEW), an intensive three-week program where corporate executives and staff collaborate to identify new ideas and move them to deployment. During the CEW, the insurer set goals to improve the data management system and find a means to better leverage the company's core business knowledge and customer experience in order to create growth and profitability opportunities.

During the CEW, CellExchange specialists in business solutions and technology work with clients to:

	Generate new, high-impact ideas using CellExchange's "left and right hand" framework;
	Identify "lazy assets" that can benefit from new technologies and improved processes;
	Tap MIT and Harvard resources to drive a strategic, problem-solving approach;
	Create a compelling, complete business case with quantitative and qualitative benefits.

Through the CEW, the company was able to identify ways to create a "left hand" vision to leverage their core business knowledge, customer experience, and data to find new channels and tools to establish value-added relationship with their agents and the agents' customers. The insurer used the Collaboration Architecture from CellExchange to:

	Develop an architecture enabling consolidation of data in disparate systems with flexibility for the changing business environment;
	Create a custom prototype of the solution;
	Provide a framework for Rapid Application Development (RAD); and
	Develop a deployment roadmap to quickly capture maximum business benefits.

The solution relies on software from CellExchange's Collaboration Software Suite as the foundation for the flexible framework to solve its multiple technology and business challenges. The company used the CellExchange Scoring Engine, an event driven workflow-based correlation and trend analysis system that supports dynamic analysis rules, as the means for the solution to filter and analyze information after it is collected. The CellExchange DataSwitch, a multipurpose communications platform that combines several functions within one easy-to-use interface, is used for data collection and dissemination. The CellExchange Sharp Statement Center, an XML-based data extraction application that lets organizations transform paper invoices, pay stubs, work orders, and the like into dynamic, personalized, interactive statements, is the basis for information dissemination and decisions.

Solution Benefits

"Agency Management @ the Desktop" will give the insurance company a clear view of all agencies and loss ratio indicators. Because of this, the company predicts a one percent reduction in loss ratio, which will mean an additional $8 million in 2004 and $10 million in 2005 added to the bottom line.

With the automation offered by the new system, time previously spent on monotonous data gathering can be leveraged for new business development and working with existing agencies to improve the company's share of business. The company estimates that each agent will gain a half to full day of time each week, with the total time savings expected to be around 10,000 hours, and will focus employee time on new business development.

In addition, the company expects the quality of business to improve, with time to focus on selecting the right customers. A 2.5 percent gain in new revenue by 2005 will add $1.25 million to the bottom line.

In short, this solution from CellExchange gives the insurer a platform for the company to create new business opportunities, improve customer service and satisfaction, and increase profitability.