Wish list: as producers' demands for technology tools spread across the board, carriers stretch to offer a large menu of options.

Key Points

* The array of tools producers prefer include such "old-fashioned" aids as e-mail, telephone and fax.

* The value of new tools can be measured by frequency of use and delivery of results.

* Carriers need to reach a place in technology and data standards where they can truly impact the agent work flow in a positive way.

Nearly all producers rely on technology to assist in their daily business functions, but their needs are anything but similar.

According to research and advisory firm Celent's recent study, Designed for Success: The Must-Have Attributes of Producer Tools, there's no single-tool strategy that universally appeals to producers. Producer demands range from proprietary carrier Web sites to point-of-sale tools, from customer self-service to contact management software. Several producer tools, however, have a wider appeal. E-mail and round-the-clock access, along with use of the Web, are primary concerns for all producers, and illustrations and online quoting tools have high potential impact, according to the study.

In a recent Best's Review technology roundtable, several industry professionals discussed today's producer needs and what carriers are doing to meet those demands.

Paul Tinnirello, executive vice president and chief information officer of A.M. Best Co. and moderator of the roundtable: How would you categorize the tools you're providing your end producers?

Peggy Scott, assistant vice president, Liberty Mutual Agency Markets, and manager of project planning and management: Our current tool set is very competitive in the marketplace. We've stepped back and listened to our independent agency population, and we've worked hard to address their key needs. It's not surprising that the Celent study shows that multiple communication methodologies, multiple tools and ease of data entry are all critical factors to our engagement with our agents and to both our success and their success in the marketplace.

Richard Cuozzo, second vice president, agency automation, for Travelers Personal Insurance: We all deal with many of the same agencies. Producers are looking for most everything to be online rather than be a manual they have to maintain. We try to deliver a lot of Web service solutions for them, and that's been successful for us. Agents don't come in the same size and shape, and they want many options. We try to deliver as many of those as we can so that they can access the same information in different ways.

Akhil Tripathi, senior vice president and chief information officer of Harleysville Insurance: The initiatives we've focused on and recently delivered are aimed at improving agency work flows and making it easier for them to do business with us. To accommodate the varying needs of our agencies, we've built and rolled out an agent portal that provides a comprehensive set of capabilities across all product lines. We've assembled our best ideas with best-of-breed carrier capabilities of other carriers. We then superimposed that effort into a continuous process of listening and training. We have established an agency technology support organization to continuously work with our agencies.

Tinnirello: Are producers split on which tools they prefer for various tasks they perform or is there one tool that's universally accepted?

Craig Weber, senior analyst and author of the Celent study: Producers are all over the map; some prefer phone, some fax, some e-mail, while others exclusively work in their agency management systems. Carriers can invest in any of those tools, but I think a better strategy is to invest in all of those tools to some degree. It's an unfortunate finding because we would all like to think there's a silver bullet solution, but that's the lay of the land. You can't please everybody with a single technology choice.

Tinnirello: Were there any surprises in the Celent study in terms of the caliber or the sophistication of the tools or lack thereof?

Weber: A number of what l call "old-fashioned" tools--phone, e-mail and particularly fax--bubbled up as being popular tools respondents preferred to use for certain tasks. This suggests that agents are ingrained to doing business a certain way. To some degree, carriers have to support that and accommodate agents who want to use those tools. But they should also think about ways to change their behavior. Agents should understand, for example, that shorter cycle times and less rework typically result from use of e-apps. Carriers can also provide direct incentives, such as paying higher commissions for business submitted electronically. Sometimes a carrot-and-stick approach to optimizing agent behavior works best.

Tinnirello: How do you measure the value and success when you implement a new tool or support an existing tool, and Is there any return on Investment that you can measure, or is it based on the amount of business that you're actually booking?

Scott: We use a number of metrics similar to a balanced scorecard approach. First and foremost, we want to get feedback from our agency population using the tools we've just implemented and make sure--through survey processes, agency council meetings and our own self-critical analysis--that the results obtained from them really deliver. It's a combination of our financial results, our activities--such as quotes submitted, applications processed and our online endorsement processing for personal lines--and then going back and performing formal surveys in terms of agency satisfaction, which is measured against both the satisfaction ratio and the importance factor of the components.

Cuozzo: The bottom line is use. If something is used, then obviously that's a boon for the tools. We've had proprietary and nonproprietary interfaces for several years so our agents can get quotes and issue business. Today, 99% of our business issued is done by agents. We take that as a vote of confidence for what we've delivered. We spend much time talking to agents about what they like and don't like, and when we deliver something new, we hold focus groups. When we're far enough along in the development process, we sit agents down and let them play with the tool to make sure we've done it right.

Tinnirello: Users of electronic interfaces tend to get comfortable with the tools and become proficient at them. After a while, getting them to replace those tools becomes somewhat of a hardship even if the new tools are better. Is this something you've encountered?

Tripathi: We must adopt and support multi-access points because agencies and producers are most comfortable working within their own environment. They have business they want to submit for quote, but they don't want to have to access the carrier's systems. We support multiple paths, a philosophy we've adopted as a result of our work with our Agency Technology Council. More than half of our personal lines agents come from their system into ours. They can do real-time rate quotes, endorsements and billing, and download various pieces of information. When they land in our portal, they can easily and seamlessly navigate through it and do transaction processing. If they come to our Web site directly--which we also strongly support--we monitor and track their usage on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. We're expanding our capabilities, and since we began the process, we've seen significant improvement in new account submissions through the portal. The proof in the pudding is seeing continuous enhancement and usage of those services.

Tinnirello: How do companies encourage producers to try new technologies that they're offering to improve producers' work flow?.

Scott: First is the introduction of the tools. We invest very heavily in a local presence. We have staff that go out to agencies and perform training on site, which is supplemented with various online tools such as video and Webinars. Also, our tool set is broad enough that we can adapt to an agent's work flow. For example, e-mail is a very practical part of our tool set. In many of our inquiry functions like claims we include a link to claim case handlers so they can click on the link and automatically go into an e-mail utility. We also rely on push technologies to inform agents of activities in their accounts, such as a pending cancellation or change in claim activity. We also operate service centers, and we have an agency-focused center that runs both as a help desk problem resolution and mini-training focus so producers can call into staff during normal business hours. We're expanding our service center capabilities so that we have capability of moving transaction processing in-house for agents. We assist them in focusing on the sales process with our proprietary sites for commercial lines quotes and personal lines quotes and also on using comparative rating tools and multicarrier sites.

Tinnirello: Are you often asked to customize or modify the tools that you provide to make work flow easier for your producers?

Cuozzo: We haven't had much of a call to change our systems for individual producers. We get into discussions about how they should be designed and try to get a consensus. Rather than individual modification of something we design, it's figuring out what third parties you may do business with. We try to support as many options, such as comparative raters and agency management systems, as we can on Web services so we can have the same information displayed on our end but also in a way that the agency is comfortable with.

Tinnirello: Do you think that producer tools now are basically all the same and that there's no real distinction between one organization's tools and another's, or do you think there is some technology leveraging that can be had in the type of tools for organizations' producers?

Tripathi: That kind of space continues to evolve, but from a carrier's point of view there's still much variation. Today, 40% of the marketplace is dominated by AMS, 40% by Applied and the other 20% by 20 other vendors of similar products. We have both Applied and AMS systems in house. That helps us to ensure that we have the appropriate integration points and structure in place to provide agents with the level of support they need when they come through their agency management system. We also have implemented a real-time account reservation process. If there's another producer submitting the same quote request, it's first-come, first-serve, which encourages them to take advantage of the capability to conduct business in real time. During that process, we allow them to attach a fax, e-mail or paper submission, and we electronically assemble all of the documents and present them to underwriters, if necessary. If producers are coming through our portal or an agency management system and provide most of the required information, we would quote them immediately. All of these paths are linked together.

Tinnirello: What are the differences between multicarrier tools and a proprietary interface, and what are the trade-offs of one versus the other?

Weber: There are clear advantages to supporting a multicarrier environment. Independent agents have choices and they like to exercise those choices by getting quotes from multiple carriers. Their main pet peeve is rekeying data. The benefit of proprietary systems is the ability to add a layer of richness of functionality and a level of relationship-building with agents that's not possible when you're trying to provide data in a standardized way. When agents need something particularly detailed or when they have a specific service request that doesn't fit nicely into the multicarrier model, they're going to seek out that functionality. If they find it in a single-carrier tool, perhaps by clicking through to carriers' Web sites via their agency management systems, that's an ideal solution and producers are willing to use that functionality wherever they find it.

Tinnirello: What would you recommend carriers do around producer tools?

Weber: They should support the multicarrier environment because that's important, but at the same time carriers need to build out support for a rich, single-carrier environment via their own portals. In doing that, they have to sweat the details because agents are keyed into efficiencies. They understand that how they do their business every day matters, and if they spend less time maneuvering around on Web sites, they're spending more time selling, which is their goal. Carriers have to leverage the kinds of tools that fit the everyday work patterns of agents. The most glaring omission for many people is support for e-mail and leveraging the fact that agents use email regularly for most things, and integrating that into some basic service operations that carriers provide via their Web sites.

Tinnirello: What are the biggest challenges that lie ahead for producer tools carriers now are using, and what's the next step?

Scott: We need to get to a place in technology and data standardization where we can truly impact the agent work flow in a positive way. It may be advantageous to get into more service-oriented architecture and some openforce-type software that won't tie agents or carriers to those specific technologies. Data standardization continues to promote what we're doing through ACORD or XML standards. It's important that we ensure that when an agent inputs information at a source, such as via our portal, their agency management systems or a multicarrier site, that it's done consistently. In returning those real-time quotes and using download of transactions back into the agency management system, we need to deliver the right data into the right data fields. It's a bit easier in proprietary sites, as we continue to develop sophisticated analytics, evaluate and broaden our appetite in various markets, and strengthen the capability to ask several up-front questions that move and facilitate the transaction through the business process. Each carrier asks questions differently or asks different questions. The challenge going forward will be ensuring that we stay in touch with our agent population and understand their data needs and the technologies they're using.

Tripathi: As carriers, we need to adopt, accept and create interfaces for the consumer technologies, such as email. mobile devices, etc.. that are becoming more pervasive in agency offices. We currently use XML interface. and we're facilitating more solution sets that allow interface with agency systems because that's their comfort zone We need to continually adopt and incorporate this evolving technology to make it easier for our agents to do business with us.

Cuozzo: We have all the XML gateways in place to take in requests and send back responses. The issue we need to keep abreast of is what things agents are going to be using over the next few years. We have to make choices as to where we spend our time using the openings we've created into our systems and what vendors are going to get us the most bang for the buck in terms of what agents want. That's the biggest challenge we face here. We have the tools and infrastructures in place, but we just need to know who we should be hooking up to. And as agents demand better front ends and functionality from vendors they do business with in a nonproprietary environment, we need to recognize who are the ones we need to talk to and deploy our resources there.

Learn More

Harleysville Insurance A.M. Best Company # 03916 Distribution: Independent agents

Liberty Mutual Agency Markets A.M. Best Company # 00060 (Liberty Mutual Insurance Cos.) Distribution: Direct, independent agents and brokers, captive agents

Travelers Personal Insurance Co. A.M. Best Company # 11020 Distribution: Independent agents, brokers

For ratings and other financial strength information about these companies, visit www.ambest.com.