Phil Maxwell's List: Agency Technology

• The agency management system is the heart of an agent's operating environment.
• Younger workers will demand technology commensurate with their personal lives
• A single view of the customer is an imperative for both the agent

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• The  term "signature" has long been understood as including "any symbol executed  or adopted by a party with present intention to authenticate a writing."
• • What are the benefits? Agencies should identify all the benefits of automating program transactions and making those transactions secure, such as:
    

  (1) Increased speed of the transaction. The partner and the agency may spend less time completing the transaction. The quicker speed combined with putting the transaction online allows real-time help to the transaction partner, providing a benefit not found in a paper based transaction.

    

  (2) Increased partner participation and customer satisfaction. Often a decrease in partner transaction costs leads to more partners completing the transaction. In addition, partners tend to have a more positive view of the process given its speed and ease of use.

    

  (3) Improved record keeping efficiency and data analysis opportunities. If data are easier to access and store then they can enhance program evaluation and expand awareness of the effects of the government program in question.

    

  (4) Increased employee productivity and improved quality of the final product. Electronic transactions tend to have fewer errors because often the system minimizes retyping and automatically detects certain errors. These benefits allow the employees to concentrate more time on other matters.

    

  (5) Greater information benefits to the public. Moving to electronic transactions and electronic signatures often can make the related information more accessible to the public and Freedom of Information Act requests.

    

  (6) Improved security. Designed, implemented, and managed properly, electronic transactions can have fewer opportunities for fraud and more robust security measures than paper and envelope transactions.

    

  (7) Extensive security for highly sensitive information. Even though implementing a more secure electronic signature option often is more expensive initially than implementing less secure alternatives, there could be larger expected benefits if the information being protected is particularly sensitive.
• This electronic process resulted in efficiencies and savings to the government of approximately $1,500,000 in time previously required to process paperwork.
• Section 7. What are current electronic signature technologies?

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• And you can decide to act based on the fear that someone with a poor notion of what the law is might make your life harder, or you can make your life easier now and deal with the senseless people later.

• Document360

• AMS TransactNOW
  

• Insurance specific document management
  

• We recently moved from Nexsure to AMS 360. I can state with confidence that this is one of the decisions that will absolutely affect the productivity and profitability of the agency.  
   
  I do not intend to discourage you from Nexsure, but to pass on some advice to do your research and due diligence of both products in depth. We took a look at the feature set of Nexsure at face value and believe we would have made a different choice had we done more homework up front. This is based in part on the specific needs of our agency and other agencies with different needs might choose differently. 
   
  I would very highly recommend visiting with agencies of similar LOB's and size (both staff and premium) of each product and spend time sitting with the users. Look at the workflow to complete task that are common to the LOB's you sell.  
   
  You will find users who love or hate either product. We had a bad experience with Nexsure and love AMS 360. I am sure that the reverse might be true with other users. 
   
  AMS set us up with a test agency prior to our final decision so that we could test specific workflows that we had issues with which was very helpful. I do not know if Nexsure will do this. 
   
  The people at both vender's are excellent. We do notice that the AMS support issues are more related to "How do I do this" versus our experience with Nexsure of "This does not work."  
   
  Both vendors are improving their product continually. AMS seems to have a more mature product in a lot of ways, however, Nexsure also has areas that are innovative. 
   
  Best of luck in your decision. Make it carefully. 
  Charles

• Hello,
  Ours is another agency that used to be with AMS (Prime), but is now with DORIS. I agree with another poster that the AMS360 is the ams version of Applied System's TAM. Nice, and it's pricey.
  Comparing the two is a bit like comparing a Ford Ranger with a Ford F250 Pick-up truck. Neither one deserves to be insulted....both are very good at what they do. The better question is: What exactly do you need? Do you need all the bells and whistles? If so, I'd recommend you bite the bullet and get the bigger system. From our perspective, we liked the "LESS IS MORE" approach.
  One suggestion I would make is to visit an agency that has the AMS360 and then visit an agency that has DORIS. Compare.
  Good luck.