INSURERS PUT NEW PRODUCTS TO THETESTIMPLEMENTATION.

Product: SEMCI Partner
Web Site: www.sisware.com

The newest feature to SEMCI Partner is WebLink, which isdesigned to save time for agencies and to increase the efficiencyof each transaction between agencies and their carriers, such asGrange Insurance. In addition, Grange has developed its ownWeb-based policy quoting, issuance, and servicing bridge forpersonal, commercial, and life insurance. Strategic InsuranceSoftware (SIS) allows carriers and agencies using SEMCI Partner tomanage passwords for all employees at each company and then sendthese passwords behind the scenes to make a seamless transitionfrom SEMCI Partner to the carrier site. WebLink takes the agencydirectly to the carrier site in real time without added burdens.The security of the carrier site is maintained throughout theprocess and never leaves the hands of the authorized individual.Grange believes the added features and their own bridge willimprove SEMCI and make it easier for independent agents to dobusiness with Grange.

We recognized right upfront we had two types of agents we had towork with, says Charlie Carter, vice president and CIO at Grange.One type of agent had an agency management system, was dependent on[that system], and didnt want to reenter the data directly into theGrange system.

Other agents primarily operated their office without an agencymanagement system. We already had developed a system for the agentswho did not have management systems, and that was a product calledGAINWeb, our Web-based system that does quoting, issuing, andpolicy maintenance over the Internet, explains Carter. A largegroup of our agents had management systems, and those agents wantedto do all their work out of the management system. Thats whatstarted the bridge process.
Grange began developing the bridge in 2004. Total development tookapproximately nine months to complete, including testing andimplementation. The Grange development team consisted of fivepeopletwo developers and three testers.

The system supports the quoting, issuing, and policy changesthat the agents have. It helps them manage their book of businessby providing a seamless interface between the management system andthe Grange system, notes Carter. He adds the bridge works with allthe major agency management systems and with all the comparativerating systems. The one thing that makes it stand out is we notonly do the quoting and the issuing of new business, but we also dopolicy changes by way of this bridge, which has been a realbreakthrough for us because thats the vast majority of transactionswe do today, he says.

Grange plans to expand the bridge to offer additional items,including first notice of loss. Were also looking at an alertsystem that will work through this bridge process, continuesCarter. The agents have the ability to do their quotes and policymanagement and in addition, through the bridge system, can do anykind of inquiry process. For example, if they are looking at apolicy on their AMS management system, they can hit one key and geta complete policy statusupdate, billing, payment historydirectlyout of our system with one keystroke.
SIS creates a unique, encrypted Web-Link setup for carriers to bedistributed to their agencies. With one click from SEMCI Partner,users are able to see whether clients checks were received on theirpolicies or submit an endorsement request. The list of featuresgrows as carriers add functionality to their Web sites.

Many of the Grange agents use the SIS system, so when thecarrier developed the bridge, Carter says the plan was to interfacewith SIS and any of the management systems. Today we work withApplied through Transformation Station, and we work with AMS andSIS directly over the Internet, he says. Interfacing with themanagement systems is different but not difficult. They each have adifferent mouse-click or a drop-down menu that initiates thebridging.

Carter reports Granges previous method of transferring datathrough agency management system batch upload had a new-businesserror rate of 30 percent. The error rate was high because we couldnot edit the input at the desktop point of entry, he states. Now,with our new bridging solution, our new-business error rate is lessthan 0.5 percent because of our real-time desktop editcapabilities.

The reason agents like the Grange bridge and the carriers otherWeb-based products, Carter believes, is because Grange uses anagent-centric design approach. That means we went out and talked tothe agents, he says. We formed focus groups and discovered therewere really three distinct audiences we were looking at when wewent into this development phase. We looked at the owners of theagency principals as being one audience group, we looked at theproducer as the second group, and finally we looked at the CSR.They each had a different need, and we looked at each of thoseneeds and tried to address them in the products we produced andmade available to them under our Grange Agentware umbrella.