Vendors of agency management systems are constantly upgradingtheir product lines with features intended to help users operatemore effectively and efficiently. Indeed, many vendors releaseupgrades several times a year.

To check out the latest wave of product improvements, werecently contacted seven major agency management system vendors.For most, a common theme was that they've taken steps to embracereal-time transactions and become more Web-oriented. Their commentsfollow.
AMS Services
(www.amsservices.com)
In the past year, AMS Services has invested significantly in the“connectivity” of all its products; that is, in clients' ability touse the systems to conduct transactions in real time withinsurance-company systems, said Bill Bunker, senior vice presidentof products and marketing. Such transactions include looking uppolicy information from an agency management system or obtainingquotes from the vendor's SETWrite comparative rating system. “We'veseen huge increases in the number of connectivitytransactions–about a 100% increase year over year,” he said. “Ifyou look at the transaction volume, we're executing well over400,000 a month.”
Such transactions take place over the vendor's TransactNOW product.“There's a new version of TransactNOW that came out earlier thisyear,” Bunker said. “It increased the speed at which (clients) canconnect to carriers, and it also focused on large agencies, tobetter manage their connectivity.” TransactNOW is integrated withthe vendor's agency management systems, Bunker said.
Charles Landau, AMS Services director of product management,provided an overview of enhancements made to the product line inthe past year:
AMS 360: Landau said the vendor overhauled therenewal-management functionality of AMS 360, its most popularagency management system, to make personal- or commercial-linesrenewals more automated and paperless. The system produces lists ofcustomers whose policies come up for renewal in the next 60 days–orwhatever intervals the agency specifies, he said. Managers can usethe new feature to assign expiring policies to specific employees,he said, and to monitor their interactions with clients leading upto policy renewal, to ensure the process stays on track.
Landau said the vendor also is introducing an applicationprogramming interface, or API, which he said could be thought of asa “software hook” that enables authorized clients or third partiesto pull certain information out of an agency management system'sdatabase–and in some cases to update the data. These external usersaccess the API, and subsequently the agency's database, via theagency's Web site.
Landau said AMS Services already had a package product, called“24/7,” that agencies can use to allow clients to do such things asself-issue certificates of insurance via the agencies' Web sites.“But if for some reason they want a custom implementation, theymight use the API,” he said. He added that the API also could beused to integrate the agency management system with other systems,such as BenefitPoint, an employee-benefits agency management systemavailable from an AMS Services sister company, or with “a suretybonding application, or a document-management application, or whathave you.” In the year ahead, Laudau added, AMS Services plans toadd more functionality to the API.
Laudau said the vendor also is enhancing AMS 360's integration withthe AMS Prevail Network, a group of premium finance vendors, tomake it easier for users to get multiple premium-financing quotesin real time.
AMS Sagitta: Landau said version 7.2 of Sagitta, thevendor's system for large agencies and brokerages, will soon bereleased. Several steps are being taken to eliminate redundant dataentry, he said, including an overhaul of the product's integrationwith Microsoft Word. The system's ability to use “e-forms,”including ACORD electronic forms, also will be upgraded, he said.In the second half of the year, the system's certificatefunctionality will be upgraded he said, and API-based, two-wayintegration with BenefitPoint will be introduced. Laudau saidPerformance Analyzer, a separately sold program for evaluating anagency's data in multiple ways, will be available to Sagitta userslater this year, first on the hosted version of its system and thenon the version for an agency's or brokerage's in-housenetwork.
AMS Prime: Laudau said the vendor expects to releaseversion 5.0 of Prime, its system for small agencies, shortly.Instead of using Paradox as a database, it will use MicrosoftAccess, he said, “a much more industry-mainstream application.” Anumber of enhancements also have been made to the product'sreporting capabilities, he said. Next, the vendor plans to create ahosted version of the system, he added, which currently isavailable only as a desktop application.
AMS SETWrite: Landau said AMS Services recently released aversion of SETWrite, its real-time comparative rating system, thatintegrates with ChoicePoint's Solutions at Quote product. After aSETWrite user enters a client's address on an application,Solutions at Quote will fill in vehicle identification numbers forany autos owned by people living at that residence, Laudau said.Those people, he added, could include drivers that the agencywasn't aware of, like an in-law that might have access to theclient's vehicles, enhancing the rater's usefulness as a front-lineunderwriting tool. AMS Producer Plus: Landau said thisproduct, formerly known as PS4 Plus, has been overhauled andrenamed. The product, he said, is a commercial-lines sales toolapplicable to hundreds of types of businesses. It can producecustomized exposure survey forms for use in gathering data forsubmissions and also can be used to create sales proposals, hesaid. Producers can run the Windows-based application in the fieldon laptop computers, he said, then synchronize it with a MicrosoftSQL Server database back at the agency. In the latter half of theyear, the vendor plans to improve the integration between ProducerPlus and AMS 360, Landau said, so the information producers enterinto the former product can easily be transferred to the agencymanagement systems, where other employees can use it.
Applied Systems Inc.
(www.appliedsystems.com)
In the current versions of its agency management systems, AppliedSystems is focusing on improving efficiency and enhancing service,according to Jeffrey D. Purdy, senior vice president of sales andmarketing. The vendor's systems are The Agency Manager (TAM), whichis designed for mainstream agencies; Vision, which is used byagencies and brokerages with complex needs; and DORIS, a productfor entry-level automation. Upgraded versions of all three productsare in beta testing now, Purdy said, with general releasesscheduled in August.
The current versions of TAM (8.0) and Vision (4.0) have abatch-scanning capability that enhances the document managementfunction already present in the systems, Purdy said. As CSRs orother employees receive documents, he said, they use the system tocreate a client-specific bar code for each document. All documentsthe agency receives can be fed en masse into a scanner. By readingthe bar codes, the agency management system automatically attacheseach document to the appropriate client file. Users pay noadditional fee for the batch-scanning enhancement, Purdysaid.
Both TAM and Vision are available as in-house or online (hosted)systems; DORIS is a hosted system. On the servers that host thesystems, the vendor has upgraded to Microsoft Outlook 2007 thisyear, Purdy said. Clients using the hosted systems get upgrades atno additional charge, he said, so they always operate on the mostcurrent system. Most new users opt for the online versions of thesystems, Purdy added. “In the case of TAM users, 92% of new clientsdo.”
Purdy said Applied Systems has developed new data conversiontechnology that makes it easier for users of one of the vendor'ssystems to upgrade to a different one, or for clients using othervendors' systems to switch to an Applied Systems model. “We'veadded what we call 'exception reporting capabilities,'” he said.Using this software, Applied Systems can convert a sample of aclient's files and create a report pointing out any problems in thedatabases–e.g., numeric characters in alpha fields–before theclient converts the entire database. Once clients have thisinformation, some pay to have their data cleaned up beforeconverting to their new systems, he said, while others deal withsuch irregularities after the conversion, knowing beforehand wherethe nonconforming data will be.
In the past year, Applied Systems launched its Disaster RecoveryService, Purdy said. All users of the vendor's online systemsalready have this service, since their data and programs aremaintained on servers away from client agencies. Now the vendoroffers DRS to customers with in-house systems, allowing them toreserve space on one of the vendor's data-center servers, fromwhere they can access their data following an incident.
Purdy said that customers who call Applied Systems for technicalsupport typically have to wait less than a minute to speak to atechnician. He added that the company has extended and enhanced itsuse of real-time chat for customer support. Customers can open a“chat” window, communicate with a technician, and often have theirissues resolved immediately. “About 20% of our 'requests forsupport' calls take the form of online chat,” Purdy said, addingthat clients who open up a chat window wait less than five seconds,on average, before communicating with a technician. The chatservice option is available for users of all three of the vendor'sagency management systems, he said.
Purdy said a new service is geared to agency networks or clustersin which one central agency holds contracts with insurers withwhich the rest of the agents or subagents place business. Thiscapability, called broker download, allows the download to be sentto the central agency (acting as the broker) as well as to theproducing agency who used the broker to write the business. Thiscapability also is useful for traditional wholesale brokers or MGAsusing one of the vendor's agency management systems, Purdy said.“The broker can offer this service to agents as a value-added,” hesaid. '”If you use me as your broker, I can get you a copy of yourdata, so you can get a download as well.'”
Lastly, Purdy said Applied Systems has introduced a producer-brokerreconciliation module for Vision, which is used by MGAs as well asby large retail agents and brokers. The module enables users toreconcile their broker statements with producer statements.
Choices Software
(www.freeacordforms.com)
Last fall Choices Software introduced “Web Client,” a browser-basedversion of its Agency Management Anywhere system. (The previousversion, “Smart Client,” remains available as a vendor-hosted orin-house system.) Dean Westover, president, said the vendor decidedto offer a browser-based version of the system because of thenature of business today.
“More and more people are traveling away from the office, and workvia Internet caf? or at the airport while on the road,” he said,and a browser-based system is ideal for them. Another advantage ofusing the online version, Westover said, is that first-time usersdon't have to spend an hour downloading the agency managementsoftware and then another couple of hours installing it. “We wantedto make it so that someone could come to our Web site and, within afew seconds, be actually using the product,” he said.
Web Client uses Ajax technology, which Westover said “is thehottest thing going right now.” In the past, programs that weredeveloped for use within a browser were sluggish, he said, becausethe browser and the vendor's remote server needed to constantlyinteract. Ajax, on the other hand, stores information locally in acache, he said, so the browser and remote server interact only whenthe cache needs to be reloaded. As a result, he said, users canrapidly switch screens and applications. The browser-based system“behaves more like a locally installed application,” he said. Theother big news at Choices Software, Westover said, is the recentrelease of Choices Real Time, a product that makes possible certainreal-time transactions between agencies and their insurancecompanies. By storing insurance company passwords and automaticallyinserting them, as well as client names and policy numbers, intransaction fields, the software streamlines repetitive inquirytasks, Westover said, saving CSRs 30 to 60 minutes a day. Theproduct gives users real-time access to three kinds of informationstored on carriers' computers: claims, billing and policy detail.He said the product will work with any company an agencyrepresents.
Westover said the same real-time capability is available with PDAClient, a free program for clients' hand-held personal dataassistants. Clients also can use their PDAs to enter data directlyinto Agency Management Anywhere, rather than put the data intotheir PDAs, then synchronize them with their agency managementsystem after they return to the office.
In addition to its agency management system, Choices Softwareoffers ACORD Forms Anywhere, a product that gives users access tothe latest version of all ACORD forms. The online version isavailable for $99 per user per year. The locally installed versionis available for a one-time charge of $500, plus $10 per user permonth. The cost for the online Agency Management Anywhere system is$150 per user per year. The locally installed version is availablefor a one-time charge of $500, plus $15 per user per month. Theadditional charge for Choices Real Time is $39.95 per user peryear. Custom pricing is available.
Ebix Inc.
(www.ebix.com)
Last year, Ebix released Client Manager for their EbixASP product,a module that gives users a comprehensive yet streamlined way toaccess information and perform related tasks. Michael Herron,director of product management, said the next release, which isscheduled for next month, will include Policy Manager, a sub-frameof Client Manager, that will give users access to an account'spolicy information. On one screen, he said, users will be able toaccess everything they need to perform any transaction related to agiven client and his or her policies; e.g., ordering endorsements,creating ACORD forms or auto ID cards, or issuing binders orcertificates.
As with the development of Client Manager, the vendor has beencoordinating with the Affiliated Network of Ebix Users as itfine-tunes Policy Manager, Herron said. “It makes navigation a lotmore user-friendly, from the CSR processing standpoint,” Herronsaid. “We've had a lot of positive feedback from the (ANEU)product-development committee.”
An upgrade made in the past year enables users to downloadcommission statements from their carriers, Herron said. Users whodon't get commission statements electronically can put them inExcel spreadsheets and import them that way, he said. As a thirdoption, users also can enter such data manually on a screen thevendor created that looks like a spreadsheet, he said. For ratingpurposes, EbixASP now integrates with EasyLink, a third-partyvendor, he added.
Graham Prior, senior vice president of agency management systems,said EbixASP can be purchased as either a vendor-hosted system oras an in-house system. “And we also do quite a lot of what we call'custom development feeds' for clients,” he said.
Herron said that MGAs using the system often ask for suchcustomization. “The system allows them to build their ownuser-defined screens for capturing data,” he said. The vendor alsoassists MGAs with the creation of forms that aren't in ACORD formator otherwise standardized. “MGAs may want to issue their ownpolicies or issue their own forms,” he said. “If they can't providethem to us in electronic format, we will convert their forms andmap them for them as custom projects.”
Prior said that in the past year, Ebix carried out a significantupgrade to its hosting environment. The upgrades significantlyimproved response times for users, he said, and also improved thereliability of the system. “We have more redundancy now,” hesaid.
QuickFile Agency Management System
(www.quickfile.net)
A move into real-time transactions is among the latest developmentsat QuickFile, according to Mark Malis, president. Malis said thevendor has been testing a link to the IVANS Transformation Stationthat will enable QuickFile users to conduct real-time transactionswith their insurers via the facility. He said he expects the optionto become available this month. Interested users will have to asktheir carriers, as well as the vendor, to enable the function.“Then it's ready immediately,” Malis said. “It's already built intothe software, so it's basically a matter of flipping aswitch.”
Malis said the real-time capability will be available to users atno additional charge, at least through the end of this year.Eventually, users will pay extra, he said, “but I wouldn't expect ahuge increase in cost.” He added that QuickFile users also willhave the option to decline the feature.
Malis said the vendor also has added security features to itsagency management system. For example, once clients' SocialSecurity numbers or federal employer identification numbers areentered into the system, they are available only to employeesauthorized to access them. Malis said a new “activity screen”enables users to view an interactive history for each client file,as well as to open policies, letters and other documents attachedto the file. He said an upcoming system enhancement will be a “datawizard” that will enable users to transfer information theypreviously entered into any ACORD form to any additional ACORDforms, thus saving them time.
The vendor has enhanced the system's “Rolodex” feature, which Malisdescribed as a simplified contact management program that also canbe used to print letters and labels. He said it can accommodate anunlimited number of contacts per insurance company, as well aslinks to carriers' Web sites. “People who go in and out ofQuickFile all day said they wished that they could always have theRolodex open,” he said. “So we turned the Rolodex into afreestanding application. Now it shows up as an icon in theirsystem tray, next to their clock.”
A couple of years ago, QuickFile launched the Enterprise version ofits agency management system, which Malis said enables users tokeep their data on the vendors' servers, rather than in-house. Now,he said, the vendor has started work on a Web-based version ofEnterprise that will let users move to a completely online system,where the vendor also will host and maintain the agency managementsystem's programs. He said the online system will be integratedwith a Web-based version of QuickQuote, the vendor's comparativerating system. Malis said the move will give users a “thirdalternative” that may eventually replace one of the others.
Malis said QuickFile doubled the size of its training department inthe past year. The vendor has a toll-free customer service number,he said, and has recently added live “chat” capability, accessiblefrom the vendor's Web site or within the agency management system.“You can just click a button and ask a question,” he said. As a newoption, the vendor is offering in-agency training, Malis said,adding that it also offers unlimited training via telephone, aswell as videos, a manual, online help and a monthlynewsletter.
Malis described QuickFile's core users as small and midsizeagencies. The in-house version of the system operates only on theWindows platform and supports all versions from Windows 98 forward,he said, including Vista, the latest incarnation of Windows. Thebasic charge for the system is $679, he said, withoptions-including Enterprise-available at additional cost.
Strategic Insurance Software Inc.
(www.sisware.com)
Earlier this year, Strategic Insurance Software launched PartnerXE, an agency management system that has been in development forthe past couple of years. It is the first SIS system to give usersthe option of having their data and programs hosted by the vendor.At the time we contacted him, Mark Miller, the vendor's chiefoperating officer, said that all clients who had upgraded to thenew system had taken that online option.
Among the new system's features are a document-management modulethat supports “paperless” operations, Miller said, as well as afully integrated accounting module that's available as an option.“We've organized it (the system) around what agents need to do togrow their business,” Miller said, adding that additional featuresare planned for upcoming releases, including expanded marketingcapabilities; e.g., in-depth campaign management.
Another upgrade planned for Partner XE users in 2008 is the abilityto conduct real-time transactions with insurers via IVANSTransformation Station, Miller said. More than 80 insurers conductvarious types of commercial-lines and personal-lines transactionswith agencies via the facility. “We've kept our eye onTransformation Station,” he said. “As it got to a critical mass, weknew it was time for us to move with it.”
At the moment, Partner XE users can conduct Web-based transactions,some in real time, with about a dozen carriers via the vendor'sWebLink and UpLink services, Miller said. SIS will continue tooffer those services, which are free to both agents and companies,even after Partner XE users gain access to Transformation Station.Miller said a number of insurers have used WebLink to “test thewaters” of real-time transactions. “Once you commit toTransformation Station as a carrier, you're really committing a lotof dollars and time,” he said.
Miller said Strategic Insurance Software has joined the MicrosoftInsurance Value Chain, a group of independent software vendorscommitted to standards-based integration of products throughout theinsurance industry. “I think it sends a good message to our users,”Miller said, who added that SIS also works with other suchstandards-supporting groups as ACORD, the Agents Council forTechnology (ACT) and the ACORD-User Groups Information Exchange(AUGIE).
Miller said about 700 agencies use the vendor's agency managementsystems, which include SEMCI Partner as well as Partner XE. Thetypical cost of a system is between $55 and $65 per month per user,he said, not including the cost of initial databaseconversions.
XDimensional Technologies Inc.
(www.xdti.com)
The latest version of XDimensional's Nexsure agency managementsystem, v. 1.9.2, came out at the beginning of the year, said BobJuracka, president. He said it enables users to conduct more typesof electronic data exchanges with more insurers than did previousmodels.
“We're downloading with more than 140 carriers now,” he said. Therange of available downloads varies by insurer, he said. “Ourclients are most excited about the direct-bill statement download,”he said.
This year the vendor is expanding its system's real-timecapabilities, Juracka said, which will enable users, withoutleaving the Nexsure system, to connect with carriers' systems toinquire about the status of customer invoices or endorsements,submit businesses, etc. “We have real time with Hartford in smallcommercial, middle-market commercial and personal lines,” Jurackasaid, “and we have CNA in testing now for their commercial-linessubmission in real time.” Besides those two, other insurers arestarting to express interest, he said.
Getting more carriers to offer real-time capability to Nexsureusers has been “a chicken-and-egg proposition,” Juracka said, withsupply from insurers awaiting demand from users, and vice versa.Nexsure's users tend to be regional, national and multinationalbrokers who historically have focused on large commercial accounts,where real time perhaps isn't as big an issue as it is for smalleraccounts. In April, however, Aon Corp. began using Nexsure for itssmall- and middle-market commercial operations. That ratchet-ed upinsurer interest in real time via Nexsure, Juracka said.
Juracka said XDTI has just released its first “EAI” (EnterpriseApplication Integration) capability for Nexsure. It enablesdisparate employees within an enterprise “to interact with theNexsure database very intimately,” Juracka said. (He defined anenterprise as one of the 10 to 20 largest insurance brokers, “whichhave hundreds, if not thousands, of users.”) For instance, in anenterprise with both bank and insurance operations, Juracka said,people on the banking side could use the EAI to access the Nexsuredatabase and view a common customer's coverages on the insuranceside. An inquiry also could go from the insurance side to thebanking side, since the EAI is bi-directional, he said. Another usefor the EAI would be to enable an enterprise's corporate generalledger to seamlessly and securely communicate with the Nexsuresystem's insurance accounting program, he said. “We've never openedup that sort of capability because we're exclusively a hostedapplication,” Juracka said, “but that's been something thatEnterprise clients have truly had a desire to do.”
Juracka said XDTI is revamping the Web-accessible interface thatinsurance customers use to self-issue certificates of insurance,verify coverage status, etc. Until now, those clients wereconfronted by a “watered-down” version of the broker's userinterface, he said. With the release of version 1.9.3 of thesystem, due out later this summer, the interface will be more“client-friendly,” he said.