Since the birth of the commercial insurance business in the late1600s when shippers, brokers, and underwriters gathered at Lloyd'sCoffee House to the present day with brokers and underwritersgathering through the Web, effective networking has been anintegral component to a successful sale and a satisfied client.Then as now, the expensive proposition of insuring business riskdepended on the ability to establish trust, leverage expertise andrelationships, and efficiently match risk to appetite.

In the modern world of commercial insurance, linking with theright people generally requires more effort than showing up at thelocal coffee shop, but the recent emergence of Web 2.0 technologyoffers an opportunity to make that vital personal interaction moreefficient and effective. While social media seems like itwould be an obvious fit for insurance, industry executives havebeen reluctant to fully embrace social networking technologies,fearing privacy and security risk, and lost productivity. Theirconcerns are justified, at least in part; but when developedspecifically for the insurance vertical and supported with theproper controls and information access, social networkingtechnologies offer an opportunity for more effective and productivebusiness activities between brokers and carriers.

Those who regularly access popular social networking platformssuch as Facebook and LinkedIn know that these sites provide awealth of opportunities for connecting to people with sharedinterests and goals. They provide not only a virtual space thatenables instantaneous communication across great distances, butthey also supply users with a wealth of potentially valuableinformation and new contact opportunities. That characteristicopenness can be good or bad depending on one's needs.

On the Lookout

Observers of technology's impact on culture have noted thatsocial networking technologies have done nothing short oftransforming not only personal interaction but also the concept ofprivacy. Sites such as Facebook not only encourage expression andcommunication but they create staggeringly broad opportunities forthe sharing of information, whether voluntary or incidental.

On a private level, this raises interesting questions about themeaning of privacy; on the corporate level it creates seriousconcerns about regulatory compliance and liability. The temptationof social networking sites also presents potentially unlimitedopportunities for non-business related socializing or any number ofother activities other than what an employee is paid to do.

These drawbacks raise significant concerns among insuranceprofessionals, but they illustrate not that social networkingtechnology has no role in the insurance workplace but rather thatpopular social networking platforms are designed with individualsand small groups in mind rather than insurance related enterprises,and they most often are geared toward recreation rather than use asa business tool to work toward well-defined, concrete objectives.Social networking helps facilitate conversation, but can alsocreate distraction, adding to the proliferation and volume ofdisconnected data.

Socializing has always played an important role in the insuranceworkplace and the sales process, and successful businesses haveunderstood how to maintain productivity by balancing a spirit ofwork and play. While the more purely recreational aspects of socialnetworking platforms can help to release tension and foster bondingbetween teammates, what separates effective enterprise socialnetworking from personal and recreational sites is a structure andinformation flow that facilitates productive interaction with afocus on business goals. In this regard, a distinction can bedrawn between “social networks” designed for individual adoptionand “collaborative networks” designed for the businessenterprise.

Social networks are primarily directed to personal satisfactionand focus predominantly on one-to-one interactions, however many“friends” a user may accumulate. They are structured for personalcommunication, amusement and for activities and informationgathering of a more social purpose — such as catching up withfriends and relatives and locating like-minded people in order todiscuss shared interests. Social networks produce no objectivemetrics of success, but succeed or fail based on a nebulous senseof satisfaction.

By contrast, enterprise collaborative networks apply the sameconcepts and technologies as social networks but are geared towardachieving identified goals through the interaction of specifiedindividuals and groups—agents, brokers, and carriers. They provideopportunities to establish connections based on skills rather thanpersonality, and they provide access to well-defined and securesources of business information that is structured, archived andsearchable. They can also track conversations to objectivelymeasure participation and impact on the results of collaboration,driving excellence in performance.

Value for Commercial Lines

The value of collaborative networks in the commercial insurancespace is their ability to facilitate communication and informationexchange between parties in a fraction of the time required to dothe same in the brick-and-mortar (or fairway-and-green) world. Moretraditional forms of networking, ranging from personalintroductions, to golf games, telephone, and email, leave brokerswith limited knowledge about opportunities and options.

Enterprise collaborative networking technology can enable thedelivery of up-to-date information of the kind the broker deemsmost valuable. It helps brokers gather information moreefficiently, leaving more time for high-value tasks such asanalysis, decision-making and interaction with clients.

It must be stressed that the achievement of liberating highlyqualified experts from the burden of low-value administrative tasksis only the baseline of what collaborative networking offers to theinsurance enterprise. While the commercial insurance business hastraditionally emphasized the value of individual effort, theunderlying insight of collaborative networking is that teamworkleads to better outcomes.

Reliable Resources

Working by the axiom that “two heads are better than one,”collaborative networks can be configured to ensure that specialexpertise can enter the discussion quickly and efficiently andemerge as a reliable and reusable resource. In many traditionalsales organizations there is little incentive to share expertise,let alone make it readily available on an ongoing basis; but withincollaborative networks, tracking of participation and impactenables recognition of collaborative contribution, incentivizingcooperation and fostering the emergence of teamwork.

Implementing collaborative networking technology begins withevaluating available solutions with regard to their control,security, and reusability capabilities. Vendors offer out-of-thebox packages adaptable to any industry, but insurance-specificplatforms can speed implementation and more reliably addresscompliance, privacy, and security concerns. Usability is paramountto adoption of collaborative networking platforms, so it iscritical to choose a solution that provides a single interface toenable access to content and collaboration.

The challenges of adoption don't end with selecting the rightsolution. Establishing collaborative networking within an insuranceorganization is a transformational step, requiring commitment atthe highest levels and buy-in from all users. Implementation mustbe driven from the top down, accompanied by a rigorous changemanagement effort.

By communicating and demonstrating the value that collaborativenetworking has not only for the enterprise, but for individual teammembers, insurance organizations can liberate untapped energy andcreativity, leading to significant gains in broker productivity andincreased sales.

Todd L. Young is the president, CEO and co-founder of ProspXin Austin, Texas, a provider of enterprise search, networking, andsales collaboration software platforms for the commercial insuranceindustry. For more information, visit www.prospx.com orcontact [email protected].