According to industry estimates, the small-business insurance market (those businesses with 50 or fewer employees) represents roughly $95 billion in potential premium—a huge lure for producers. In a traditional agency, however, an agent's sales process is both lengthy and costly: There are limited human and financial resources for relationship-building, account-selling and customer-retention efforts. 

When factoring in the investment of time and effort required, agents simply aren't able to make enough money in the small-commercial arena—and as a result, this market has been largely untapped, and small businesses remain underserved and underinsured. 

In 2009, SeaPass Solutions, a company that delivers automation solutions to the insurance marketplace, conducted a survey of 125 small-business owners to find out how effectively the insurance needs of this group were being served. The goal: to better understand how both business-process improvement and technology automation could help agencies and brokers turn a profit in the small-business market.