Tech Closes Generation Gap At One Iowa Agency

Some experienced agents may see the younger generation as a resource to fulfill their perpetuation plans, but one Iowa agent teamed with his younger colleagues to improve the agencys technology edge and make the agency operation more efficient.

Brian Anderson, president of Knapp-Tedesco Insurance Agency Inc. in Ames, Iowa, said that he and others in the agency had an ongoing discussion about going paperless for some time. Knapp-Tedesco is a 13-member property-casualty agency that dates back to 1926, with total revenue of $1.1 million, and with 30 percent of its business coming from its employee benefits division.

Half of the agency is over the age of 40 and the other half under 40, which is important when talking about technology, Mr. Anderson noted. Those under 40, he noted, are far more comfortable with technology than the over-40 crowd that he admits being a part of. Despite this impediment, Mr. Anderson said his agency likes “to stay on top and have all the newest equipment, from a computer standpoint.”

Because the agency is inundated with paperwork, Mr. Anderson said he had held many discussions with his staff, primarily Valeri Sands, commercial producer, and Pam Nicola, information technology systems manager, about one day going paperless.

Around February of 2001, Mr. Anderson explained, a decision was made that if the agency were going to upgrade its system, it should make the leap of faith and go paperless.

The agency had a few things going for it to make the transition a little easier. Already on hand was a “duplexler,” a Sharp AR-P450 duplicating machine capable of copying 30-page documents directly to an electronic file. With a change of code, said Ms. Nicola, the machine that sat idle because no one got it to work became an important component in the push to modernize the agency.

Next came the upgrade of the workstations. Ms. Nicola custom built 14 computers [a 15^th is in works], containing a 950 MHZ AMD Athlon Processor, 256 MB of Ram, and a 20GB (gigabyte) hard-drive. Each runs on Windows 98 and is connected to DSL. There is also an HP Scanjet 2200c scanner for small jobs.

Pulling the system together is Applied Systems version 7.0, allowing the forms to be scanned, filed and recorded. The system also allows the agency to send faxes via the Internet.

The cost of putting the system together was cut by half of retail, to about $8,000, said Mr. Anderson, and the current system should be good for another four to five years.

Another technology advancement for the agency was wireless phone headsets. The phones make it easier to deal with customers and continue with processing work into the computer, they said.

After a three-month trial period, from October 2001 to January 2002, and numerous meetings on inputting information, the agency took the leap.

In the time since the agency has gone paperless, Mr. Anderson said, they have not lost a single client file. He credits Ms. Sands and Ms. Nicola for the success of the system.

They attribute the efficiency to the practice of scanning all paper work that comes into the office and immediately saving it to a customers electronic file. Also, all client transactions are saved under the clients file.

If someone wants a paper document, it can be printed out, but as soon as he or she returns to the office, the information is recorded and the paper goes in the garbage. This is also done with any other transactions that take place with a client.

Overall, the story involves not only the successful adaptation of technology to make the office more efficient, but also the embrace of technology by an older generation and how they learned from the younger generation.

“When we first started, the older generation [in the agency] was a little iffy about it, a little wishy-washy, but when they saw how much easier it isthere was a real sense of gratification,” observed Ms. Sands.

“I think everyone feels pretty much the same way, even the older people, they wouldnt go back to the old ways for anything. I think everyone is really happy,” added Ms. Nicola.

One thing the agency did that benefited this process was to set a mandatory date to go paperless. Setting the date has two benefits, they saideveryone is doing the same function at the same time, and it helps to eliminate E&O claims.

“You cant do this little by little because you cant leave yourself hanging out there for an E&O claim,” said Ms. Sands. She explained that their electronic filing system date and time stamps all entries, helping to defend against such claims.

Knapp-Tedesco has both commercial and personal lines customers in their system, and is planning to incorporate its employee benefit business, including its life group, shortly. They anticipate that this end of the business will be up and running in the beginning of January.

Going paperless is the wave of the future, Ms. Sands observed. More and more companies are going in that direction, and she predicted agencies that wait will only find themselves incurring enormous expense in an effort to catch up.

The real problem for those older agents who have not gotten onto the technology bandwagon, pointed out Mr. Anderson, is that they have become too comfortable with the way they do business and dont want to change.

“You look at an insurance agencythe average age is over 50, they make a good living, theyre fat, theyre comfortable, and they dont have too many young people in the business like I do,” noted Mr. Anderson. “Agents are old and they dont want to change. Theyre making a damn good living shuffling paper and they dont want to change.”

“Even if you do have younger people in an agency, they dont have the say in making changes like this, and this is a dramatic change in an agency,” Ms. Sands said.

It also helps, she noted, when executives in the agency, like Mr. Anderson, want to remain on the cutting edge of technology.

Agents looking for advice to make the leap forward can contact either Ms. Nicola at pam@knapptedesco.com or Ms. Sands at val@knapptedesco.com.

Reproduced from National Underwriter Property & Casualty/Risk & Benefits Management Edition, December 30, 2002. Copyright 2002 by The National Underwriter Company in the serial publication. All rights reserved.Copyright in this article as an independent work may be held by the author.

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Tech Closes Generation Gap At One Iowa Agency

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