Achieving technological sophis-tication is a challenge that faces both carriers and agents, particularly when it comes to dealing with Web portals and the elusive real time. Both sides would like to attain a better working relationship, but neither is absolutely certain the other side has the right idea. Nowhere is that more true than with the fuzzy phrase ease of doing business.

Marilyn Norman, senior vice president of IT/operations for the Thomas Rutherfoord, Inc., agency, has looked at life from both sides of the industry. She has spent half her working career on the agency front and the other half toiling with carriers. "I know what it's like to be hamstrung with legacy systems and bandaging them together to make them work and deal with all the reinsurance and storm issues and distribution, particularly in a soft market," she says.

Norman realizes the relationship between carriers and agents can be painful. "Here's where it is difficult being on [the agency] side of the equation," she says. "Each carrier wants its own platform and its own portal to be easy. Unfortunately, each carrier has its own view of ease of doing business. [Carriers] may have made it easier for [themselves] to get material in or force material out, but they haven't done anything that is different for our side."