Since the birth of the commercial insurance business in the late 1600s when shippers, brokers, and underwriters gathered at Lloyd's Coffee House to the present day with brokers and underwriters gathering through the Web, effective networking has been an integral component to a successful sale and a satisfied client. Then as now, the expensive proposition of insuring business risk depended on the ability to establish trust, leverage expertise and relationships, and efficiently match risk to appetite.

In the modern world of commercial insurance, linking with the right people generally requires more effort than showing up at the local coffee shop, but the recent emergence of Web 2.0 technology offers an opportunity to make that vital personal interaction more efficient and effective. While social media seems like it would be an obvious fit for insurance, industry executives have been reluctant to fully embrace social networking technologies, fearing privacy and security risk, and lost productivity. Their concerns are justified, at least in part; but when developed specifically for the insurance vertical and supported with the proper controls and information access, social networking technologies offer an opportunity for more effective and productive business activities between brokers and carriers.

Those who regularly access popular social networking platforms such as Facebook and LinkedIn know that these sites provide a wealth of opportunities for connecting to people with shared interests and goals. They provide not only a virtual space that enables instantaneous communication across great distances, but they also supply users with a wealth of potentially valuable information and new contact opportunities. That characteristic openness can be good or bad depending on one's needs.

On the Lookout

Observers of technology's impact on culture have noted that social networking technologies have done nothing short of transforming not only personal interaction but also the concept of privacy. Sites such as Facebook not only encourage expression and communication but they create staggeringly broad opportunities for the sharing of information, whether voluntary or incidental.

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

These drawbacks raise significant concerns among insurance professionals, but they illustrate not that social networking technology has no role in the insurance workplace but rather that popular social networking platforms are designed with individuals and small groups in mind rather than insurance related enterprises, and they most often are geared toward recreation rather than use as a business tool to work toward well-defined, concrete objectives. Social networking helps facilitate conversation, but can also create distraction, adding to the proliferation and volume of disconnected data.

Socializing has always played an important role in the insurance workplace and the sales process, and successful businesses have understood how to maintain productivity by balancing a spirit of work and play. While the more purely recreational aspects of social networking platforms can help to release tension and foster bonding between teammates, what separates effective enterprise social networking from personal and recreational sites is a structure and information flow that facilitates productive interaction with a focus on business goals. In this regard, a distinction can be drawn between “social networks” designed for individual adoption and “collaborative networks” designed for the business enterprise.

Social networks are primarily directed to personal satisfaction and focus predominantly on one-to-one interactions, however many “friends” a user may accumulate. They are structured for personal communication, amusement and for activities and information gathering of a more social purpose — such as catching up with friends and relatives and locating like-minded people in order to discuss shared interests. Social networks produce no objective metrics of success, but succeed or fail based on a nebulous sense of satisfaction.

By contrast, enterprise collaborative networks apply the same concepts and technologies as social networks but are geared toward achieving identified goals through the interaction of specified individuals and groups—agents, brokers, and carriers. They provide opportunities to establish connections based on skills rather than personality, and they provide access to well-defined and secure sources of business information that is structured, archived and searchable. They can also track conversations to objectively measure participation and impact on the results of collaboration, driving excellence in performance.

Value for Commercial Lines

The value of collaborative networks in the commercial insurance space is their ability to facilitate communication and information exchange between parties in a fraction of the time required to do the same in the brick-and-mortar (or fairway-and-green) world. More traditional forms of networking, ranging from personal introductions, to golf games, telephone, and email, leave brokers with limited knowledge about opportunities and options.

Enterprise collaborative networking technology can enable the delivery of up-to-date information of the kind the broker deems most valuable. It helps brokers gather information more efficiently, leaving more time for high-value tasks such as analysis, decision-making and interaction with clients.

It must be stressed that the achievement of liberating highly qualified experts from the burden of low-value administrative tasks is only the baseline of what collaborative networking offers to the insurance enterprise. While the commercial insurance business has traditionally emphasized the value of individual effort, the underlying insight of collaborative networking is that teamwork leads to better outcomes.

Reliable Resources

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

Implementing collaborative networking technology begins with evaluating available solutions with regard to their control, security, and reusability capabilities. Vendors offer out-of-the box packages adaptable to any industry, but insurance-specific platforms can speed implementation and more reliably address compliance, privacy, and security concerns. Usability is paramount to adoption of collaborative networking platforms, so it is critical to choose a solution that provides a single interface to enable access to content and collaboration.

The challenges of adoption don't end with selecting the right solution. Establishing collaborative networking within an insurance organization is a transformational step, requiring commitment at the highest levels and buy-in from all users. Implementation must be driven from the top down, accompanied by a rigorous change management effort.

By communicating and demonstrating the value that collaborative networking has not only for the enterprise, but for individual team members, insurance organizations can liberate untapped energy and creativity, leading to significant gains in broker productivity and increased sales.

Todd L. Young is the president, CEO and co-founder of ProspX in Austin, Texas, a provider of enterprise search, networking, and sales collaboration software platforms for the commercial insurance industry. For more information, visit www.prospx.com or contact todd.young@prospx.com.

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Collaborative Networking for the Insurance Enterprise Goes Beyond Social Media

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