Making business partners happy has become a requirement in todays business world. The Hartford Fidelity and Bonding felt it needed to improve its relationship with brokerage firm Aon Surety if business was to grow, and Russell Vance, director of business development for the bond unit of The Hartford, knew that meant seamlessly linking the Web sites for each company.
We had our 1StepSurety system in place, and Aon was already utilizing it, but at the same time [the brokerage] was also using AonBondLink, says Vance. Aon didnt want to run concurrent systems.
But it needed to utilize The Hartfords underwriting platform and still maintain client records in AonBondLink. Thats when we started talking about getting these Web-based applications to speak to each other and allow the user to utilize 1Step and BondLink seamlessly at the same time, Vance says.
The Hartford had the technical talent in-house to pull it off on its end, and Aon turned to Blackwell Consulting Services for its end. Weve been working with Blackwell for close to five years, says Geoff Heekin, managing director of Aon Surety. It has been a critical partner to us in bringing our surety automation system to the point it is today.
Al Nasti, software engineering manager for The Hartford unit, says the key was to get the information into The Hartfords system and then get the data back into Aons system so Aon could record the information it needed for its clients. They decided to use the ACORD XML standards for B-to-B communication. Aon runs on a Microsoft platform, and The Hartford has a JAVA platform, according to Greg Siefert, Black-wells director of Microsoft solutions. The ACORD XML standard was able to integrate the two platforms together seamlessly, he says.
Nasti says transactions are done in real time. The users book a bond on 1Step. An XML transaction is sent to BondLink, and then BondLink lets 1Step know it has received the transaction, he says.
Vance says one of the issues that had to be addressed was the difference in the type of customer information required by a surety company and by a broker. Were more underwriting, whereas an agent or broker is client driven, he says. We adapted some of our informational flows to help agents/brokers better populate their system. We acquired some information we would generally not require that would help agents/ brokers understand their client.
Nasti says Aon had a concept of a client and a client ID, and The Hartford did not have that same concept within its architecture. It required Blackwell and us to come up with a creative solution that would satisfy the requirements BondLink has, he says.
Heekin says the association with The Hartford is good for Aon. Its commitment to technology married well with ours as well as its commitment to this particular market segment, he says. Its a significant market segment representing 35 percent of the marketplace. Its a highly distributed segment. There are a lot of people trying to pursue that 35 percent. The Hartford understands the segment as well or better than anyone.
Seeing how Aon operates brought a message to The Hartford. Aon was looking at account relationships, whereas The Hartford was looking at bond relationships, says Vance. This project drove us toward taking a look at account relationships. We want to work more with our agents and brokers on an account relationship.
Vance says this project fit in nicely with The Hartfords corporate goal to improve relationships with agents and brokers. It drove us to deliver a message back to our underwriting team that we need to start looking at customer relationships from all bond relationships versus a single transaction relationship. Robert Regis Hyle
Case File
The Problem: Creating a seamless connection between a broker and a carrier.
The carrier: The Hartford Fidelity and Bonding
Web site:www.1stepsurety.com
The broker: Aon Surety
Web site:www.aonbondlink.com
The consultant: Blackwell Consulting Services
Web site:www.bcsinc.com
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