David vs. Insurance Goliaths
One small carrier stretched the capabilities of its system to match larger competitors functionality and offer independent agents instant messaging with its underwriters.
It may not seem like such a long time ago, but in 1998, when Rob Shoenfelt joined Celina Insurance Group, the Ohio-based carrier did not have e-mail and his new bosses told him they were waiting to see what this Web thing would do to the industry. As senior vice president and CIO, Shoenfelt says, The challenges we faced were to use technology to work with our independent agents and also to compete with companies that are significantly larger than us. We had to do something rapidly, and it had to be something easy to use.
Celina might have been one of the first insurers to have its own Web site, dating it back to 1995, Shoenfelt points out. But for years, the site had just one feature: a picture of Celinas home office. It was a beautiful picture of the building, he affirms.
Celina did have a Notes server, a Web server, and a back-end DB2 database and linked the three pieces together. Things started simply with policy inquiry for the agents. That expanded to a payment option and then the ability to change policies. Lotus Notes is used to serve up the pages, explains Shoenfelt. It runs the bulk of our Web site. The home page is HTML, but once you get behind the wall, Notes is used to authenticate all the users and dictate functionality and menu choices. As weve progressed, its not pure Notes. Theres a lot of Java script involved, so its not just right out of the box. Were pushing the product hard.
Celina has taken the policy inquiry function a step further. When agents are looking at a policy online, they see the name of the Celina underwriter and can double click on the name to do an instant chat with the underwriter, according to Shoenfelt. This is all a part of the overall Celina effort to become easy for agents to do business with. If were not easy to do business with, our agents wont use us, says Shoenfelt. We put a few things out there that werent easy enough to use, and [the agents] just didnt use them. We learned pretty quickly to take the pulse of the agents, get their feedback, and make sure its something they want and is easy to use. If theres a path of least resistance, [the agents] are going to take it.
One of the things that didnt work well was the ability to report auto claims online. The Celina developer sat down with claims staff and automated the claims form, but the option did not get much use by the agents. We had a few beta agents, and they tried it once and said it was way too hard, says Shoenfelt. The carrier went back to work and prefilled the customer and policy information, and that was all that was needed to gain acceptance by the agents. Even though the developer did exactly what he was asked to do, it wasnt easy enough for the agents to use, he says.
Celina has two advisory councilsone is made up of agents and one of customer service representatives (CSRs). The CSR group has been helpful in pointing out to the Celina IT staff what works and what doesnt. The CSRs helped us define what functionality we need to have and how that functionality should work, says Shoenfelt. Thats been a critical piece to what we are doing.
As a small carrier, Celina believes it is important to extend its legacy system as far as possible. Wed certainly love to build a purely object-oriented back-end system with a perfectly normalized database, says Shoenfelt. But being a small company, that is a pretty tough thing for us to do. Our back-end system works, so why replace it if we dont have to.
What is tough is hearing from agents who tell the carrier what competitors are doing to connect with their agencies. We hear, Well, those guys do it, why cant you? Those guys the agents are referring to might do $20 billion in business, but the agents expect the same from us, says Shoenfelt. Were smaller and more nimble. We were able to put the chat piece out there without going through bureaucracy. The disadvantage for us is we dont have the resources. Weve seen competitors with no Web presence at all surpass us. They can take all the ideas out there and just buy their way past you. Thats the challenge of working in a small organization. ROBERT REGIS HYLE
Case File
THE PROBLEM
Carrier has to keep agents happy while competing with huge competitors.
THE CARRIER
Celina Insurance Group
Web Site: www.celinagroup.com
Direct Written Premium: $60 million
THE SOLUTION
Lotus Notes from IBM
Web Site: www.ibm.com
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