The beginning of the 34th National Conference of the AMS Users Group in Nashville this month could mark the beginning of the end of a very challenging year for the association, which, like most entities, has seen revenue fall thanks to fallout from the economic crisis.
The biggest hit came due to decreased attendance at the group's conferences, as agencies looking to cut expenses in the face of falling premium volume due to a softening market and shrinking economy pull back on educational costs and travel.
AMSUG's outgoing president, James T. Armitage, said his group has overcome the problems caused by the economy by reducing its own costs and improving efficiency.
"We did what we could do," said Mr. Armitage, who is also a principal at Arroyo Insurance Services Inc., in Arcadia, Calif.
Today's organization is "doing a lot more with a lot less," he said, and acknowledged that while that can be tough on people, it has made AMSUG a "stronger and more nimble" organization than it was before.
He said the group has become "prudent" concerning expenses, and is realigning its expectations toward how it engages with its membership.
"We looked under every rock to see what we were doing, and made the best of it," working to make the organization even more efficient and effective despite the tough times, he noted.
Working with its committees and chapters, and partnering with Vertafore (the software developer of AMSUG products) helped further the training of members even though spending had to be cut. "They rallied to provide some meaningful education to our members," he said.
The board was downsized, relying more on liaisons to carry many of the functions board members had done in the past.
"We have spent a lot of time trying to strategize on how to do a better job on reaching our members outside of just an annual conference or a webinar," said Mr. Armitage. "We really concentrated on being more strategic and trying to look into the future and hopefully being more proactive than reactive. You get some curveballs you have to react to, but overall the group is being more proactive."
He gave a lot of credit to the organization's chief executive officer, Brady Polansky, who came on board just last year as AMSUG faced the growing challenges posed by the new economic realities. With a full year under his belt, Mr. Polansky gave the board support and helped focus its mission on what needed to done, according to Mr. Armitage.
"As result, as a board and leadership, we were less involved in the nitty-gritty of the organization and could focus on" future strategic issues, he said.
Another initiative the association has taken, something Mr. Armitage called a real strength for AMSUG, was to increase communication with Bothell, Wash.-based Vertafore, spending more time planning and developing. That has facilitated better understanding about where Vertafore is going with its product lines, and allowed the company a better understanding of its customer's needs.
That communication, observed Mr. Armitage, will have more impact on how the product will look in the future and give Vertafore a valuable resource for its own product development.
"Overall, we are probably a more transparent organization than we were in the past," said Mr. Armitage. "We are more united in what we are doing. The bottom line is that we are doing all we can to help our members be more efficient and more profitable, and allow them to do what they do best–to service their customers."
When he began his term, the theme of Mr. Armitage's tenure was "Dream, Dare and Do."
"We really challenged everyone to rethink and relook at everything for the future so that we would be a lot better overall as an organization and that would trickle down to our members," he said.
As he hands his post to the incoming president, Carl R. Schlotman III (president of CAI Insurance Agency Inc., in Cincinnati), Mr. Armitage believes his successor will be in a position to continue to lead the organization along the road to profitability, growth and efficiency.
Mr. Schlotman stressed that for the group, advocacy, education and networking will continue to be critical points. The group's efforts will primarily be concentrated at the grass-roots level, he noted, where he believes the real opportunities to influence growth of the association and industry lie.
"We need to really focus on making those kinds of opportunities available to the younger generation as they enter into the industry," Mr. Schlotman said.
He explained that the organization must gear all its resources to the goal of making assistance available to everyone so they may grow efficiently–whether that is accomplished through its chapters, e-community postings, or other electronic media.
The purpose, he said, is not just to help those in the AMSUG community, but also nonmembers in the Vertafore family who have yet to touched by the user group.
It is both an opportunity to help and to bring new members into the group, he added, noting that AMSUG will need to make use of all the new means of social media that are springing up.
The goal is simply to get more people to help each other, he explained, asserting there are plenty of opportunities currently for members to pose a question and get some advice from someone who resolved that same problem in the past.
It is not the theme for the year, but it is a mission of Mr. Schlotman to get more people to help each other.
"My big hope is to get people to reach out–to find someone they don't know and help," Mr. Schlotman said, focusing on building the AMSUG community and getting more people to join.
"I did not know anyone when I joined, but I didn't need to because everyone reached out to me, and that left a strong impression on me," he said.
Overall, according to Mr. Schlotman, the challenge will be to continue the mission that was laid down over the past few years. "Hopefully we can accomplish some good things," he added.
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