NetVU Chairman Outlines Growth Strategy

He said it is through discussions with fellow agents who have made improvements and solved technology issues that individual producers have grown and improved their business, helping to underscore the benefits of association membership.

"When people talk, good things happen," noted Mr. Schlotman, adding that there is more creativity that takes place when people work together than alone on technology issues.

He called the grassroots membership of NetVU the most important component of the association, and he urged members to do more to share knowledge by attending conferences or bringing new people into the association.

In an interview with National Underwriter, Mr. Schlotman (who is president of CAI Insurance Agency Inc. in Cincinnati) said that getting to that grassroots level will mean concentrating on the reinvigoration of the association's chapters over the next three years.

This effort, he said, means giving the association's 40 chapters a set of goals and tools to make them more effective and to become the centerpiece of the association's education drive.

Mr. Schlotman would like to see the growth of more chapters, he said, adding that there are plans to open three to four more chapters soon.

For the interview, Mr. Schlotman was joined by James T. Armitage, immediate past-president and principal of Arroyo Insurance Services in Arcadia, Calif., and Brady Polansky, chief executive officer of NetVU.

Mr. Armitage said the grassroots effort includes the association's internal social network E-community where agents share ideas and issues and is a resource for a wealth of information. The association is working to improve this online system to make it "faster and more robust" for users, he said.

The association also plans to take advantage of its power users, those users that have a high level of knowledge about Vertafore products, by holding a meeting this fall with them to develop future strategies for improvement for other users.

There will be an increased emphasis on the use of best practices, said Mr. Polansky, alluding to the Reagan Consulting peer comparison study of successful agencies and brokers, for agencies to take those insights and improve their bottom line and overall efficiency.

Utilizing best practices will also be a component of developing technology solutions with Vertafore in the future, noted Mr. Schlotman, as the focus will be to develop agency efficiency and productivity and not concentrate on software mechanics.

The long-term challenge, he said, is to get "the tools out there to get more efficiency and offer the greatest opportunity for gain."

The association will also be looking to its chapters and members to spread the word about the group's new brand, noted both Mr. Armitage and Mr. Schlotman. They expect the membership to publicize that NetVU it is not a functionary of Vertafore but is about education and improving the agency system.

A major driving force behind the brand change, noted Mr. Polansky, was that there was confusion about what AMSUG meant. With NetVU, there is a clear picture of the user group's mission.

Overall, Mr. Armitage said the name change has been greeted with a lot of positives.

If the number of attendees is any indication, interest in NetVU's mission has not diminished. The association executives said convention attendance was down 21 percent compared to previous years, but remained the same as last year, around 1,700 attendees, which they feel is a good sign in consideration that many firms are still recovering from the effects of the economic downturn.