Agency Management Sytems - Applied Epic Vs. AMS360?

[kmccann]

HI Kris,
Any feeback since signing with EPIC?

We had DORIS, now we have TAM. I hate both . Very hesitant on moving to EPIC, but it does look great, after our private demo. (so did Doris and TAM) we moved mainly for accounting (they needed something more), so data management was not a concern, however, it is now. We need more information to be captured.
Waiting on AMS 360 to schedule with us in the next few weeks, we did a phone/web demo, but feel we need to see more. We are a niche insurance agency so a lot of the bells and whistles don't apply.

Any feedback would be great!

 

[jtmgolf00]

you mention accounting - do you have unique accounting requirements?

 

[KrisCook]

HI Kris,
Any feeback since signing with EPIC?

We had DORIS, now we have TAM. I hate both . Very hesitant on moving to EPIC, but it does look great, after our private demo. (so did Doris and TAM) we moved mainly for accounting (they needed something more), so data management was not a concern, however, it is now. We need more information to be captured.
Waiting on AMS 360 to schedule with us in the next few weeks, we did a phone/web demo, but feel we need to see more. We are a niche insurance agency so a lot of the bells and whistles don't apply.

Any feedback would be great!

Well, the jury's still out. We've been in Epic Online since September, after a pretty smooth migration from Vision. Some things are better, some are worse. I wish I knew TAM or DORIS, so that I could give you an apples-to-applies comparison. We moved from Vision because we (correctly) figured that Applied Systems was withdrawing all development effort from that app. We submitted many, many PMR's for capabilities we needed, to simply never hear from them again. We were (incorrectly) told that Epic was built on a completely different architecture from Vision. I can tell you that isn't true because it basically works just the same.

We have yet to do our big certificate run, which happens in June. Our largest client's renewal date is 7/1 and we run over 1500 certificates for that renewal. As the bean counter, I'm very happy that I don't have to deal with certificates very much.

I don't think our claims person can find all the fields/functionality she needs in the claims module, either. So it looks like we'll be paying for Riskmaster for the foreseeable future. I'd hoped to be able to eliminate that.

I've tried to turn on policy/claims download, but Applied keeps dropping the ball on that, telling me I need to talk to the company to set it up, but I have no idea who in the company to call. You'd think they'd be working with the companies enough to know who to call!

We also thought the boxes would be bigger and resizable, because one of our main gripes with Vision was how tiny the windows and pop-ups were. It's not much better with Epic.

What is it that TAM isn't doing for you that you need? If you'll make a list, I will look to see if I can figure out if Epic can do it. Sales people will tell you anything. Don't even ask how much money we've spent.

Good luck to you!

 

[kmccann]

Well, the jury's still out. We've been in Epic Online since September, after a pretty smooth migration from Vision. Some things are better, some are worse. I wish I knew TAM or DORIS, so that I could give you an apples-to-applies comparison. We moved from Vision because we (correctly) figured that Applied Systems was withdrawing all development effort from that app. We submitted many, many PMR's for capabilities we needed, to simply never hear from them again. We were (incorrectly) told that Epic was built on a completely different architecture from Vision. I can tell you that isn't true because it basically works just the same.

We have yet to do our big certificate run, which happens in June. Our largest client's renewal date is 7/1 and we run over 1500 certificates for that renewal. As the bean counter, I'm very happy that I don't have to deal with certificates very much.

I don't think our claims person can find all the fields/functionality she needs in the claims module, either. So it looks like we'll be paying for Riskmaster for the foreseeable future. I'd hoped to be able to eliminate that.

I've tried to turn on policy/claims download, but Applied keeps dropping the ball on that, telling me I need to talk to the company to set it up, but I have no idea who in the company to call. You'd think they'd be working with the companies enough to know who to call!

We also thought the boxes would be bigger and resizable, because one of our main gripes with Vision was how tiny the windows and pop-ups were. It's not much better with Epic.

What is it that TAM isn't doing for you that you need? If you'll make a list, I will look to see if I can figure out if Epic can do it. Sales people will tell you anything. Don't even ask how much money we've spent.

Good luck to you!

I have a huge list..ha. How long do you have !
One of my biggest issues was the character spacing on the fields it was limited to about 35, we have medical and legal offices with very long names, and they don't fit; there is no place to put all the extras (EPIC seems to be able to do this). PMR's haha... you might as well write to the president that is how quickly they will not get done. Sometimes when we call support, it's sorry can't do it, but make a PMR, and we find a workaround later.
There is A LOT of clicks in TAM, Epic seems to have less clicks more drags, but seems you don't believe that is the case?
When we got into TAM we got in for accounting, data was not an issue. Now it is and we need more data capturing at this point.
Do you think EPIC is good for data capture and being able to report off it?

You mentioned about certs, in EPIC do you see them going easier? Jan. is our biggest month and we do about the same amount of certs. We have to go into EACH customer, the policy, the policy line and update it que and print. It did appear Epic worked the same.
Thanks for all the great feedback and help!

 

[KrisCook]

I have a huge list..ha. How long do you have !
One of my biggest issues was the character spacing on the fields it was limited to about 35, we have medical and legal offices with very long names, and they don't fit; there is no place to put all the extras (EPIC seems to be able to do this). PMR's haha... you might as well write to the president that is how quickly they will not get done. Sometimes when we call support, it's sorry can't do it, but make a PMR, and we find a workaround later.
There is A LOT of clicks in TAM, Epic seems to have less clicks more drags, but seems you don't believe that is the case?
When we got into TAM we got in for accounting, data was not an issue. Now it is and we need more data capturing at this point.
Do you think EPIC is good for data capture and being able to report off it?

You mentioned about certs, in EPIC do you see them going easier? Jan. is our biggest month and we do about the same amount of certs. We have to go into EACH customer, the policy, the policy line and update it que and print. It did appear Epic worked the same.
Thanks for all the great feedback and help!

1/5/2015
I think we are more limited in our data fields than we were in Vision, especially with the description line in transactions. I was also under the impression we'd be able to get more characters in most fields. I haven't seen that to be the case. Not with disbursements or receipts, either. I do think you can have long account names, though. We have one that is 48 characters in our list.

I don't know about Epic's drags because as the accounting person, I'm not dragging things into it. I don't even know where you'd use the drags. Do you drag email into it?

I think Epic captures data as well as Vision did, but the reports....
Let me just suggest you get extra training on how to set up the reports. They are super hard to work with. One thing I will say for them, though, is that they are 100% customizable if you know what you're doing, and you can get them to tell you just about anything you want to know. I'm sure we'd have been able to work with Vision's tech people to design the same things, though, but we just never did. I hate the way you can't print just a selection of pages out of a previewed report. If you want to do that, you'd have to send it to pdf and pull up the pdf and print selected pages from there.

In Vision, we had hundreds of different insurance certificate templates, each with its corresponding batch of holders. I don't work with certificates, but I understand that with Epic we can have only one template and somehow tell the system what the certificate should look like for each individual holder. And I think we can build all the certificates in CSR24 if we want the client to be able to access certificates. And I remember one of my MAE's calling Epic to see if the "print certificate attachments" box could default to checked, only to be told it couldn't. So I don't know what that is going to do to batch printing.

Entering disbursements, some things in each line are written in stone as soon as you close them and you can't go back and change them; same with journal entries. Vision had more flexibility.

Please don't let me be all negative, though. There are some very good things, if I think real hard. It's just a shorter list. And their sales people tell me that they are selling Epic right and left, doing conversions every day, so there must be something to it. I'm sure I'll warm up as I get more familiar with it. Let me know how your search goes!

 

[kmccann]

Thanks so much Kris- we had a great demo on AMS and I am again torn. I appreciate the negative because all they show (rightfully) is the positive.

 

[AZDave]

We just changed to AMS 360. If you go that direction, pay very close attention to the training sessions, the data conversion and hopefully they assist with initial carrier downloads. It is difficult to learn a new system, so much time spent. We were provided a series of training sessions that provided the basics. Then we went live.

We had to go to each carrier for initial downloads - zero policy data transferred with their migration. What did transfer was basic account information, and that come over with address in wrong positions, contacts in wrong positions. We have to touch each and every one of our accounts, talking many minutes for each.

Certificates are a true learning curve. First, zero policy data migrated over, meaning when one creates a new coi, no policy data prefills. Now we must go into the account and spend minimum 20 minutes creating the applications for the policy. That detail can only be done by the agent or extremely knowledgeable commercial CSR. We were used to being able to create, send and attach endorsements in a minute or two, AMS 360 will take you 10 - and that is when you know the system. To email out to vender takes many clicks to find the contact info. But easy to email to client.

Renewal certs we are still learning, and appears even though we created a Master for 2014 with the underlying holders and each holder with specific endorsements, to renew one must again create the individual holders and attach the endorsements. At lease the description wording does carry over. Understand that some do change on renewal, but some do not, as it stays with same carrier.

Maybe in one year I will sing praises for AMS 360, but since changing over our selling time has gone down, and AMSing time has gone up.

Good Luck.

Dave

 

[KrisCook]

...but since changing over our selling time has gone down, and AMSing time has gone up.

Well put.

Since I don't really know how Epic is with certificates, I'd suggest really hammering their sales people to do a thorough demo. I also might be able to hook you up with our power user, if we can find a half second when she isn't putting out a fire. Does this forum have PM capability?

 

[robtmccarthy]

Well put.

Since I don't really know how Epic is with certificates, I'd suggest really hammering their sales people to do a thorough demo. I also might be able to hook you up with our power user, if we can find a half second when she isn't putting out a fire. Does this forum have PM capability?

How are the retention and renewal reports?
Looking at purchasing an agency on Epic... I want to make sure I can count on those reports to be accurate.

 

[KrisCook]

How are the retention and renewal reports?
Looking at purchasing an agency on Epic... I want to make sure I can count on those reports to be accurate.

No idea. I found an expiration report in the system, but no report called retention. The expiration report looks adequate. Applied has some really skilled tech people, who can build you whatever report you want... but they have some who are not so skilled, too. We are a niche CL agency that retains 100% of clients, who are for the most part large commercial contractors. I don't guess we've ever needed a retention report. Sorry I'm not more help!