Best Web-based All-lines Agency Management System?

[sgriswold]

I own a 4-person agency (2 staff, 2 agents) and am looking to expand but our software is currently a bottleneck.

Due to various reasons, I use Macs at the office -- we currently use Daylite CRM for contact and agency management. It's a very good program but it needs a lot of tweaking / hacking to make it do what we want.

Because we have been ramping up P&C significantly this past year and are now courting much bigger clients (with premiums in the six-figure range), in addition to larger group benefit cases, it would be disastrous to not look into an insurance-specific software suite.

Here's my criteria:
- Must work on Mac + PC (i.e. internet-explorer only solutions are out)
- Ideally web-based (I may have off-site agents, also this is more secure)
- Natively handle both employee benefits and P&C (we are about 75% L&H, 20% commercial, 5% personal)
- "Reasonable" cost. I've looked at a couple that are $200+ per user per month. That's just ridiculous.

UPDATE - 07/29/2011 - I gave my office till Mid-August to find a suitable system. Here's what we have so far.

So far the following are OUT:
1) ZyWave - PC-Only plus horribly unprofessional sales staff
2) RadiusBob - Great interface, but way too basic (no accounting, no multiple lines per client, no advanced reporting features)
3) QQEvolution - PC-Only. :(
4) DORIS - Touted as "web-based" but not really. Requires PC.
5) i-Relay - Sales department is useless. Two emails and three phone calls later, and no one wants to call us back. If they can't even get their sh*t together to contact a potential client, how terrible is their customer service?


The following have cleared our initial criteria:
1) Aspire - Excellent interface, good workflow. However no true support for employee benefits management (you can't even really have multiple contacts per company). No Gmail integration (outlook only). However the price can't be beat and they have great built-in features (SMS support, client portal)
2) SalesForce - Ridiculously customizable and powerful. Also very expensive. Just rolled out PDF ACORD support (our previous objection was that they only supported export to XFDL). Will cost $$ plus more $$ to customize and add other features (full Gmail support, client portal, etc.).
3) AMS360 - pending demo, but this with their benefits management addon seems to work.

 

[Braxtonut]

SalesForce is absolutely the way to go. It has support for many mobile products and has many options customization options.

The reporting tools are excellent for the price, and their support is awesome.

 

[yfang]

You could try Choices Software. Their online solutions may work for the Mac as well as PCs. Also, they are coming out with ACORD Forms that are designed specifically to be used with Salesforce. You could e-mail them for more info.

 

[bigindy]

Interesting suggestion re: SalesForce. How do you see this as a Total Agency management solution rather than a dynamic marketing program ( Both for Prospects and Clients )?

I'm asking with genuine interest - not sarcasm. If Salesforce could be used to manage the daily agency tasks ( Certs, Policy Changes, etc. ) in addition to marketing - it would be the system to end all systems.... IF the automation and processes were easy to develop.

The challenge I am having is finding a solution that could eliminate the need for multiple software solutions. Agency Management for the routine insurance processes, Marketing automation ( email, social, AND direct mail ), accouting, etc.

Keep this thread going!!!

 

[sgriswold]

Interesting suggestion re: SalesForce. How do you see this as a Total Agency management solution rather than a dynamic marketing program ( Both for Prospects and Clients )?

I'm asking with genuine interest - not sarcasm. If Salesforce could be used to manage the daily agency tasks ( Certs, Policy Changes, etc. ) in addition to marketing - it would be the system to end all systems.... IF the automation and processes were easy to develop.

Salesforce for Insurance seems to have all the necessary infrastructure for full policy servicing. It's not as *elegant* as say, Aspire, since it's really a super-customized version of Salesforce and it shows, but there's ACORD creation, submission management, and all of it is backed by a community of thousands of developers. Salesforce developers have their own trade show, for Pete's sake.

The downside - we're looking at twice the cost (or more) vs. Aspire. But it's definitely more future-proof and feature-filled.

 

[djs]

Wow, it's been a while since I looked at Salesforce, but I couldn't imagine using it as an all-lines management system. Maybe they have added some features to make this work though.

Do they have integration with carriers for downloads? While a small book might be manageable without it, any decent size book will require it.

Last time I looked at Salesforce, their marketing automation system required a college degree in 'overly complex things' to even begin to make work. Now, this was years ago, hopefully it is better.

Salesforce quickly becomes cost prohibitive compared to a premier agency management system as well.

Having to support Macs throws a lot of decent systems out the window, such as Hawksoft. Of course, wanting to be web-based is a problem with some as well. Please note that web-based is not a requirement for remote operations. Even ACT manages remote without requiring web-based.

Dan

 

[sgriswold]

Wow, it's been a while since I looked at Salesforce, but I couldn't imagine using it as an all-lines management system. Maybe they have added some features to make this work though.

Do they have integration with carriers for downloads? While a small book might be manageable without it, any decent size book will require it.

Last time I looked at Salesforce, their marketing automation system required a college degree in 'overly complex things' to even begin to make work. Now, this was years ago, hopefully it is better.

Salesforce quickly becomes cost prohibitive compared to a premier agency management system as well.

Having to support Macs throws a lot of decent systems out the window, such as Hawksoft. Of course, wanting to be web-based is a problem with some as well. Please note that web-based is not a requirement for remote operations. Even ACT manages remote without requiring web-based.

Dan

Their marketing automation looks leaps and bounds over what you're describing. They've done a lot of work to make it work for an insurance agency. The entire thing is still more complicated than I'd like, though.

The document download is a point of contention.

Also, regarding being web-based, it's not just for remote access, it's for data security. Our current system (Daylite) is portable as well, but I don't think ANY disk-based CRM has appropriate encryption protocols in place to justify not panicking in case of theft.

(Yes, I supposed I could force any remote computers to use WDE, but that's still more than I want to deal with)

 

[djs]

Its probably been 3 years since I looked at Salesforce automation system. It was a nightmare then, though I assume they have cleaned it up a lot. Even when I talked to them, they were already claiming to be working on it.

I didn't mean document download, I meant policy download. An auto policy cancels, its new status gets downloaded to your system. A new policy is written, it gets downloaded to your system. A new driver is added, it gets reflected in your system, etc. This is not as much an issue on life & health or even commercial as it becomes on a decent size book of personal lines policies. Part of my retention policy is actively working the alerts I get (daily) on pending cancellations and actual cancellations.

Also, if people bookmark sites and save passwords, you have to worry about a stolen laptop on webbased systems almost as much. Of course, changing the password quickly helps, if it is reported in a timely manner!!!

Dan

 

[ksigmtsu]

Look at sugarcrm also. They have a free version, community edition (its sort of a pain to install), works on all platforms since its java/mysql/php based, and can be customized to fit basically anything, since really you're talking about a fancy webpage built on a database.

For the price though, considering it costs 0$ per month compared to the massive cost of salesforce or some of the other options, its very hard to beat.

 

[sgriswold]

Wow, Vertafore (AMS360) is a TRAIN WRECK in terms of their sales department. Just saying.