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You may want to take a look at "Your Insurance Office" (YIO). I originally developed it in 1995 and it has been upgraded several times since.
Agents throughout the US and in eight foreign countries are now using it and love it. It is so simple to use that anyone who can use a keyboard and a mouse can load it and begin working immediately. Support is unlimited and toll-free.
See reviews from users on this board at the Insurance Offers section.
For more info feel free to call the toll-free number listed below.
Agents throughout the US and in eight foreign countries are now using it and love it. It is so simple to use that anyone who can use a keyboard and a mouse can load it and begin working immediately. Support is unlimited and toll-free.
See reviews from users on this board at the Insurance Offers section.
For more info feel free to call the toll-free number listed below.
G
Guest
Guest
You might want to take a look at this posting:
Going Paperless - Insurance Agent Forum
Yes, Frank is right. YIO has a strong, vocal, and happy user-base. It may be exactly what you are looking for. His system is functional, but inherently insecure (not his fault... it's a Microsoft issue.)
I would no longer trust my data to an Access database. Access has had a long history of being buggy and easily corrupted. It's fine for non-critical data, but there are better options today.
Ten years ago when Frank wrote the system there were not many (or even a few) other choices... and it was a GOOD choice considering the alternatives back then.... but a lot has changed in ten years. As with any database, as long as you make frequent backups of your data you will be fine. (I don't trust ANY database. I take hourly backups of the database I use (MySQL) which is industrial strength... and you should too if you make a lot of additions/changes to your data.)
The big "buzz" today is web-based CRM systems (Customer Relationship Management.) There are tons of choices. Several of the large health GAs offer them for free (BenefitMall has one that is pretty basic but works o.k. from what I can tell.) Word and Brown has come out with a 'killer' system called AgencyPro which is free if you put a minimum of business through them.
As I've said over and over, the choice of an office system is very personal. Just because something works for Rick or something works for me, does not mean it will work for you. Take a look at YIO as well as several other solutions out there and take your best guess... and that's what it is until you actually use it for a month or so and see how it goes.
Time to baste the turkey.
Al
thebeacon
Expert
- 77
I see a lot of loan agents switching to insurance industry these days. Welcome aboard.
The best systems to manage contact in my experience and everyone in my agency is ACT and Salesforce.com.
I have used ACT for years and it is absolutely priceless. You can even create custom template specifically for what you need. meaning the information you need to know from a client. Act does everything you could possibly imagine and more, plus I have a smart phone so I have all my clients synchronized at all times and they are always with me. Also with ACT you can set it up to where if one of your clients calls you My computer will automatically recognize them by caller ID and pull up all of their information on my screen.
I have not used Salesforce.com but their system is the best I have seen, you can go to their website and take a look at the demo they offer.
The best systems to manage contact in my experience and everyone in my agency is ACT and Salesforce.com.
I have used ACT for years and it is absolutely priceless. You can even create custom template specifically for what you need. meaning the information you need to know from a client. Act does everything you could possibly imagine and more, plus I have a smart phone so I have all my clients synchronized at all times and they are always with me. Also with ACT you can set it up to where if one of your clients calls you My computer will automatically recognize them by caller ID and pull up all of their information on my screen.
I have not used Salesforce.com but their system is the best I have seen, you can go to their website and take a look at the demo they offer.
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I am using YIO to keep track of my "senior" clients. Works great. Cust Serv is great, even at midnight. I have tons of prospects in there that have med advantage plans that I will be calling monday.
G
Guest
Guest
What happened with YIO that you needed to call Frank at midnight? The Access back-end data-store go corrupt on you? Access has a long history of being easily corrupted. Fortunately most of the time it is easily repaired with a utility that Microsoft gives you. (I hope Frank does not use auto-sequenced record keys... 1,2,3,4, etc. as opposed to generating "real keys" like 2874lu76, 29asl873 because it is known to happen that even a 'repair' won't work on an Access table with auto-incremented primary keys. I don't know why. Anyway, no self-respecting programmer would use auto-increments as record keys so I doubt Frank did either.)
And this is not just an Access issue. No matter what data-store you are using, you should set up a procedure to take a backup every hour. I use an industrial-strength database called MySQL (MySQL AB :: The world's most popular open source database) which has a ton of internal 'controls' to keep it sound... but I still don't trust it and I have a very simple script to do what is called an sqldump of the data each hour. Should the crap hit the fan, it takes all of 2 minutes (granted my data base is not large) to regenerate a new version of the database and be up and running. Thus, worst case is I lose an hour of work... as long as the server is up!
I also have a copy of SugarCRM (which is the front-end to my database.. Sugar can use Oracle, MySQL (free) and Microsoft SQL-Server) on my office machine and each morning I take the latest sqldump from my server and re-generate the database on my Macintosh. Thus if my server takes a hit I can continue to work. True, I can still get out of sync, but I've only had one server hit in the past 4 years (for 10 minutes) so I'm not too worried. (I use Pair Networks (pair Networks - World Class Web Hosting) Great outfit to work with... the fix things in minutes, not hours... they are not cheap, but good service never is.)
When you decide on a software system you need to remember how important making backups are. My motto is "A backup an hour... in case things go sour."
Al
- 297
If your considering ACT check out amazon.com
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I exagerrated an hour. I believe it was 10:30 or 11:00pm. It was not YIO's fault. I was driving down the road to an appointment( something insurance agents do, Al) and had the pulled up on YIO. Of course I should have pulled over but I didn't. I have no idea what happened but I hit a button or a couple buttons, I don't really know, and I lost all my data. I also did not back up my files, I was freaking out. I called Frank and he told me to call him back when I wasn't driving. SO when I called him back it was about 10:30 or so. Anyway the problem was fixed and Frank found my data for me. That is the only problem in the 5 months I had it, which was my fault not YIO.
There are plenty of threads to read this battle with you Al. Quit being your annoying self. You going to the next miller parade?:bump:
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There are plenty of threads to read this battle with you Al. Quit being your annoying self. You going to the next miller parade?:bump:
Your only mad because he is more annoying then you!
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LoL, He stole my mojo.
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