We are a small independent agency. One agent, and I will be licensed next month (hopefully!). No other employees. We sell mostly P&C. About 85% Personal lines and 15% commercial. BOB is around 1.5 million. I am new to this business, and came to this agency to learn as much as I can about insurance, so I can make a career of it. The biggest problem is that we have no management system in place. I don't know how he has been doing this so long (10+ years) with not even a list of contacts! Everything is old school. Filing cabinets FILLED...no...STUFFED with old policies, new policies...all sorts of stuff. We waste so much time tracking down info. we should have on-hand, (What's so and so's phone? Address? What company are they with? What's their policy number?)...that we are losing out on business. I'd eventually like to go paperless as well. I watched a live demo for AMS360....but even with the promotion, we are looking at $2400 MINIMUM to start up. I need help. Any suggestions on web-based management systems for an agency our size, with considerably lower start-up costs than this? I don't need all the bells and whistles of AMS, it would be nice, but it isn't necessary right now. I just need a way to get this agency under control, because right now I just want to pull my hair out. Any help, suggestions, or insight would be greatly appreciated!!
Please Suggest an Agency Management System for Us..
- Thread starter Sparky06
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- agency management
- 11,280
I'm glad you asked and am eager to see the responses. Nobody has ever asked this question.
- 2,024
sugarcrm maybe?
I dunno what an agency management system has to do, but if it is managing records in a database with other records related to them, sugar is real good for that.
I dunno what an agency management system has to do, but if it is managing records in a database with other records related to them, sugar is real good for that.
G
Guest
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quomation.com
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I cant believe you are that big and dont have a management system already
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I cant believe you are that big and dont have a management system already
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Quomation is one option, Hawksoft another, along with several others, but at a lower cost than AMS, a bit less functionality, but still very capable when doing things in house.
You'll have to decide what you really need, such as:
- Carrier downloads (to me, this is the biggest reason to have a management system)
- Client tracking, such as emails, phone calls, to dos, etc.
- Acord form completion
- Rater integration (way cool when it works correctly, huge time saver)
- Policy tracking (kinda goes along with carrier downloads)
- Trust account management
- Commission reporting
.... and any number of other things that management systems can do.
Sugar would be good if all you want to do is track clients and their policy numbers. It would be a step up from where you are, but to me, if you are going to invest the time, I'd make the investment in a system designed as an agency management tool. It's the only way to grow.
You need to be careful though, a $1.5M BOB won't go far when it's paying two people and a lot of overhead.
Dan
You'll have to decide what you really need, such as:
- Carrier downloads (to me, this is the biggest reason to have a management system)
- Client tracking, such as emails, phone calls, to dos, etc.
- Acord form completion
- Rater integration (way cool when it works correctly, huge time saver)
- Policy tracking (kinda goes along with carrier downloads)
- Trust account management
- Commission reporting
.... and any number of other things that management systems can do.
Sugar would be good if all you want to do is track clients and their policy numbers. It would be a step up from where you are, but to me, if you are going to invest the time, I'd make the investment in a system designed as an agency management tool. It's the only way to grow.
You need to be careful though, a $1.5M BOB won't go far when it's paying two people and a lot of overhead.
Dan
- 1,473
Softhawk is a nice system. It does not cost that much about $200 a month. It will help u keep ur hair for now.
Have the same dilemma and have been searching for the right system. I've checked out epic, ams360, hawksoft, aspire, qq and the sugar crm. The first 2 are pricey, functional but don't always flow well. qq is nicely priced but limited. When u add in the stuff u want like scanning docs the price goes up too. Hawksoft and aspire look the best to me right now, though I'm leaning more to aspire - its totally on the web, its got all the crm stuff sugar has, and it looks easy to learn and use. Hawksoft does have a slightly lower price though. Any other ideas on systems I should check, let me know.
A big concern for us was the ability to migrate to another system without a huge hassle. Seems that many of the systems, 4-5 years ago, were not very friendly toward moving a book to another(competitors) system.
I went with IMS at the time because they were so "Erie Insurance" friendly. We have been very pleased with the results.
I went with IMS at the time because they were so "Erie Insurance" friendly. We have been very pleased with the results.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but Agency Matrix doesn't do carrier downloads (at least not yet). If you are going to spend the money on an Agency Management system, why would you not want carrier downloads? Isn't that a key part of the system?
When you are first starting, downloads may not be a big deal, but very, very, very quickly it becomes a huge issue.
I work very hard to try not to reenter the same data over and over again.
Dan
When you are first starting, downloads may not be a big deal, but very, very, very quickly it becomes a huge issue.
I work very hard to try not to reenter the same data over and over again.
Dan
