Silver plume offers "Sage" advice

Rough Notes, Sep 2001 by Strazewski, Len

"Increasingly, agents are targeting commercial lines as a way to grow their agency," he continues. "However, successful commercial lines marketing requires a high degree of detailed information, including knowledge of coverage requirements, industry profiles, and market information. With market conditions becoming increasingly tight, agents have to focus on doing more than selling policies. They have to provide more comprehensive service and address the many risk management concerns of their customers. Customers faced with 'sticker shock' on rising premiums may tend to shop their coverage but will likely stay with the agency that serves all their riskrelated needs.

"Accordingly, this first release of Sage focuses on commercial lines information and provides producers with a central source of information that is simple, searchable and portable," McMurray explains.

McMurray says the no-tech approach to Sage and the reasonable price make the product particularly valuable. "Unlike many 'productivity enhancing' insurance technology solutions, there's no software to load. That means there's no distraction by training and implementation. Agents simply log on and get what they need.

"We tried to eliminate any sort of compromise that users make in using the technology that's supposed to be making their lives easier. As a result we don't force agents to learn a new process, but rather allow Sage to enhance the process that already exists-whatever that might be.

"Producers on sales calls can access Sage from any computer, including laptop computers with Internet connections and standard Internet browsers, and retrieve the most current information," he notes. "By having complete information when dealing with an account, the agent can eliminate much of the back and forth between client and underwriter. That time savings and efficiency translates to sales effectiveness. Couple that with an average price roughly equivalent to what you'd spend on lunch and your favorite frozen-caramel-cookie-almost-- coffee-drink daily, and Sage presents tangible value to your agency."

Once an agent connects to Silver Plume Online, presently accessible through the Silver Plume Web site (www.silverplume.com), the agent enters a User ID and password. The Sage Web site introduces a simple search box to access the Sage content.

The real heart of Sage is its proprietary search engine, designed by Silver Plume Vice President Steve Hirsch. Hirsch says that he developed the search engine specifically for the insurance industry, building in an ability to rank results by relevance with an intuitive understanding of the connections between insurance terms.

"We selected pieces of content from the most wellrespected sources used by the industry today to build Sage. But all of the right content is virtually useless unless you can get it when you need it. Sage's powerful search engine means one or two words in a search box are all you need to find the right information."

Sage is divided into four separate information categories with several subsections.