FULFILLING THE TECHNOLOGY PROMISE

Rough Notes, Nov 2004 by Bates, Virginia M

Agency Systems offers agency management solution designed to enhance efficiency and increase productivity

Agency Systems in Bryan, Texas, considers itself still to be an innovator after more than 20 years of creating agency automation solutions. The customer base consists of about 350 agencies with an average of seven to nine employees. Like many agency management systems with roots in the 1980s, Agency Systems, formerly known as Empire Systems, started off as an accounting engine; but given the opportunity to automate a large agency, Agency Systems wrote a front end for personal lines and commercial lines. Today the vendor has expanded its lines of business to include aviation, marine, and crime modules.

Agencies that choose Agency Systems often start with the Agency Apps module which is an inexpensive way to manage insurance-specific tasks while continuing to do accounting, general ledger, and payables either manually or with stand-alone software like QuickBooks or Peachtree. Agency Apps is priced at $495 for the one-time entry cost, or $550 with download. The monthly user fee is $69 for up to three users, with incremental payments for additional users. Mike Hunter, president of Agency Systems, points out that the modular approach works particularly well for these agencies when they want to add accounting and claims modules because they don't have to go to another vendor, risk a data conversion, or deal with a retraining effort.

Agencies that opt for the benefits of full functionality in an agency management system find the Agency Systems product to be just the ticket. Using Agency Apps as its foundation, Agency Systems includes accounting, general ledger, accounts payable, and claims submission ability.

Users of both Agency Apps and Agency Systems can add Agency View for a one-time cost of $495 to allow policy change upload and direct bill inquiry directly to a carrier's Web site. With Agency View, right-clicking any policy takes the user directly to the policy detail at the carrier's Web site. Currently 70 carriers are available via Agency View. Direct "screen-to-screen" access to a client's billing or claims history via the carrier's Web site is not yet available.

Agency On-Line is Agency Systems' ASP version with the simple pricing of $200 per user start-up cost with a monthly $100 user fee per month.

Carrier interface is an important part of the Agency Systems package of benefits to agency users. Personal lines download is appreciated by many of its users. However, some users choose not to use it. "We don't upload into any carrier systems because I won't do their work for them, and we don't download because the carrier's data can go into incorrect fields and change our database in a way we didn't intend. We want our database nice and clean," says Clare Marentette, Marentette Insurance in Windsor, Ontario.

Mike Hunter explains that Agency Systems does not yet data-push to the carriers because the demand from even the largest clients is minimal at this time. When they do implement data-push, it will be proprietary, rather than via IVANS' Transformation Station. "Many of the carriers that our agencies use are smaller and/or are mutuals and they have told us they need a less pricey solution than Transformation Station. Since XML is written into our database, we offer a solution to those companies not able to justify the expense of third-party translation and transfer tools," he explains.

Adding commercial lines download has been a top priority and commercial auto, workers comp, and businessowners download modules are now in the certification process. Wisely, Agency Systems has developed a test-program for download development (on certification, prior to starting download with a company). The program allows selected users to study screen shots of downloaded screens to verify that data elements traveled into the correct fields and didn't overwrite other data, such as underwriting information that the carrier may download. "Our users' databases are not infiltrated by download until we and they know it is safe," explains Hunter. "We will do all that we can to preserve the detail that they have so carefully entered."

Policy numbers in the download file do not have to match perfectly the policy numbers shown in Agency Systems. "This is a great feature," Hunter continues. "Dashes and spaces are often used by the agency but not always by the company, and vice versa." The Agency Systems download will automatically determine if the policy and client exist in the database and will create the client record if it does not. This could be a problem, though, if the unmatched download record actually pertains to an existing agency client that has a slight difference-such as middle initial-in the agency system that does not show up in the company system.

Agency Systems, however, has solved that problem because nothing in the download is created on the fly unless it passes a series of tests to ensure that duplicate data is not created. In the situation described above where the client could have a slight difference such as middle initial (or another example "John" rather than "Johnny" as the named insured), the program would require that that person also have the same address, phone number, and Social security number. So there is no possibility that duplicate data could be entered.