IVANS, BWC & APT TEAM UP
WITH ARBELLA TO CREATE
UNIQUE UPLOAD SOLUTION

"...errorless rate fluctuates between 94% and 96%."

It all started with a trip to an IVANS User Conference," says Kim Farrell, agency interface manager, Arbella. "We heard about interface at one of the IVANS meetings, and we've been building a comprehensive program ever since."

Arbella joined IVANS in 1989 and began downloading to its agents in 1993. The company now downloads policy data to 230 agency locations and supports six agency vendor systems. But it's Arbella's upload project that makes it unique.

Arbella tapped APT and BWC Systems, a division of IVANS, to create a system that provides greater speed and accuracy on its new policy submissions. Once retrieved from the IVANS network, policies now flow into Arbella's mainframe system at the rate of one every two to three seconds. "And the accuracy has gone through the roof," says Farrell. She notes that the errorless rate fluctuates between 94% and 96%, and she credits APT's company edits and BWC's application and consulting services with boosting the accuracy rate.

Augmenting its successful download program with upload required extensive planning with each business group within Arbella in order to carefully plot how upload would affect work processes. "We learned a lot about ourselves and were able to streamline some internal processes as a result."

Arbella also knew from querying its agents that its upload solution would need to be non-proprietary. "We found our agents did not want proprietary interface at all," Farrell explains.

Kudos for APT and BWC

"What intrigued us about APT were the Agency and Stand Alone Modules. We saw that we could achieve true SEMCI with APT," Farrell says.

She also credits BWC with seeing "the big picture" while working on Arbella's download program. "BWC wasn't just focused on implementing download for us. They were constantly looking to the future and how upload would fit into our plans," Farrell continues. "Their knowledge of the ACORD standards got us to where we are today."

Terry Woodford, senior systems specialist, BWC Systems, was the point person for Arbella's upload project. What makes Arbella's program unique is that it can support both batch and interactive requirements with one set of edits. This "batcheractive" solution is valuable to carriers who need to support both environments simultaneously. "Batcheractive offers all the advantages of dynamic updating of edits and company unique fields, coupled with direct insurer control offered by standard batch upload," Woodford points out.

Upload: It's not just for companies

Many in the insurance industry assume that downloading policy information from companies benefits only agencies while the uploading of data from agencies benefits only companies. Farrell disagrees.

"Upload is a huge benefit to agents as well," she says. "We have agents who have been able to streamline work processes, being able to do more work with less resources. And these are growing agencies." Currently, Arbella agents are no longer required to submit paperwork to the company. Instead, periodic field audits are done by Arbella's underwriting staff to ensure that agents' files are complete. "They love the fact that they don't have to send us paper," says Farrell.

"In talking with the agents, we also heard many different definitions of SEMCI. But I think that APT means SEMCI," Farrell says. "Everything that they've been trying to do to pull all the companies together for this SEMCI approach is what impressed us the most."

Enter the Internet

Arbella is currently evaluating how the Internet will fit into its plans. The company, however, is not ready to use the public Internet for upload and download, since many of its agents are not yet online. Arbella has evaluated APT's new webSAM™ product for possible use in the future. webSAM is designed to reside on a server and perform non-proprietary upload with any carrier that uses APT's Company Module™.

Change endorsements: The next step

With the uploading of new policies running smoothly, Arbella has turned its attention to supporting policy change endorsements. Upload of change endorsements is more complicated because there are many more combinations of endorsement information not associated with new policies. Again, APT's products and BWC's expertise are playing a critical role for Arbella.

"Change endorsements require a lot of cross editing," Farrell says. "When you think of how many combinations of endorsements there could be, it gets a little complicated, but it's definitely doable."

Supporting agents

Arbella has a team of agency interface coordinators that acts as a field support team for its agency force. They will work with an agent from the day he or she installs an agency management system. "We begin with the download piece, providing training and implementation assistance and we also help with the upload piece," Farrell explains.

"We don't want our agents to have to stop their workflow, or worse, create additional steps," she says. "Our interface program saves them time, makes them more efficient, and gives them more time to sell. And that makes Arbella and its agents more successful." *