By Nancy Doucette
Mention Washington state and software, and powerhouses such as Microsoft may spring to mind. Travel southeast from Microsoft's campus for about 3-1/2 hours and you'll come upon Kennewick, Washington. Kennewick is where Insoft Corporation, a relative newcomer to the line-up of agency management system vendors, is headquartered. Founded four years ago by Ken French, a second-generation agency owner, Insoft's product and philosophy reflect his viewpoint of what makes sense in an agency automation system.
French's partner in the Insoft venture is Tom Hatcher, who owned a competing agency just down the street from French's. Hatcher left the agency business in 1990 to attend graduate school. One of the factors that influenced his decision to sell his agency was the cost of automation. The cost of moving from a standalone system to a network system was prohibitive, he notes.
When Hatcher and French met again, French was looking for a partner to help manage Insoft's growth. "Ken's product and vision were so exciting," Hatcher recalls. "The product he was offering was exactly the product I couldn't find in 1989."
At $1,995 for a single-user package plus $750 for each additional user, Insoft can compete on price. However, Hatcher is quick to point out, Insoft is "definitely not an entry level system, although you can use it that way. We compete with any system on the market. We offer a full function system at an entry level price."
Changes in development tools enable Insoft's programmers to do in a day what programmers of older systems would need weeks to accomplish, Hatcher says. What's more, he and French come to the vendor arena from the agency side which he says means "we're aggressive about maintaining low overhead."
It also means that the Insoft system has been built from the standpoint of the person doing the work. "If you're a CSR, producer or agency manager, you have different functionality that you want from a system," Ken French explains. "We've tried to build it from those viewpoints."
Built to run in Windows, Windows 95 or Windows NT, Insoft includes a number of errors and omissions safeguards. "We looked at the entire design from the standpoint of E&O," Hatcher points out. What resulted is the ability to permanently attach notes and
e-mail to client files. Once the note or e-mail has been saved or handled, it can't be edited or deleted. The system also includes built-in prompts. For instance, when a user completes a task that requires a follow-up, a screen automatically appears requesting the follow-up information. A listing of unresolved diaries is part of each day's start-up routine.
The interrupt capability of Windows is implemented in the Insoft system by way of its "task" function. "It works like a bookmark," French notes. "With three clicks of the mouse you've set a bookmark and you're off to another transaction. When you're done with the new transaction, you hit the task button and you see a list of uncompleted tasks. Those tasks are not eliminated from the list until you complete the task." This uncompleted task list also appears as part of the daily start-up routine as does a report of customers for whom you are holding money which is to be forwarded to the company. "These are examples of the intelligent design we built into this system," he continues.
Growth of the Insoft user base has been steady since the first system was sold in August 1993. As of December 1996 their 200 users are located in 39 states. Four workstations is the average, although Insoft's largest installation has 35 workstations. The Year 2000 challenge and carriers pressuring agents to automate are boons to Insoft's marketing efforts, French says. "The Year 2000 challenge will afford us unprecedented opportunity over the next 24 months. Agents are going to have to move or upgrade with their existing vendor. For what some of these agencies are paying for monthly support for these other systems, they could buy new hardware and Insoft.
"Carriers are going to their agents and insisting that they get automated or lose their contract. Our system is friendly and inexpensive."
As for agents who are already using Insoft and are in a growth mode, adding a new workstation is only a phone call away. It's part of what French and Hatcher call "make 'em smile" service and is an outgrowth of their own frustration with their automation vendor when they owned their agencies. (Coincidentally they both used the same vendor.) French recalls contacting his vendor about increasing the number of workstations in his agency. He was told that he had to buy the hardware from the vendor. "That went against my grain as an independent agent," he remembers. What's more, he insured a local computer business. "I wanted to buy my hardware from him; let him take care of the networking."
So when an Insoft user is ready to add a new workstation they contact Insoft and get the necessary coding information by phone or fax. "We don't have to ship them any software. We get them set up that same day," Hatcher says.
Insoft's support fees also reflect the reaction of French and Hatcher to their vendor's approach. Insoft charges a flat fee of $100 as the basic fee to which an additional $5 per workstation is added. So, a single user support fee would be $105. The support fee for a 10 user system would be $150. (Additional databases are extra.) French devised this structure because of his own dissatisfying experience with "timed" support. His vendor allocated 60 minutes per month for customer support. "Some months we didn't talk to customer support at all," he says. But then there was the month the agency exceeded their 60-minute allocation. "There was a glitch in the system--nothing we did--but we exceeded our 60 minutes of telephone time for that month, so we were put on the clock," he recalls. "We don't do business that way. We give them whatever support is necessary."
Insoft assigns a specific CSR to each agency customer, again drawing on how French and Hatcher ran their own agencies. The Insoft CSRs were agency CSRs initially, so they understand the importance of developing a relationship with their customers. Hatcher says the CSRs are charged with Insoft's "make 'em smile" customer service philosophy, and that includes going to the programming department occasionally to report problems.
Marilyn Fortier, co-owner of Insurance & Bonding Associates of Colorado, located in Englewood, Colorado, has been using Insoft for just over a year. Her agency writes mostly commercial lines and had been using an agency management system which they'd purchased in the 1980s from one of their largest carriers. Her search for a new system began by requesting demo disks from the agency management system vendors she'd seen listed in a directory published in a trade publication. She "test drove" each one for about a week and found the Insoft system easiest to follow. "It was easy to learn, so I knew it would be easy to teach others," she says.
Another consideration was cost. "The way technology moves today, the computer you use today won't be the one you use three years down the road. So we decided to go with a lower priced system. It does everything we need it to do."
She says she doesn't miss the biweekly support calls which being on old hardware necessitated. Now working in a Windows-based system means she can easily interrupt one task to handle another.
Fortier says there is little training needed in order to get up to speed on Insoft. The screens are self-explanatory and do a good job of guiding users through each process. Tom Hatcher points out that Insoft's training can be as structured or as unstructured as the agency wants. Many agencies simply use customer support and the tutorials. There is also a regional training center in St. Louis where agency personnel can go for a three-day intensive training session. (Training is also available at Insoft's Washington headquarters but Hatcher points out that St. Louis is easier to get to.) On-site training is also available.
Insoft's user base includes MGAs and wholesalers. Hatcher reports that the vendor has some 40 wholesalers on the system already. "We've modified our software with a built-in switch for wholesale agencies," he explains. Custom programming is also available. As a result of such programming, two of Insoft's wholesale users are uploading policy and statistical information via the Internet to their London correspondent. "Instead of sending a box of policies to London each month, now all that data flows over the Internet. It's not a real detailed upload--they wanted just limited data. But it virtually eliminates lag time for updating management files."
National Insurance Professionals, based in Poulsbo, Washington, was the first MGA to go on the Insoft system. Jamie Augustine is in charge of the firm's automation needs and recalls that the agency had been using an IBM 36--which was used strictly for accounting--before deciding on Insoft. As most of the agency's transactions were not automated, Augustine decided to bring in the hardware about two months ahead of the date the agency was to go "live" on the software. The computers came with Windows loaded so that the staff could get comfortable with the technology before learning Insoft.
But once they'd learned Windows, the staff had little difficulty learning Insoft. "If you know anything about Windows, Insoft is self-explanatory," Augustine says. ACORD forms look exactly like their paper counterparts "so it's easy for people who are familiar with the ACORD forms to work with the Insoft system." And for this MGA, that includes issuing policies and endorsements right off the system.
For retail agencies, especially those heavy into personal lines, download for auto and homeowners will soon be available, Hatcher continues. Insoft is now certified for download with one company and is working on two more. The cost for download is not built into the system's base price because not all the users want it, he explains. The Insoft download process will not edit or overwrite existing data. The system will overlay a new dec page on top of the existing policy, just as if you were looking at a paper file. The system also provides a "history" button that allows users to page back through dec pages.
Ken French says that emerging technology will continue to be part of Insoft's programming efforts. The Internet will play more of a role in the coming months as will imaging. And there's audio transactional filing. This will enable the system to save telephone conversations as digital files. It can be relistened to over the computer or printed out as text.
French maintains that development, customer support and marketing are interdependent. "None can survive without the other two."
Hatcher describes Insoft this way: "Being a lean organization allows us to be responsive. We're a speed boat not an ocean-going freighter where once the course correction is put in, it takes another 100 miles for the vessel to turn."
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Headquarters:
Kennewick, WA
For more information:
800-736-1425;
Internet URL: http://www.insoftcorp.com
Ownership:
Privately held
Agency management system product:
Insoft