IVANS last year introduced its SEMCI Services™ program to help medium- and small-sized companies achieve agency-company interface. "One of the fastest growing member segments last year was regional carriers," Dan Carmichael, CPCU, president and CEO of IVANS, points out. He adds that SEMCI Services has been one of the reasons for this increase. "Most of the large carriers have an interface program in place," Carmichael continues. "But there is a great demand for smaller companies to achieve the same results."
"This program draws upon the extensive interface experience and knowledge of IVANS and other major industry service providers to reduce implementation time in rolling out a company interface strategy," according to IVANS Senior Vice President Rita Waters.
IVANS, its BWC Systems Division, and a number of industry partners are combining to deliver SEMCI Services. The company has partnered with ACORD, Applied Systems, the Alliance for Productive Technology (APT), and Comm-Press to provide a variety of interface solutions for download, upload, e-mail and the Internet.
Solutions include education, strategy development, agency surveys, implementation guidelines and on-site assistance, edit development software and assistance, EDI translation reformatting consulting and software, data compression software and help desk assistance.
As its name would imply, SEMCI Services enables upload/download data transfer between insurer and agent without duplicate data entry. SEMCI Services allows an insurance company to customize the agency system to automatically edit for the company's unique data format, reducing the need to correct errors or ask for missing information. Information from the company can be downloaded "as is" to its agents.
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