John Dedrick, chairman of West Bend Mutual Insurance Company, says offering the Agency CD Online to producers supports the insurer's Building Competitive Advantage initiative.
In baseball lore, the triple play is about as common as a blue moon--but when it happens, it's beautiful to see. Grace, style, and speed come together to create a breathtaking ballet that fills even the most cynical fan with childlike awe.
For agents of West Bend Mutual Insurance Company, a strong regional carrier that was profiled in the April issue of Rough Notes, the triple play isn't about baseball but about the power of technology to enhance efficiency and profitability. Earlier this year, West Bend became the first insurer nationwide to offer its agents the Agency CD Online, a leading-edge electronic tool that addresses every aspect of agency marketing, underwriting, servicing, and management. To learn how agents are putting this powerful product to work, we'll talk with John Dedrick, chairman of West Bend, Kevin Steiner, vice president of sales, marketing, and underwriting, and Bob Butzke, a top producer whose agency has been using the Agency CD Online for several months. We'll also hear from Domenick J. Yezzi, Jr., vice president, specialty commercial lines, of ISO, whose ISOnetSM product is a key component of the West Bend Agency CD Online.
Domenick J. Yezzi, Jr., CPCU, is vice president, specialty commercial lines of the Insurance Services Office.
The natural
"We became aware of the potential for the Agency CD Online in the summer of 1999, when our agents group met with the software distributor," Dedrick explains. "They had heard about West Bend Connect, our Internet-based solution to help agents acquire and service business. As a company, we're ahead of the curve with respect to Internet development; our agents tell us we're a leader in using the Net to deliver products, services, and systems that make them more efficient. We realized that the Agency CD Online was much more than just a CD; it would allow us to offer our agents a searchable, user-friendly online database. The distributor was looking for a carrier to 'go live' with the product, and we accepted eagerly."
Kevin Steiner, is West Bend's vice president of sales, marketing, and underwriting.
West Bend's commitment to technology is part of a wider, ongoing initiative, Dedrick notes. "Our company mantra is Build Competitive Advantage," he says. "For the last three years we've focused on finding products and services that will help our agents set themselves apart. The Agency CD Online is a perfect fit for our Building Competitive Advantage program." Making the product available to agents also supports West Bend's commitment to using Internet technology to support its agency force, Steiner adds. "We're totally committed to independent agents, and we believe the Internet can be a vehicle for achieving greater efficiency for us and our agents."
West Bend began offering the Agency CD Online to its agents last spring after introducing it at the insurer's Agency Road Show in March. Training sessions at the home office help agents become familiar with the product and its many uses.
Today almost 200 of West Bend's 450 agencies are using the Agency CD Online, Steiner says, and the number is growing daily. Some producers are not yet Internet enabled, he notes, and as they come on-line the number of users will increase.
Inside the box
What exactly is the Agency CD Online, and how are agents using it to gain the competitive edge? Simply put, it's a next-generation sales tool designed to help agencies compete for business not on price but on knowledge, products, and service. Here's what this Internet-based product provides for each major area of agency operations:
* Agency owner: Authoritative management, marketing, and sales information to maximize agency growth. Proposal language and detailed analyses for complex risks, new products ideas, and a directory to locate excess and surplus lines carriers and specialty lines coverages for a wide range of risks.
* Producers: Proposal language, coverage explanations, court cases, Commercial Risk Management Survey with exposure-based questions for more than 700 risks, and sales and marketing ideas. The product is laptop enabled.
* Commercial account specialist: Checklist of coverages and exposures to loss, proposal language for standard and unique coverages, monthly updates of new forms and endorsements to assist in matching markets and coverages to customers.
* Office manager: Technical insurance training, including proficiency exams for all levels of personnel. Business-building letters, proposal language, and more than 4,500 ISO® policy forms via ISOnet, updated as changes are filed and approved.
* Customer service representative: Customer correspondence, letters, and dictionary: Insurance Words and Their Meanings. Proposal language and detailed policy analyses for quick professional answers to client questions.
* Claims personnel: Detailed coverage analyses, ISO forms, and second opinion from coverage specialist.
* Receptionist: Professional letter templates, cut and paste paragraphs, and insurance dictionary.
* Network administrator: ACCESS consumer marketing content for agency Web site, ease of installation, convenient monthly updates, and software support.
Bob Butzke accesses the Agency CD Online from his customer's showroom. Below are representations of what appears on his laptop: the home page, which provides links to all the Agency CD Online products, including The Risk Management Survey--which includes a risk-specific checklist of the appropriate coverages; Coverages Applicable-which provides discussions of how coverages will apply in the event of a loss; and Insurance Words and Their Meanings--an insurance dictionary which is great for new employees.
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ISOnet advantage
To make the Agency CD Online even more useful to its agents, West Bend worked directly with the Insurance Services Office to enhance the product with ISOnet, which offers agencies instant online access to the latest ISO personal and commercial lines circulars, policy forms, and Commercial Lines Manual information as soon as they are released. Forms can be viewed, printed, or downloaded in Acrobat PDF format. Most forms are also available in Word format for full editing capability. An extensive menu of search options allows users to select forms by state, effective date, line of business, or form type. Forms also can be located by using selected words or phrases in the form title. Users can research an online reference library of several years' worth of ISO circulars, historical policy forms, and previous manual editions.
ISOnet provides electronic access to the current edition and up to two prior editions of each section of the 25,000-page ISO Commercial Lines Manual. With hypertext linking and advanced text search capabilities, users can quickly find specific ISO advisory rules, state exceptions, classifications, territories, and loss costs. For example, while viewing a circular announcing a state's approval of a forms filing, users can immediately view and link to any prior referenced circular for more details on the history of the filing, as well as view a copy of the new form. Manual information is presented in HTML format so users can view, print, perform full text searches, and copy and paste information.
"For today's agent, ISOnet is a convenient, easy-to-use tool to increase business," says Domenick J. Yezzi, Jr., vice president, specialty commercial lines, of ISO. "It's a very powerful system that will help agents select the right policy writing information, which is key to making a sale. Bottom line: less work for the agent, more revenue potential for the agency." What's more, he points out, "The information in ISOnet dovetails with the Agency CD Online and increases the value to agents of both."
At work in an agency
To find out exactly how the Agency CD Online with ISOnet can give an agency the competitive edge, we talked with Bob Butzke, whose Northbrook Insurance Associates in Menomenee Falls, Wisconsin, has been using the Agency CD Online for four months. Northbrook is a full-service agency that represents 10 carriers but places most of its business with West Bend. In fact, Butzke began his insurance career as a special agent for West Bend, and his relationship with the company dates back some 30 years.
Given Northbrook's strong commitment to automation and Internet technology, Butzke says, West Bend's introduction of the Agency CD Online represented an exciting opportunity. "We realized it was a great sales tool, and it offers a wealth of information at our fingertips instantly, via the Internet; there's no need to spend time finding resources," he comments. "The Risk Management Survey is a powerful tool for our producers to use on calls, and we use it on both new and renewal business. There's a checklist we complete to make sure we've talked about all the coverages a client might need. Also, the Coverages Applicable feature helps us explain to customers how coverages will apply in the event of a loss." Another feature Butzke likes is the insurance dictionary. "Insurance Words and Their Meanings is great for new employees, and there's a quiz they can take to test their comprehension," he says.
The bottom line? "The Agency CD Online is helping our agency project a professional image and operate more efficiently," Butzke asserts. "This tool is a great way for us to gain the competitive edge."
That's exactly what West Bend is aiming to achieve by making the Agency CD Online available to its producers, Dedrick says. "By selling product knowledge instead of price, agents can increase account retention and increase per-account premium. This helps us build the profitable growth partnership we're looking for with our agents."
When it comes to triple plays, the West Bend-Agency CD Online-ISOnet combination is hard to beat.
(The Agency CD Online is produced and distributed by The Rough Notes Co., Inc.) *
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West Bend agents learn about the features of the Agency CD Online. |