California agency creates software
products, using itself as the testing lab
By Dave Willis
Nils Martinson is president of Insurance Visions and Industrial Risk Insurance Services.
Nils Martinson, president of agency software provider Insurance Visions, is not a techie in the way most people think of techies. That's part of the secret to his firm's success.
Martinson's roots in the insurance industry go back to the mid-1970s, when he signed on as a Liberty Mutual agent. Within two years, he ventured out on his own, opening an independent agency that today boasts a staff of more than two dozen professionals and a client base throughout Southern California and beyond.
A decade after starting his agency--Industrial Risk Insurance Services, based in Tustin, California--Martinson brought a product to market that one of his staff developed to ease work at the agency. In the years since, Insurance Visions--which until late last year was known as QwikApp, Inc.--has developed other programs, generally because the agency or a client had processes that needed automating.
In the '80s, Martinson, like many other agency owners, bought an agency management system that he says helped handle the financial aspects of the business, but not much beyond that. "The most advanced portion, aside from the accounting module, was the system's ability to do a memo," he recalls. "From an agent's perspective, it really wasn't very effective at processing paper."
Applications led to application
But paper needed to be processed. So Martinson did what any good leader would do--he hired someone else to worry about it. Mike Gustaveson, with two years of college under his belt, joined the firm to help manage the paper. Martinson remembers: "The only way we processed applications at that time was to roll a preprinted ACORD form into a typewriter and to manually type the data onto the form." So Gustaveson typed--and typed, and typed.
"Being a large agency, we created tons of these ACORD apps," reports Gustaveson, who now is Insurance Visions' software vice president. "I was the only one who typed them. That was the majority of my day--typing these ACORD apps over and over. I finally said, 'This is ridiculous.'"
Gustaveson, who had a knack for computers, wrote a simple program to store the data. "I'd put the ACORD form into the printer--an old dot matrix--and it would print the data where it needed to go," he says. Renewals would simply require data updates, not white outs and typeovers.
Martinson recognized the benefit that Gustaveson's program could bring to other agencies, so he started a new firm and put the product on the market as QwikApp.
The product has evolved, and the company has grown. Today, Insurance Visions offers agency management products, a certificates of insurance program, OSHA reporting and other products for agencies, MGAs and other businesses.
Systems to manage agency processes
At the core of the offerings is a trio of DOS-based agency management products. The basic product, AppMaker II, is an outgrowth of the original QwikApp program that Gustaveson created. It can generate all commercial lines applications, certificates, binders, loss notices and endorsements.
"The AppMaker II program is strictly an application generator. It has few integrated databases. That is sort of an entry-level program," Martinson explains. "Then, as the agency needs additional functionality, we can move them up to the Commercial App program, which has a lot more features."
Commercial App adds policy history, database functionality and single-entry capabilities. Schedules of insurance, a certificates program, evidence of property program, and policy maintenance functions also
are included.
At the top of the line, Commercial Plus builds on the other products. "In a nutshell, Commercial Plus is an agency management system, without the accounting," Gustaveson says. "We have national brokerages using Commercial Plus to this day," despite the fact that it's a DOS-based program. "The reason is producers can load it on their laptop and go out and do their applications.
"We also have mom and pop shops that do their accounting by hand, or use QuickBooks or some other program. Commercial Plus is perfect for them because it's not going to cost them forty grand," Gustaveson explains. "There's a plain paper invoice in there, but by no means does it do any serious accounting."
Gustaveson says that Insurance Visions plans a Web-based version of the agency management product, but timing has not been determined. That's, in part, because the company has its plate full enhancing other products and bringing new ones to market.
Certificates offline and on
"One of the other products we came out with seven or eight years ago was a product named CertMaker," Martinson says. "It's a desktop, DOS-based program that permits an agency to issue certificates of insurance." CertMaker includes integrated databases, and lets users issue certificates, print them and fax or mail them out.
The program is still in use, in small agencies as well as Fortune 500 companies. "It's a DOS-based program; the darned thing just doesn't break. Customers are still producing thousands of certificates with this thing," he continues.
However, many of those who used CertMaker are not doing so anymore. They've gone online--to Insurance Visions' new Web-based product: eCertsOnline. This online service lets users create, store, issue, and e-mail certificates of insurance, endorsements, addendums and attachments.
Mike Gustaveson developed the QwikApp program and directs Insurance Visions' software division.
Insurance Visions offers agency management products, a certificates of insurance program, OSHA reporting and other software products for agencies, MGAs and other businesses.
Users can access the product through the Insurance Visions site or from an agency or brokerage site. "The agency's name is all over the Web site," Martinson says of agency-branded sites. "So we're working to be able to actually change the coloring of the Insurance Visions Web site, of the pages that come up, to identically match the coloring of the agency site. So it will be a transparent movement from the agent's Web site over to the eCertsOnline Web site."
Colors aren't the only things Insurance Visions can change when clients ask. An insurance agency that serves commercial trucking clients requested special wording on a certificate, Gustaveson relates. "They wanted wording on the master certificate to say, 'Under no circumstances are additional insureds allowed.' So I went in, added a field, programmed in a little logic, and called their person back a couple of hours later to approve the changes."
That agency signed on for eCertsOnline early but did not start using the product for quite a while after making the purchase. Gustaveson asked the client why. "He said he was too busy doing certificates to do anything with it. So we uploaded data from the agency's management system," Gustaveson says. That got things going. Now the agency clients are doing the certificates, and they're doing it whenever they please.
"Truckers can get their certificates ready to go at 7 a.m. if they want," he continues. "The insureds just love it, because they can get their certificates right now. They don't have to call; they don't have to wait 24 hours; they don't have to get a fax later. They can get an original and do it in about 30 seconds."
More clients are doing it, as well. According to Martinson, "We're seeing a doubling of the number of certificates every month."
Reporting claims and workplace injuries
Other QwikApp programs evolved in the early 1990s. "One of our other programs calculated the California experience modification," Martinson says. "Then in 1995, we created XpressComp, which permitted an employer to complete a first report of injury on the PC, then e-mail it via an AT&T mailbox system." The carrier would retrieve the e-mail and would print it or upload it.
In the late 1990s, Insurance Visions developed a Web-based first-reporting system for a large third-party administrator in California. "They put it on the Internet and permitted their customers to report via the Internet," he says. "And the data would be automatically loaded into their system."
The TPA had been running an 800-number first-reporting process when it launched the online version and continues to operate both. Most clients have evolved from the telephone to the 'Net to report employee injuries. "I'd say the first year, probably 95% of their first reports were coming in via the 800 reporting system," Martinson says. "Now, 95% are coming in via the Internet and only 5% are coming in via the voice system."
Insurance Visions' latest product evolution occurred in December 2001. The company took that first-reporting system and expanded it to offer OSHA reporting online as well. Martinson sees the new product, dubbed OSHA300online, as not just a lifesaver for employers, but a value-added tool that insurance agents and brokers can offer their clients.
Effective January 1, 2002, new OSHA regulations govern how employers record injuries. "The OSHA log, which customers have been using for the past 15 to 20 years, is being completely revamped," Martinson explains. "And because it was done by the federal government, instead of making it easier, they've made it far more difficult. To maintain the OSHA 300 log manually is going to be an absolute nightmare.
"Agents will be able to offer to their customers an online version of the log, and the ability to not only do first reports of injuries, but also to maintain their OSHA log online," he says.
If they wish, agents will be able to buy the service for their clients and offer it as a customer service, Martinson says. "Now when the agent has to present a renewal premium that's increased 50%, he can also give this service to the client, which will eliminate some of the client's headaches."
Agents who don't want to buy the service for clients could sell it to them instead, he continues, and earn a 25% commission by doing so.
What will Insurance Visions' next product be? Martinson and Gustaveson continue to look for daily tasks that can be improved upon through automation, and that's what leads to software products and services from this company.
When a new product does come out, Martinson's agency will test it before it hits the streets. "The programs that we built, we still use to this day, within the agency," he says. *
The author
Dave Willis is a New Hampshire-based writer who edits www.RoughNotesToday.com, an online daily news service for agents. He is a cofounder and former editorial director of PropertyAndCasualty.com. Previously, he wrote for national and regional business and nonprofit publications, and held senior communication positions for a large, global insurer and an insurance professional society.
For more information
Web site: www.insurancevisions.com