TECHNOLOGY
Vendor's new strategy builds on long-time success
By Nancy Doucette
Gathered outside the Applied Systems corporate offices in University Park, Illinois, are (from left) John Higginson, Executive Vice President of Technology; Doug Johnston, Executive Vice President of WARP Interface Services; Rick Morgan, Vice President of Business Development; Wayne Pardue, Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing; and Jim Kellner, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer.
Get a group of industry executives together and it doesn't take long before the conversation focuses on the agency segment's bottom line--and the impact that technology has on those results. One of the main discussion points in those conversations is: Is the agency's technology investment delivering business results?
Applied Systems, an insurance automation vendor based in University Park, Illinois, has been involved in some of those conversations. As a result, the vendor is redirecting its development efforts to provide agencies that choose Applied Systems as their management system vendor with a resounding: Yes.
Part of Applied's new direction is its N2N strategy. "N2N is a spin on 'end-to-end'--carrying the agency's automation needs across the enterprise," explains Wayne Pardue, executive vice president of sales and marketing for Applied.
"The N2N strategy is to be customer centric," says Rick Morgan, Applied's vice president of business development. He says Applied's approach is to deliver the right technology at the right time. Additionally, the N2N approach will include consulting to the extent that the N2N team does a technology gap analysis to understand the customer's needs before committing to a technology solution. "It's our approach to that agency that's important," he continues. "Rather than going in and immediately offering a technology solution, our process is to spend time with the organization understanding their needs--asking them what they need from a vendor." That may include working with third-party vendors to integrate their products with Applied's The Agency Manager (TAM) management systems.
"That's the key to N2N," Pardue says, "understanding the organization's needs. In the past a vendor would go in and do a demo, give the prospect agency a proposal, and hope for a contract and a check. Today we go in and spend a lot of time before we even talk about product--understanding that organization's business needs--evaluating the products that the agency is currently using, learning about what the organization's pain points are, finding out when staffers are keying in data multiple times into multiple systems. Based on this process, we're better able to suggest a product or an integration, or build an interface to help the organization overcome those obstacles."
"Applied's philosophy has always been to protect our customers' technology investment," Morgan points out. One example of this philosophy is the vendor's commitment to providing free upgrades to its products, so as users move from version to version of a product, the new software is free. Hardware, of course, might need to be upgraded, and that's the responsibility of the user.
Protecting the customer's technology investment is an integral element of Applied's philosophy, according to Wayne Pardue and Rick Morgan, and the N2N strategy builds on that concept.
With its N2N strategy, Applied is leveraging its position as a leader in the connectivity/data exchange world. "Every year at ACORD, Applied Systems wins upload and download awards," Morgan reports.
According to Doug Johnston, vice president of WARP and interface services for Applied, "Last year, Applied Systems grew upload (agency/
company communication) by 17% in terms of the number of agencies and companies communicating. And the number of companies downloading to Applied Systems agencies grew by 27% last year."
What this means to the users of Applied's products, Morgan explains, is that Applied can connect parties wherever needed. This is essential in the changing world of the moderate- to large-size agencies. "Most organizations of moderate to large size struggle to consolidate information within their organization," he says. "Applied has the tools and resources that allow us to meet the varying needs of customers. In a sense, we can create a one-to-one or a customized environment for a unique customer without having to do a lot of custom programming. We can combine a lot of individual pieces to provide the organization a fully integrated environment."
John Higginson, executive vice president of technology for Applied Systems, oversees the product development groups for the vendor. He observes: "N2N starts with the larger agencies but, increasingly, agencies of all sizes are working in heterogeneous environments where they have a management system at the core but they have a lot of other applications and tools that they need to integrate."
With agency environments changing, Applied Systems is also taking a different view of the world, Pardue notes. Case in point: He and Morgan recently visited an agency that wanted to integrate a popular off-the-shelf contact management program. While Applied's products address many of the same areas as the off-the-shelf product does, the agency had invested a lot of time and effort into using the product and the agency didn't want to forfeit that. Using its ConneXion programming interface toolkit, Applied built the interface between TAM and the off-the-shelf product.
Doug Johnston points out that numerous upload and download awards from ACORD affirm Applied's position as a leader in the connectivity/data exchange world. He says Applied's new Web Edits product streamlines the interface process.
In another instance, an agency was doing a significant amount of benefits business. Applied used ConneXion to build the interface between the TAM Vision management system and the third-party benefits program.
"This is what the marketplace demands," Morgan observes. "We're responding to the changes in the agency environment and the requirements that agencies have to be successful. It's important to note that this is all customer driven."
"The customers are dictating who our third-party relationships are with," Johnston notes. "The relationship is unique between the agency, Applied, and the third-party vendor." This is yet another new direction for Applied. "In the past we fit the agency to TAM. Now we're going to fit TAM to the agency. Using our N2N strategy, we'll go out and work with the products and services that we need to suit it to the agency. We'll integrate to a different database or a Web site, but for that particular agency, that's how we'll do business."
Generic solutions are also in development using ConneXion, Higginson reports. Applied has been working with a company to provide flood mapping capabilities to all TAM and TAM Vision users. Whether the solution is unique or generic, Pardue notes that Applied writes the business logic around ConneXion so as other Applied products move forward, the interface that's been built isn't broken from version to version. "This gets back to protecting the agency technology investment,"
he says.
John Higginson, in Applied's server room, notes that the vendor carefully evaluates new technologies and implements them in a way that makes sense for Applied and its customers.
In its commitment to protecting the agency technology investment, Applied carefully evaluates new technologies. Sometimes, a trendy technology solution isn't the solution for a particular agency's automation needs. Higginson points out that following the most current trend doesn't always make for a sound business strategy for Applied or
its customers. So while he acknowledges that so-called thin clients built on HTML offer advantages, they still pale in comparison to the power and flexibility afforded users with rich clients like Windows apps. "We've made extensive use of Web technologies and Microsoft's .NET in areas like Web Services and purpose-specific Web apps like our InScopeTM product," he notes. "For mainstream business applications, Windows is the best environment. It's a strategy shared by many software companies, including Microsoft. There's no Web version of MS Office. It's about using the technology where it makes sense.
"Applied has a history of pursuing new technologies on a graduated basis," he says. For instance, Applied evolved its management system products as Windows and Microsoft Office products matured. The vendor brought its customers forward in a way where they could continue to run their agencies and get the benefit of the new technology. But because the development effort was graduated, the solution wasn't so far out in front that the agency operation was negatively impacted.
Applied has taken advantage of some of the advances in thin client technology in expanding its InScope customer self-service product. In addition to enabling agency customers to view portions of their data, the product also helps CSRs and producers who are on the road get access to policies and do some standard servicing activities.
Also part of Applied's new direction is an enhanced business strategy with respect to interface. Its Web Edits product is a Web-based strategy that streamlines the process of dealing with company-unique questions that apply to a submission or to a rating process. According to Johnston, this Web service invokes the company-unique questions for each of the companies identified by the agency and presents them in a single workflow. Web Edits are dynamic, meaning that only the questions that need to be addressed are invoked. In a quoting situation, for instance, if there are no youthful operators on the risk, no youthful operator questions are asked.
Carriers will also appreciate Web Edits because Applied has come up with a method of handling company-unique questions that is system independent. In the past when Applied would update TAM or Vision, the carriers would have to update their company-uniques. Now with Web Edits being run outside TAM and Vision, Applied can update the management system products as necessary and carriers can update their company-uniques as they need to. The release of one doesn't break the other. "It's going to make the carrier's lives a lot easier," Johnston says.
"Applied Systems understands that the world of our customers has evolved," Morgan says, "and Applied is much more flexible than it's been in the past. It's not technology alone--there needs to be an infrastructure, the strategy, the corporate will." Applied's new N2N strategy is one way the vendor is expressing this to the industry. *
For more information:
Applied Systems, Inc.
Phone: (800) 999-5368
Web site: www.appliedsystems.com