TECHNOLOGY

You say you want an Evolution

The eVo agency management system delivers powerful performance at a pleasing price

By Elisabeth Boone, CPCU

The history of agency automation is a colorful saga that covers the spectrum of human drama, from despair to hope, from frustration to exhilaration, and everything in between. From the clunky beige “dumb terminals,” minuscule data storage, and snail’s-pace processing of the 1970s, agency automation has evolved to the warp speeds, terabyte memory, and sleek black hardware of today.

Not only are today’s agency automation systems leaner, faster, and exponentially more functional, but they’re also being designed for a new generation of agency owners who know what they want—and don’t want—in a system that in most cases represents a substantial investment of money and time.

Bold solutions

A leader in developing agency automation solutions for the 21st century is Ken Butler, who in 2007 founded Evolution Agency Management, LLC, with headquarters in Norcross, Georgia. With a background in both agency systems and financial systems, Butler undertook to design a system that would work in agencies of all shapes and sizes, from a one-person, home-based shop to a multi-state organization with hundreds of users and a complex mix of business.

Called eVo, the system was launched in January 2008 and, Butler believes, represents the third generation of agency management systems.

“The first generation is large, all-inclusive, very pricey systems that generally are available only to larger agencies,” he says. “The second-generation systems are smaller and less expensive, with more limited functionality, and are useful mostly to personal lines agencies. As the third generation, eVo has much more functionality than second-generation systems and costs much less than those in the first generation,” he asserts. “Pricing starts at $200 a month for single agencies and increases for additional offices,” Butler explains. “There are no add-ons for support and training.”

What does an agency get for the money? Plenty, Butler claims—and it all starts with a document that he believes is unique in the industry.

Agent’s Bill of Rights

At the heart of eVo is the Agent’s Bill of Rights, which spells out in detail Evolution Agency Management’s commitment to agents who choose the eVo system. (The complete Bill of Rights can be seen on Page 71.)

“The agent should have certain rights in selecting and deploying systems,” Butler says. “Basically, these rights are openness and transparency in pricing, protection from price increases, freedom to host the system anywhere they want, and a guarantee as to the privacy of their data. I’m not aware of any other vendor that makes these promises or that openly publishes its price sheets.”

In designing and testing eVo, Butler says, he and his colleagues sought and acted on input from agents, and he believes that maintaining an ongoing dialogue with users is essential to ensure that the system can evolve to meet agents’ changing needs. “We value honest input from our users and rely on them to tell us what works and what needs to be tweaked,” he declares.

Broad functionality

A key factor that makes eVo stand apart from comparably priced competing systems, Butler points out, is its multi-agency/multi-office functionality. “Each individual user can see data only for its own office or agency, but management can view the whole picture,” he explains. “Data for each unit is stacked in an organization chart format, with no limits on how deep it can go or how many agencies or offices it can support. With eVo, management has access to both individual reporting and consolidated reporting.”

The sophisticated management reporting capability built into eVo includes retention analysis, employee activity analysis, book of business analysis, new business vs. renewal analysis, production by account size, top company analysis, and more.

Another feature that is highly valued by eVo users, Butler notes, is its full general ledger system, which provides separate accounting by sub-agency or office with full consolidated reporting capabilities. “Many systems in our price range just interface with an outside accounting system, which usually is not suitable for the account current process or multi-agency accounting,” he observes.

The eVo system provides full policy detail, Butler says. “Drivers, vehicles, and other data, all integrated with ACORD forms, are not normally found in systems at this price level,” he remarks.

Although eVo’s customers range from a single individual working out of his home to one of the nation’s largest privately owned retail agencies, Butler says, “We are an excellent choice for smaller agencies that are trying to grow. Many of these agencies achieve growth by acquiring other agencies or expanding into commercial lines,” he remarks. “No other system provides this level of support for multiple agencies and commercial lines processing at this price point.” As its name implies, Butler adds, eVo is designed to evolve as an agency grows and changes.

Other features of the eVo system are real-time company interface, policy download, direct bill commissions download, transactional filing, rating integration, claims management, expiration list, searchable user-defined fields, contact management, document management, word processing/mail merge, Outlook-style calendaring and scheduling, and hot links to other systems.

High marks from first user

As eVo’s first customer, Beth Block of Block Insurance Services in Oviedo, Florida, was delighted to find a vendor that actually listened to prospective users and took their concerns seriously. (The Block agency was the Rough Notes Marketing Agency of the Month in March 1995.)

Beth Block and her husband, Steven, established the agency in 1987 as a general lines operation. In 1990, the Blocks decided to focus on providing coverage for child care centers and private schools, and their agency now operates in all 50 states.

“I had a lot of conversations with Ken about what frustrated me about the systems that were available,” Beth Block says. “I felt as if I were being held captive by a vendor that raised our prices without enhancing the value of the services we were receiving. I also did not like the fact that our data was tied up in this system that gave me no ability to capture my data and use it without agreeing to pay the vendor’s increased prices,” Block says.

Even worse, she notes, “There were rumors about data being made available to third parties that had no business having access to it, and that made me very nervous. What if our information ended up in the hands of a competitor?”

The Agent’s Bill of Rights, Butler says, owes much to Block’s input. “I believe that the concerns I raised helped guide Ken’s thinking about how to assure agents that he was truly going to be different,” Block says.

Block Insurance Services began using the eVo system in early 2008, and Block says the vendor has made good on its commitment to agents in every way—beginning with allowing users to choose whether to host their own data or have it hosted on eVo’s servers. “The fact that we can host our data in-house is a huge plus for us,” Block declares.

Block is also impressed by the quality of eVo’s commercial lines support. “Our agency is 100% commercial lines,” she says. “Our total premium is $7 million and our average account size is $5,000, so we need a system that can efficiently process a high volume of transactions.

“For us, a system’s ability to handle agency bill and accounts current is critical,” she says. “That is an area that can cause a commercial lines agency a lot of grief, and eVo handles it brilliantly. For every carrier I deal with, I can see every invoice that I’ve generated, whether it’s been paid by the insured, and what was the effective date,” Block explains. “I can direct eVo to pay the carrier, to report to the carrier, or to leave the invoice unpaid. If I choose to pay the invoice, I can tell the system to generate my check and close this account current for the carrier.”

Multi-state user

The eVo system gets high praise from Gordy Bunch, founder, president, and chief executive officer of The Woodland Financial Group (TWFG). Based in the Houston area, TWFG distributes its products through a network of some 170 branch agents and independent agents in 17 states, and has approximately 400 individual users. The rapidly growing firm has more than 100,000 customers. TWFG is predominantly a personal lines operation, with 70% of its volume in that sector, 25% in commercial lines and 5% in life and health coverages.

Bunch, a former president of the PIA of Texas, shares Beth Block’s enthusiasm for eVo’s agent-focused philosophy and commitment to pricing transparency. Like her, he was unhappy with his previous vendor.

“I was on the user board of our previous vendor,” Bunch says, “and even with that influence and the feedback I provided, I was unable to persuade the vendor to create needed security for protecting our book of business from disgruntled producers or others. To me, having our entire database open so anyone could print out our client list was just too great a risk, especially given our multiple locations. Ken understood our concern and configured our system to address it,” Bunch says.

Internal security is also a high priority at TWFG, and here too Bunch is pleased with Butler’s grasp of his situation. “Ken worked with us to create producer management reports that give us a snapshot of each producer’s book of business,” Bunch says, “and that goes all the way up to an agency-level report. Because we have multiple locations, we have to get rather granular with our data. In most agency management systems, the data is pretty much lumped together.

“We really needed to break it down by both location and producer, and on top of that we wanted security at each of those levels,” Bunch continues. “In a lot of agencies, each producer is able to see the entire book of business, and I wanted the system to allow each producer to see only his book. With eVo, we’re able to do that.”

He adds, “We have a full imaging system built in, so we can attach almost any type of file, like a policy record or a client record, and do a year-over-year analysis. We can export many of our closed commission statements into Excel, which allows us to do more manipulation outside the system.”

eVo’s downloading capabilities are also a plus, says Bunch. “Not only can we download from the national carriers, but we also create custom download protocols for smaller regional companies that don’t typically use IVANS or don’t have the ACORD AL3 format,” he explains.

Like Block, Bunch wanted a vendor that would allow him to host his own data in-house, and he enjoys that flexibility with eVo. “We have complete confidence in our third-party host facility,” Butler asserts, “but we understand our customers’ security concerns and think they should be the ones to choose how and where to host their data.”

A family agency expands

Although the Moore Insurance Agency doesn’t operate on the scale of TWFG, the family-owned firm does have four branches in addition to its headquarters in Corpus Christi, Texas. Co-founder Gary Moore Jr., needed many of the same system features. In fact, Moore comments, “It was Gordy who told me about eVo, and I liked what I heard.”

Established in 2006 by Moore and his father, Moore Insurance Agency started using eVo in September 2008. Gary Moore Jr., says the previous systems they used “didn’t support a hierarchy like the one we’ve set up in our organization. We had to run multiple databases and different scripts. It was costing a fortune, and it really wasn’t working well. On the other hand, eVo does a great job of supporting our hierarchy.”

Moore also is pleased with eVo’s downloading and accounting capabilities. “Our previous systems didn’t do a very good job with homeowners downloads or commercial lines accounting,” he says. “With our multiple offices, having that functionality with eVo is huge—and it’s much more affordable than comparable systems from other vendors. The best quote I got for a system that would do what I needed was $25,000 down plus about $1,500 a month. I get the same functionality with eVo at a much lower price,” Moore says.

For years, if not decades, independent agents have yearned for a system vendor that listens. At Evolution Agency Management, LLC, Ken Butler is all ears.

For more information:
Evolution Agency Management, LLC
Web site: www.my-evo.com
Phone: (678) 992-2616