A large insurance company, the parent company of the MSA group, offers personal and commercial lines products that are designed to fit the needs of Main Street America. Today the insurance company is a multifaceted company, writing business in 16 states and partnering with the best independent agents in the industry, backed by superior, personal service.

The company knew that their employees spent an inordinate amount of time trying to retrieve data, which prevented them from spending that time working with customers. Sometimes, it was impossible for marketing reps to access needed information to provide to customers. Furthermore, company managers did not have the information and tools to review and manage field marketing performance.

The company wanted to consolidate data that was stored in multiple formats and locations, spread among a mainframe, various databases, Excel spreadsheets, and on paper.

The inconsistent data and overlapping analytical tools also created other problems. Work was duplicated as staff in different regions created their own Excel spreadsheets to analyze data and administrators had to manually re-enter data for analysis, making information flow and collaboration difficult.

The insurance company sought assistance from CTE's technology and business experts to establish "Agency Management @ the Desktop" to improve information flow and collaboration throughout the company and to automate data collection and analysis.

The company began the project by participating in CTE's Cambridge Executive Workshop (CEW), an intensive program where corporate executives and staff collaborate to identify new ideas and move them to deployment. During the CEW, the insurer set goals to improve the data management system and find a means to better leverage the company's core business knowledge and customer experience to create growth and profitability opportunities.

Through the CEW, the company was able to identify ways to leverage their core business knowledge, customer experience, and data to find new channels and tools to establish value-added relationship with their agents and the agents' customers. The insurer used the Collaboration Architecture from CTE to:

• Develop an architecture enabling consolidation of data in disparate systems with flexibility for the changing business environment;
  
• Create a custom prototype of the solution;
  
• Provide a framework for Rapid Application Development (RAD); and
  
• Develop a deployment roadmap to quickly capture maximum business benefits.

Benefits

"Agency Management @ the Desktop" will give the insurance company a clear view of all agencies and loss ratio indicators. Because of this, the company predicts a one-percent reduction in loss ratio, which means an additional $8 million in 2004 and $10 million in 2005 added to their bottom line.

With the automation offered by the new system, time previously spent on monotonous data gathering can be leveraged for new business development and working with existing agencies to improve the company's share of business. The company estimates that each agent will gain a half to full day of time each week, with the total time savings expected to be around 10,000 hours, and they plan to focus that recovered employee time on new business development.

In addition, the company expects the quality of business to improve, now that they have the time to focus on selecting the right customers. A 2.5 percent gain in new revenue by 2005 will add $1.25 million to their bottom line.

In short, this solution from CTE gives the insurer a platform for the company to create new business opportunities, improve customer service and satisfaction, and increase profitability.