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. However lack of information transparency limited NGM’s responsiveness.

The insurance company provides a number of online tools or web capabilities for the agents to speed up manual transactions and to provide reports to the agent. Some examples of transactions that can be performed through the insurance company’s web capabilities are putting in a policy change request (PCR) or requesting a quote online (Quick Quote). The idea for these web capabilities is to make it easier for the agents to do business with the insurance company. the insurance company wants to track the utilization by the agents of these web capabilities to maximize usage, make sure the web capabilities are easy to use, reduce processing time for the agents.

To overcome their obstacles, the insurance company approached CTE.

The insurance company participated in CTE’s Cambridge Executive Workshop (CEW). A typical CEW brings together executives, managers, end users, and other stakeholders to identify innovative ideas and quickly implement them as solutions. During the workshop CTE proposed an application that would provide reports with metrics about how many transactions are being performed online, what the error rates are on these transactions, etc.

There are two views into the application:

The field/marketing view - This includes the internal the insurance company field representatives and their supervisors who are trying to get the agents to use the web capabilities that are currently available. They need to know why the agents may not be using the web capabilities so they can help to increase usage. The reports that CTE developed will provide a roll-up of utilization metrics with drilldown functionality so the field representatives can quickly figure out which agents are not using the web capabilities, then drilldown for more information on why not.

The product team view - Product teams are responsible for making sure the commercial lines and personal lines are profitable. Regarding web capabilities, they are responsible for developing the web capabilities for the agents to make it easier for agents to work with the insurance company. They would need to figure out what needs to be developed next to support the agents best.

The proposed solution will help the insurance company become a valued partner to its agency due to the following reasons:

• Improved cycle times
  
• Credible data
  
• Ability to measure and benchmark productivity
  
• Ability to provide information on demand
  
• Informed spending and project tracking
  
• Ability to provide detailed information
  
• Performance measurement
  
• Targeted approach to driving utilization.