I, first, want to explain what this post is in regard to, then, I'd like to ask this group a question.
I and my firm are developing a series of industry specific software applications, intended to help insurance agents, real estate salespeople & brokers, and mortgage originators, by offering a cost-effective CRM (Customer Relationship Management) solution to making more sales, to help agents become better organized, and to overall improve agents/egency efficiency. Although our entire staff is comprised of software developers, ALL of us have worked in other related fields. I, for instance, have worked as a mortgage originator who upsold supplemental insurance to my clients. I also sold real estate. The problem, was that the software that the firms I worked for was either proprietory, or lacking in some area(s).
Our flagship product will be geared toward insurance agents, and is already in development. Our database model is a highly scalable, MS Sql Server-based multi-user implementation, built on the latest and greatest Microsoft .NET technology. Initially, our versioning system is set up to build an "LE" (or Light Edition) product, for a plethora of reasons, most importantly, to see if there is a market for a bold new application, and, to simply get the end-user better tools to do their job.
We have looked at (among others, listed alphabetically):
Agency Software, Inc., <a href='http://www.agencysoftware.com/' target='_blank'>http://www.agencysoftware.com/</a>
DORIS Insurance Systems, <a href='http://www.dorissystems.com/' target='_blank'>http://www.dorissystems.com/</a>
InStar, <a href='http://www.instarcorp.com/us/' target='_blank'>http://www.instarcorp.com/us/</a>
LifeLink, <a href='http://www.lifelinkcorp.com/' target='_blank'>http://www.lifelinkcorp.com/</a>
QuickFile, <a href='http://www.quickfile.net/' target='_blank'>http://www.quickfile.net/</a>
QuickQuote (Parent to QuickFile), <a href='http://www.qqonline.com/' target='_blank'>http://www.qqonline.com/</a>
The Agency Advantage, <a href='http://www.agencyadvantage.com/' target='_blank'>http://www.agencyadvantage.com/</a>
Your Insurance Office, <a href='http://www.yourinsuranceoffice.com/' target='_blank'>http://www.yourinsuranceoffice.com/</a>
In a perfect world, if you were to take all of the above said products, pour them in to a blender, and filter-off the best features that each had to offer, you would have a premiere product B)
This is where we have reached a quagmire. Our epiphany. We intend to bring to market an affordable (ESRP of $399.95 one time fee) user-friendly system, that incorporates seven basic functions:
[A] Appointments & Calendaring
Clients
[C] Policies
[D] Reporting & Metrics
[E] Administrative Functions
[F] Notes & Journaling
[G] Goals & Goal Setting
As a side bar, the "industry," or, people like us that develop software, are typically moving to a "pay per month" (and/or) online product. There are many features and benefits to this type of setup; including "real timing" the process -- making your data available anywhere, anytime. Some of the drawbacks of this type of system can be one-time upfront costs, and "per seat" (or per user, per month) recurring costs. Again, the industry is moving to this type of model.
After our "LE" version gets us some good feedback, we intend to move into the more complex integration of Acord forms (very big financial investment to integrate in to the development environment for an upstart company) and RTE (Real Time Enterprising) technology: making the product available anywhere, anytime, to it's users. There will have to be different pricing models for "hosted" RTE setups (this is where the market has moved to) since, the database is essentially offsite, somewhere in cyberspace. We intend for our core product to be both Internetwork-able AND intranetwork-able; meaning, the database will be available as a stand-alone, potentially as a peer-to-peer system, at the office via the corporate LAN, or, while at home or on the road, via remote access, VPN, via HTML (or a web interface), or other corporate remoting process.
The last leg of integration will be to build application interfaces, where we can get our product to talk to large carriers (for data transfer and paperless integration), large pre-existing systems (that may already have their "fixed" system in place, and are not, nor will not migrate their systems), and disparate systems (ex: one independent office, with four agents, all using different CRM solutions) all talking to one-another. This is almost a pipe-dream, but for geeks like us, where there's a will, there's a way (We::TAWTAW).
Possible feedback topics for this group:
1) As for the above stated list (letters [A] thru [G]), how would you rate their importance?
2) What features do you want in an "agency" type application?
3) How portable does your system need to be, i.e., do you need to access your database from multiple locations (Home, Office, at a seminar or training, at a client's suggestion location)?
4) What system do you currently use?
5) What shortfalls (if any) does your current system have?
6) What are the best features of your current system?
7) How often do you use scanned-in documents?
Do you use the built-in forms (like Word documents, etc.) frequently?9) Do you customize forms or documents?
10) If so (customize forms), which types of forms/letters/documents, and for what purpose?
11) Does your system currently incorporate Acord forms?
12) Do/Does you/your office use Acord forms?
13) Do you use only pre-printed, or company-supplied forms?
14) Does your system talk to your PDA, BlackBerry, or other wireless device? (PDA's :: HP iPaq, Garmin iQue, Toshiba Pocket PC, Palm, Dell Axim, Sharp Zaurus, Sony Clie)
15) Is wireless portability important to you, or your company?
I am sure that I/we have a million more questions. and if there's anything that you think is important that hasn't been touched on, please advise.
In closing, I'd like to add that the design model we are currently developing integrates well with the current Microsoft Office family of products (Outlook, Word, Excel, etc.) and we will look to maintain this relationship throughout the development cycle. We want to offer a product (and or service) that is cost effective, is feature-rich, and integrates well with existing systems. Our primary operating system requirements will be for Microsoft XP Professional, with Service Pack 2. Why? because XP Pro / SP2 is faster, more secure, more scalable, and the best business or personal operating system that Microsoft has ever developed. If you're not using Windows XP now, you should be
... and, chances are, you probably will be in the near future. Did I mention that I'm also an optomist