Agency Management System

[resistencia13]

Thanks for the info. Have a great day!

[runningw/thedolphins]

hi there ~ I am Interested how your final decision ended up ? We are looking at options for moving away from AMS360 as well ?

Thanks

[pageltd]

There seems to be no consensus, no compelling reason to switch (my phone will be ringing with sales calls soon), all software programs are too expensive, nothing is really that secure, there is no silver bullet.

We're still using an ancient piece of insurance software that gets the job done for our policy holders. That seems to be a compelling enough reason to sell me a new system. It's not. It costs nothing (and I really mean nothing) and does a whole lot. It does NOT 1) Make me coffee 2) Get the mail for me (yup, the USPS is still in business) 3) Scan the mail 4) Respond to my emails. It's free...and while free is NOT the most important thing.

Stable, capable, persistent. Slow and steady win the race...just like the tortoise and the hare.

What it does is this. When a client calls our office, we can pull up their information in seconds. We are usually able to solve the problem, answer the question, pay the bill, make the change, a few seconds later. The reality is that SEMCI was a dream, as is Real-Time (I know, the Real-Time hawks will disagree). Bottom line, I can can beat anyone in a race using my secure password manager, logging into a company site to make a change...against a CSR using Real-Time. Any day!

That's IF the company website is up and running and the billing system does what it's supposed to do. I'm not faulting company IT. They have a monumental job and it's not easy to fit all the pieces of the puzzle together. BUT, the client does not care about that and it lands on our shoulders.

Different topic, different thread.

The Real-Time fanatics will probably argue that Real-Time documents everything...maybe, but we need crystal clear notes that tell a story and give me information, not just system notes that describe a function that just happened. Any E&O seminar will you that. It's insurance 101.

Document, document, document!

It's also part of relationship management. That, they will not argue with...

We supplement the very capable free software that with a CRM (I dislike that term because I think it downplays the importance of people ). It manages contact, tasks, calendar, email and. It functions in a different way that our AMS, is super flexible and very cheap. While cheap is not the most important thing, it's a good thing.

Maybe I'm totally wrong.

[Shawna64]

Love Love love my TAM. If you learn it you can make it do almost anything. Not going to EPIC for the reasons stated here, many friends in the business did and regret it.

[resistencia13]

Hello all!

I know some users here were shopping around for new management system. Has anyone recently switch from AMS360? If so are you happy with you new system? Which system is? I am desperate as I just switched to another system from AMS360. I will not say the system just yet as I am trying to work through it and see if I can stay, but so far it seems that as much as I hate AMS360, it makes financial sense to come back unless my new system can somehow accommodate my basic needs. As currently my staff is copy and pasting information just to send an email to client with basic information.

I really do not get what goes through programmers/developers head when designing these system!!!! Is like the system are being design by people from another planet. I am in my 4th system in 10 years and honestly, all I can say is that so far the best system of all was Instar (before vertafore purchased and stop servicing it). If you are in Instar, my recommendation is do not switch until you can fully test drive the system you intend to purchase. Preferrably try to find someone that owns the system and go work/use the system for a full day or more on a real life scenario.....I tested my current system at least 5 times, asked every relevant question I thought of and requested to see how some features work and still did not get it right. My staff hate the system and I love some features and hate other...At this point, I am seriously considering hiring a developer to create a custom system for my agency. At this date in age, you would think that management system will understand the needs of agent and create a friendly/common sense system, but I have learned the hard way that common sense is not that common.

For what is worth, note that AMS360 raped me on my way out.....They charged me almost 10K to give me my data back and obviously I have no choice, but to pay it as the alternative was to go live on my new system with no data. Also they expect you to notify them at least 90 days in advance to remove user because it takes effects. So if an employee quit or is fired, you cannot just remove the employee as they will not stop billing you for 90 days after the request is received. I will come back and update once I either get a resolution or switch back to AMS360 from my current system.....Yeah, I know it makes no sense to switch back after going through a conversion and over 20K later on associated cost, but at this point I have been with the new system for 60 days and productivity is down due to lack of specific feature, which no amount of training will be able to make up for it as you cannot make a rock bleed! So I either keep being less productive or go back to my old system as bad as it's it's more productive than my current system.

If anyone out there switch from AMS360 and is happy with their new system please advice as I would like to explore other system before switching back to AMS360. Also there is any insurance software developer out there please contact me as I really want my own custom system so I can stop depending on people that know nothing about insurance make the decision on the way my system perform (although they all claims to be developed by an insurance agent, but after getting to know the software is hard to believe)....Sorry about the rant, but I am hoping for someone to save me from going back to AMS360.

[pageltd]

PM me. Let's talk.

[RUinsured]

Great info here. I'm in the same boat as a lot of you guys on the board. Tired of Vertafore AMS360 inefficiencies, constant annual increases, forcing you to upgrade to their new product as they make your existing system obsolete to charge you more, etc etc etc. I can literally go on.

Looking at Agency Master, Now Certs, Nexsure, and TechCanary. Update to follow.

[itc79]

Used TAM, AMS360, and Nexsure.

Here is our take, AMS and TAM are both owned by large companies who care very little about their customers. If you are very vanilla agency with no expectations of doing anything atypical for the insurance industry (integrations, data analytics, or anything that wasn't around in 2005), they are a fine choice. When a company boosts it's faxing capabilities, than you know where they are and intend to be.

Nexsure - smaller company that is much more ahead of the time. Adopted new capabilities like APIs well before Applied or Vertafore did. The bad, they do a LOT of things, but NONE of them well. They remind of the Motorola Q smart phone from 2005. It was great on spec sheet, but if you owned one you would not have been happy with any of the features (MP3 player, email, calendar games, etc). I would say that while Nexsure goes to market as a more advanced solution it still has a lot of growing pains. Reporting for examples is absolutely terrible as its based on a Crystal Reporting platform from mid-nineties. Still way better than AMS and TAM, but I would recommend taking a longer look at all systems.

[pageltd]

So basically we're back to the idea that there is a need for a new system that will do things well, but not try to do everything.

[itc79]

I think agencies should invest 3-6 months to make a proper selection. Require vendors to complete a formal RFP and provide references of companies that have recently went live with a similar set of functionality as you would be. This is a huge decision, don't take it lightly.

I'd also warn against having one vendor do too much. Find something that has the ability to integrate so you can use other solutions outside of the AMS.

Any yes - there is still a need for a better vendor that sticks to providing a product that does the core insurance processes well. Nexsure, Vertafore, and Applied and not there yet.

[pageltd]

3-6 months to do what? You don't know anything about a software system unless you've had a chance to run it through it's paces in a real world scenario. Most software vendors will not let you access a working demo, and if they do the time period will not be adequate (and there will not be enough data to work with) to make an informed decision. If you're a big agency, I suppose you could demand an RFP, but a small agency not really. Any agency is making a leap of faith when they switch vendors. Data conversion is time consuming, and inconsistent from system to system. There is really no standard for the level/amount of data that can be transferred/converted. Sure, ACORD and Ivans have their standards, but as far as data that can be converted it's hit or miss with the vendors. These are the reason why it's hard for some to switch, even if they want to. The bigger companies have an absolute choke hold on the insurance software segment of the insurance industry.

[pageltd]

I totally agree that you should have multiple tools to do business. For example, we use Docusign to obtain e-signatures. We also use RPost to send encrypted emails, with the Gmail plugin (we use GSuite which is business grade email). RPost offers a digital signature component but at this point we're used to Docussign, it's a solid service, and we're on a legacy program which allows for unlimited signatures.

[resistencia13]

You are absolutely right when you said that some system have lots of functionality appears to be efficient, but when put to practice they are useless. As per 3-6 months investment, I disagree. I believe if know what you want and know your agency's need you can know if the system is right for you within 1-3 months. I did with AMS360, but could not go back to Instar as it was being discontinued. With my current system (Nexsure), I already know it's not going to work unless management makes some of the changes I requested, which by the way are not pretty basic. Nexsure has lots of potential, but like you said many features, but do not work well and lots of reports, but cannot get the information out without jumping through multiple hoops and/or having to export to excel and then manipulate excel using formulas.

Like George say unfortunately switching system is a leap of faith as sometimes they look awesome until you actually start dealing with servicing, download, search property locations, sending emails, etc that is when you really see the issues. I was very through during my demo and still missed many things that are now hunting me.

You mentioned there are other options out of there. What systems are you referring to? What system do you run now?

I think agencies should invest 3-6 months to make a proper selection. Require vendors to complete a formal RFP and provide references of companies that have recently went live with a similar set of functionality as you would be. This is a huge decision, don't take it lightly.

I'd also warn against having one vendor do too much. Find something that has the ability to integrate so you can use other solutions outside of the AMS.

Any yes - there is still a need for a better vendor that sticks to providing a product that does the core insurance processes well. Nexsure, Vertafore, and Applied and not there yet.

[pageltd]

We need a secure open source solution with useful API's.

[itc79]

Our Agency is using Nexsure now. Biggest issue is reports. They said there is a solution called their "Data Warehouse", but ran a demo on it and it was still a static reporting system that had to programed for each report and field you need.

I stand by 3 to 6 months if you are switching. Make sure you include everyone from accounting to the CSRs. If a company won't provide a response to an RFP with references than move on. This is a decision that has haunted us for years and switching out costs more than when we switched. I don't have a recommendation for a new system, but when finally decide to move we will be exhaustive and possible hire a consultant to help.