Have you read an article or brochure lately about insurance technology and came away overwhelmed by the fact that you don’t understand XML, SPX, .NET and SOAP? Don’t let it bother you. As an agent, you should not be expected to keep up with all these technical articles on the advancements in the technology “de jour.” I think independent agents and brokers have been bombarded with too much technology. It’s time we let agents focus on their real jobs – sell and service customers.
Don’t get me wrong, technology is a wonderful thing – it is the business I am in after all. Technology possesses the tremendous ability to provide efficiencies to business processes. However, it is more important to understand how to properly use the technology to your advantage than it is to understand the intricacies of how technology actually works.
For example, I know how to use my office phone, cell phone, home phone and computer modem. I can use these to communicate with anyone in the world, regardless of the type of phone and service provider they use. However, I do not have a clue as to how it all works. I do not know anything about switching stations, packets or PBX systems. The phone companies have made certain that I know how I can benefit from their services, but they do not waste my time trying to get me to understand the engineering behind it.
Likewise, the greatest thing technology can do in the insurance industry is to insulate technology from agents, while allowing them to reap the benefits of the technology. Our job is to make it as seamless as the telephone.
The Internet has offered our industry new opportunities, and with it, new technologies. The Internet has allowed us to offer new methods of communication between customers, agents and companies. In the early days of the Internet, everyone focused on web sites – getting people to come to your agency site, or company site. But it is important to note that the Internet by itself does not offer a new business model; it merely offers faster and more flexible methods of communication.
For the past several years, the focus in Internet development for the insurance industry has been to use the power of the Internet for data communications between agencies and companies – more specifically, directly connecting agency systems with company systems. This is where technologies such as XML, SPX, .NET and SOAP come in. They are all designed to promote and manage the communication between agency systems and company systems – seamlessly and in real-time.
The engineering to make all of this work is happening on many fronts. IBM and Microsoft have laid the frameworks. ACORD has set the specifications for the insurance industry with ACORD XML and SPX. But as agents, you should not be expected to understand these frameworks and specifications. Not that these aren’t important – the ACORD standards are designed to make it easier for independent agents to communicate with multiple companies, and agents should support that work.
However, it is the benefits of this work – rather than the engineering behind it – that are important, and those benefits are huge. Agents can process policy transactions, and retrieve account status information, directly between their agency systems and the company systems, with the click of a mouse button, at exactly the time they need it: A customer has a request, and “click” the agent has an answer – without delays, phone calls or faxes.
In order to receive these benefits, agents do need to make sure the technology deployed in their businesses possesses the technology to deliver the desired benefits. You should be aware of how technology can help your agency and then allow your agency to apply that to its practices. Stay on the latest operating systems and have upgraded hardware. However, it is not important to teach your staff the structure of an XML document.
Often our industry gets so carried away with technology that we forget we’re in the insurance business to take care of customers. Teaching agents the intricacies of ACORD XML standards is like teaching my mother about HTML standards – when all she wants to do is surf the Internet. All she really needs to know is how to turn on her computer, how to connect to the Internet, and how to use a browser.
Just like my mother wants to surf the Internet, agents just want to write insurance. So they rightly should be focused on successfully providing the highest levels of sales and service to their customers as cost efficiently as possible. Technology helps agents accomplish that. But remember it’s more important to understand how to properly use the technology than it is to understand how the technology actually works. So it’s okay if you don’t understand what those technology types are talking about.
Doug Johnston (djohnston@appliedsystems.com) is executive vice president of Applied Systems, a leading supplier of technology to the insurance industry.
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