April 23, 2008 by Steve.

Moofing, a verb, is derived from the acronym for “mobile, out of office.” Moofers abandon the workplace between meetings, taking laptops and BlackBerrys to the local Starbucks—or anyplace else where they can escape interruption by talkative coworkers.

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April 16, 2008 by Steve.

I’ve been around this industry a long time. Over the years, I have had the privilege of participating in many projects that attempted to work on improving how agents, agencies, insurance companies, and vendors work. While I believe that progress has been made, there are many gaps in our industry. The industry as a whole needs to work on closing these gaps in order to make a profound difference in the profitability and viability of independent insurance agents.

Every problem we encounter in the industry also presents an opportunity for those willing to take bold steps to fill in the gaps. Here are a few examples:

The communication gap and opportunity—how do we build trust and develop deeper relationships with our prospects and clients in a fast-paced, even frenetic, world?

The generation gap and opportunity—how do we understand the coming generations and provide products and services that they embrace?

The expectation gap and opportunity—how do we begin to understand and respond to the changing expectations of our clients?

The workflow gap and opportunity—how do we streamline workflows so that we spend less time simply processing transactions and more time meeting client needs?

The training gap and opportunity—how do we help our staff learn new software and keep up with the constant changes we need to make to stay current?

The systems gap and opportunity—how do we get all of the hardware and software systems we need to use to communicate with each other so that data and information can be shared with whomever needs it?

This year’s HIGH-TECC conference in Vail, Colo. is specifically designed to help you explore these gaps and maximize the opportunities that are available to agents, insurance companies, and vendors that are willing to look forward. As we begin to fill in the gaps, our organizations are better positioned to meet the needs of clients, staff, and business partners.

At HIGH-TECC, you’ll also discover ways to:

• Develop new strategies to attract and keep customers.
• Sell successfully against low-priced competition.
• Build a strategic long-term plan.
• Reduce your chances of failure.
• Boost your profits and your bottom line.

If you’ve ever thought about attending HIGH-TECC and wondered if it is really worth the time, effort, and money, I would suggest you talk with some of the agents who come year after year. These agents attend repeatedly because they understand the value of working “on” their agency, not just “in” it. They take the time to focus on the big picture, including where they want their agency to be in the future. HIGH-TECC enables you to get answers and solutions from both experts and other agents. It’s a platform where you can get “tried and true” answers to your real- world problems.

Some people have asked, “Why Vail?” The answer is simple: 1) It’s a great place to get away and focus on your business, and 2) Vail in the summertime is a wonderful place to vacation with your family, if you choose.

Again this year, we have a stellar group of presenters—a “dream team” if you will, that you’ll find informative, stimulating, and instructive. And since we value one-on-one interaction, we intentionally keep HIGH-TECC small in size. (Because of that, I encourage you to register early. We’ve even included incentives for you to do so—including a discount—just so it gets to the top of your “to do” list.)

It’s not too early to plan for your summer now. As we all know, July will be here before we know it so go to www.HighTecc2008.com and register now.

I look forward to seeing you at HIGH-TECC 2008!

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April 14, 2008 by Steve.

Microsoft recently announced plans to provide a software-as-a-service offering not just to the large enterprises already eligible for such a service from Microsoft, but to companies of all sizes. Through the new Microsoft Online Services, businesses with less than 5,000 employees will be able to subscribe to Internet-based applications from Microsoft and its partners instead of buying hardware servers and software licenses.

Initially, the company will offer subscription-based applications around e-mail and its SharePoint teamware. Microsoft has already provided similar services for enterprises with more than 5,000 employees.

US-based customers can register to take part in a limited beta of the new service at www.mosbeta.com. 

We have been an advocate of the software-as-a-service (SaaS) model for some time. It is particularly well suited to agencies because it allows them to use sophisticated software without the pain of having to manage software and hardware in-house.

There are a number of examples of other product offerings that utilize this model. Microsoft is trying to head off similar services from Google (Google Apps), Yahoo, and other firms like Dell.

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April 7, 2008 by Steve.

FindMeOn (www.findmeon.com) is a profile management service that connects online identities across social networks, blogs, and photo sharing sites. This is a meta-social network that you can use to update all your sites simultaneously. You can hide select profiles from coworkers or family and use identity controls to share only the content you want.

PeekYou (www.peekyou.com) is a site that enables users to search for people by first and last name, username, tags, or location. The aggregated profile pages contain bios and links to blogs and social networks. They also have modules for RSS feeds, so you can see what people are saying on their blogs and on Twitter (www.twitter.com).

Pipl (www.pipl.com), a people search engine, crawls deeper than most to include social networks, blogs, and publicly available information such as addresses, birthdays, SEC filings, court records, patents, and more.

Spock (www.spock.com) aggregates a person’s profile by crawling blogs, photo sharing sites, and social networking profiles. Users can vote on tags used to describe you.

Wink (www.wink.com) searches for people by name, location, school, work, and interest by crawling social network sites. The site plans to also start crawling blogs, photos, and general Web pages. You can create and share your own Wink profile.

Zoominfo (www.zoominfo.com) is a business information search engine. It delivers comprehensive, easy to read profiles of 37 million people and 3.5 million companies. Search for prospects using targeted criteria including title, company name, location, industry, and company size. Zoominfo delivers business information you can’t find anywhere else, such as the person’s work history, educational background, and board memberships.

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April 2, 2008 by Steve.

While Google continues to capture the majority of Web searches, there are many specialized search engines that are worth knowing about and using. The Tampa, Fla.-based RedZee (www.redzee.com) is one example. The company says their technology makes it possible to produce the top 100 Web pages that match queries, instead of the conventional top 10 search results found on Google and other text-based search engines.

RedZee Search 2.0 displays search results as fanned Web page images. You can quickly peruse the search results by simply mousing over the images and then clicking on the Web site you want to see.

“We believe pictures are worth a thousand words, and we’re bringing that philosophy to our search engine,” says John Stewart, president of RedZee Search. “Visuals make it so much easier to see what you like rather than read what you like.”

Almost 85% of searchers settle for what they find on that first page, even if they didn’t find exactly what they were looking for. Although desired results are more than likely buried deep in the list, most people do not have the time or the patience to read through page after page of text-based listings. RedZee Search still uses text, meta tags, and other text-based tools to scan Web pages to match search criteria. But instead of producing the results in text format, they’re listed visually.

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