October 29, 2008 by Steve.

Every day, business travelers are putting the sensitive and confidential data of their organizations at risk when they travel through airports. Although companies are dependent upon on a mobile workforce, this mobility is putting companies at risk of having a data breach if a laptop containing sensitive information is lost or stolen.

Sponsored by Dell, Ponemon Institute conducted a study, Airport Insecurity: The Case of Lost Laptops, to understand the current risks posed to sensitive and confidential data contained in the laptops of business travelers. According to the study:

• Business travelers lose more than 12,000 laptops per week in U.S. airports.

• Only 33% of laptops lost and found in airports are reclaimed.

• Over 53% of business travelers say that their laptops contain confidential or sensitive information. However, 65% of these travelers admit they do not take steps to protect or secure the information contained on their laptop.

• According to U.S. airport representatives, the most common airport locations where laptops are lost include security checkpoints (40%) and departure gates (23%).

This study highlights the fact that every laptop in your agency should be secured and encrypted to make sure that personal customer information is protected in the event the laptop is lost or stolen.

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October 22, 2008 by Steve.

Microsoft recently launched a new Web site called Photosynth that creates 3D views from digital photos. With nothing more than a digital camera and some inspiration, you can use Photosynth to transform regular digital photos into a 3D, 360-degree experience.

Photosynth is a mixture of two independent breakthroughs: the ability to reconstruct the scene or object from flat photographs, and the technology to bring that experience to virtually anyone over the Internet. Using techniques from the field of computer vision, Photosynth examines images for similarities to each other and uses that information to estimate the shape of the subject and the vantage point each photo was taken from. Photosynth was inspired by the breakthrough research on Photo Tourism from the University of Washington and Microsoft Research.

It is easy to use. Using any digital camera, take a series of pictures of a scene or object (such as a client’s factory). Make sure you overlap each photo. Take as many pictures as you want, and take them from as many different angles as you can. Fifty to 100 pictures should be sufficient. Upload the photos to Photosynth and the service will “stitch” the pictures together, creating a panoramic view you can navigate using a browser.

Photosynth provides an interesting new way to deliver visual information to a client or underwriter—and it’s currently free.

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October 16, 2008 by Steve.

During a recent presentation, I noticed a younger person in the very back of the room working on his computer as he was listening to me talk. (And no, he wasn’t taking a continuing education class.) During one of the breaks, he approached me and said, “We have to talk.”

He explained that he had started a new agency less than two years ago that concentrates on personal lines coverages for individuals with high net worth and high valued homes. He had two additional full-time employees and did not have a physical office. He was receiving most of his leads through Internet lead aggregators, such as Netquote and InsureMe.

As I listened to this “20-something” describe his insurance agency, I was struck by his creativity and willingness to expand beyond what had been done in the past. I’ve since started an e-mail conversation with him so that I can explore how he uses technology to support his organization. I wanted to know how he tracks client information. He uses Salesforce.com. Following are some excerpts from one e-mail conversation:

Q: What’s lacking in current agency management systems?

A: Mostly, they are all commercial insurance driven. (And rightfully so… with their distribution model and the fact that 99% of agencies are general in nature… they’d be foolish to make a niche product for personal lines.) If I have to choose to create workarounds in an existing commercial agency management system or just build one from the ground up using my exact terms and processes, I prefer the custom ground up idea.

The major plus of an existing agency management system would be company integration… upload/download. Because I’m so niched… my primary company barely does anything with upload/download as it is. If I download partial information, I’m really not that much better off than downloading nothing. In the end, if I have to log into the company portal to get “real” up-to-date information… download isn’t that impressive. Not to mention that we have a low target for number of accounts… say 300 to 400. With that low number, using a people-driven process to move data from the company to our system isn’t all that impractical… particularly if we move to outsourced/overnight processing either overseas or in our own backyard (i.e. $12 per hour to look at all the changes posted in [the carrier] system and to move that data into our agency management system).

Q: What are the advantages of SalesForce.com?

A: SalesForce’s “Long Tail” model is its biggest strength. Because SalesForce is simply a platform without a predesigned set of usage guidelines, their focus is keeping the main infrastructure on the cutting edge. I’ve been thinking of it like a box of Legos. They’re constantly adding pieces that we can add to our custom build, so long as we don’t “misuse” pieces. The most exciting part is the SalesForce App Exchange. People can build their own apps and customizations and sell them to people using SalesForce. This means if a guy in India wants to make a few bucks, he can build a .wav to text converter that works seamlessly inside SalesForce.

Bottom line

Traditional agency management systems will be around for a long time. Yet, how many young people are entering the industry without preconceived notions of what a data management system should be? Certainly one young agent does not create a trend. That said, this agent is using (and will use) whatever technology platform he can find that will help run his business.

Posted in Cool Tools, General, Agency Management Systems, Opinion | Print | 2 Comments »

October 7, 2008 by Steve.

Jim Kellner, Chairman and CEO of Applied, announced a new agency management system—Applied Systems Epic™, at the ASCnet Users Group annual convention last month. The Applied Epic system has been under development for several years. While the company has tightly controlled information about the new system, some information began to surface several months ago.

During the announcement, Kellner called the new system “a simple-to-use, secure, scalable, rich Internet application that is free of browser-based inefficiency.” Applied Systems Epic is the culmination of “a lengthy and intensive undertaking to create a new system, to construct it on totally new architecture that would be flexible and scalable for any agency or brokerage.”

He emphasized that the new system is not an update of any existing system, including Applied’s 25-year-old flagship, TAM (The Agency Manager®). He said the company is committed to continuing development of TAM as well as its other systems, Vision and DORIS. The Epic system will be in general release in the United States on November 12, and in Canada in 2009. TAAR will take an in-depth look at the new system in a future issue.

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