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 [1] 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.