It has been a couple of years since Texas-based Barnard Donegan Insurance moved to a .NET-based agency management system. In that time, the firm has added offices, replaced a paper-shuffle with document imaging, and saved as much as an hour and a half each day in the reduction of repetitive entry tasks.

“It has really helped us to expand some,” says Martin Morris, Barnard Donegan operations manager, about the AMS 360 system from Bothell, WA-based AMS Services that the firm adopted in an effort to improve efficiency. “We’ve expanded our coverage area and added locations.”

Prior to the use of AMS, the company’s offices were connected via expensive T1 lines, Morris notes. “With 360, we have been able to use the Internet-based server, which allows us to operate six locations on the same server,” he says. The full-service agency founded in 1911 offers personal and commercial lines, serving approximately 8,500 individuals and families and 1,500 business concerns in the San Antonio-corridor area in Texas.

Shortly after moving to AMS 360, the firm also adopted the platform’s document imaging tools, allowing it to scan documents and store them for easy retrieval.

“We can attach imaged documents to customer files as activities. That way we can easily keep track of documents and can shred hard copy documents after imaging,” Morris says. In terms of storage and retrieval, customer files contain all customer related documents in electronic form, and the search function is quick, easy to use, a major shift from a traditional file-cabinet based storage system. The firm estimates it has reduced paper costs by 50 percent.

The combination of an online agency management system and document imaging has helped the firm restructure its customer services team so that customer service representatives (CSRs) are distributed, rather than all based in one location.

“They used to all be in the main office. Now, the mail still comes into the main office, but it’s sorted and faxed or emailed to different CSRs at different locations. Voice over IP allows calls to the central switchboard to be dispersed to different locations so that callers don’t know from what office they are being serviced,” he says. Meanwhile, walk-in customers to branch locations can find customer service assistance available on site.

A marked time savings comes in the area of comparative ratings.

“Before there was a lot of time spent on individual company Web sites,” Morris says. “Now, you can write it up one time and enter it with multiple companies that way.” In addition, information from the individual insurance companies is automatically downloaded back into AMS 360. The company estimates it may have saved as much as 180 minutes a day by eliminating the time spent on individual Web sites.

Seamless point-and-click integration with Microsoft Outlook, Excel and Word has made the user interface familiar and easy to work with for staff. In addition, the Web nature of the system has enabled some staff to work from home part time.

For the agency, another major benefit has come in the area of data storage and management.

“If you maintain your own server, you have to do your own backups and load your own updates. With 360, you don’t have to do that. We have a full time IT person here, but he has cut back on what he has to do to maintain any updates – they are all loaded by AMS.”

In addition, the data storage and security of the data far surpasses anything the agency would have been able to accomplish on its own.

“Of course they back up the data and they back it up with triple redundancy. That’s something we never would have been able to do on our own,” Morris says.

Overall, Morris says the move to the Web-based system has helped to modernize the operations of the agency and position it well to take advantage of technological changes on the horizon.

“If you aren’t current on what technology is doing it’s hard to catch up. This allows us to stay very current and far outreach what we would have been able to do on our own,” he says


www.donegan.com

www.amsservices.com

By Renee Wijnen Caruthers