Related Items
  FREE Insurancenetworking.com Site Registration!
Sign up today and access the leading source of Insurance I.T. information on the Web.

Your FREE site registration entitles you to

FREE Insurance Networking eNewsletters

Search more than 7 years worth of archived data

White Papers and Industry Research that provide valuable insights on a variety of technologies and implementation issues

Access our Web Seminar series

   

Once Can Be Enough When Entering Data

Carrie Burns February 2007

Not many adjusters would argue against technology as a means of easing their workload-certainly not the adjusters at Farmers Mutual of Nebraska. After all, the company's claims estimating system was efficiently processing information at the desktop. But that apparent blessing was actually part of the problem: the system processed data at the desktop and not in the field, where much of the real work takes place.

"Our adjusters would go out in the field and inspect the loss, noting the damage just on a piece of paper," says Jamie Fredrickson, director of Field Services. "Then they would go back to their district offices, sit down at their computers and manually re-enter all of this information to generate their estimates."

The Lincoln, Neb.-based home, farm and automobile insurer, which writes business in Nebraska and South Dakota, wanted a system or process that "provided a more seamless transition from assessing the damage to preparing the estimate and getting the estimate into the hands of a contractor or policyholder faster," says Fredrickson.

Fredrickson credits Farmers' vice president of information systems for introducing the carrier to Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario-based Symbility Solutions Inc. The VP knew vendor from a previous relationship. "He brought it to our attention, and we contacted Symbility," says Fredrickson.

Farmers was pleased that mobile claims software is not licensed, not copy-protected and has no restrictions on where you can install it and use it. There is no upfront license purchase cost for the system. Users pay a per-claim fee for using the software.

Soon after the initial contact, Farmers began a pilot test of Symbility.NET and the mobile claims software with a few of its adjusters in November 2005 and decided to roll it out to all its field staff in February 2006.

THE HARDWARE

Farmers needed to make a few purchases in order to use the system. "At the time, all of our adjusters were just using desktop PCs, but we wanted to get into the arena of mobile devices," says Fredrickson. "So this gave us a reason to purchase [the devices]."

Farmers could have used its old mobile claims system via laptops but wanted to buy tablets. "[The old system] didn't really offer the same technologies [as Symbility] as far as being able to use it with a tablet PC and a stylus," says Fredrickson.

Fredrickson was impressed with Symbility's accessibility. "The adjusters would be able to upload information and then offer anyone with access to it a view of that estimate," he says. "So we would have the ability to mutually view information before the adjusters submitted it back to the home office for approval."

Symbility.NET is an Internet-based communications hub that offers a data warehouse and analytics engine. The mobile claims software piece is an extension of Symbility.NET, which enables adjusters to review claims, gather information, and create and edit estimates in the field (on a pen-based computer) offline or online. It can run on PCs that are five years old or newer, as well as a tablet, notebook or pocket PC.

Fredrickson researched his options and listened to suggestions from Symbility. "Symbility gave us some guidance as far as the hardware that would work best with their system," says Fredrickson.

Farmers narrowed the choice down to the motion tablets, and looked at offerings from Gateway Inc., Toshiba America Inc., Panasonic Corp. and Fujitsu Ltd. In the end, Farmers decided on Fujitsu tablet PCs, which offered larger keyboards, enabling Farmers' adjusters to get rid of their desktops, and use the tablets in the field and in the office.

For more information on related topics, visit the following channels:


Agent Network

Claims

Enterprise Technologies

Insurance Network

Vendor Spotlights