Who’s Buying What: Recent deals for technology software and services
Insurance Networking News, March 1, 2008
NATIONWIDE FINANCIAL ADVANCES TIME TO MARKET
Columbus, Ohio-based Nationwide Financial Services, working with Insurance Technologies LLC, a Colorado Springs, Colo., point-of-sale software provider, now offers on a single platform historical hypotheticals, as well as forward projections to help financial and insurance producers accelerate the annuity sales cycle. The speed-to-market initiative eliminates the need for financial and insurance producers to work with disparate, disconnected systems and data entry duplication. Nationwide Financial is looking at long-term utilization of ForeSight, Insurance Technologies’ point-of-sale software, reports the company.
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“ForeSight is connectable technology,” says Susan Gueli, SVP and CIO of Nationwide Financial, which provides a variety of financial services that help consumers invest and protect their long-term assets, and offers retirement plans and services through both public-and private-sector employers. “This positions us in the future to integrate the platform seamlessly with our sales desk, back office systems, and databases, vastly decreasing the amount of time it takes to get our updated rates and products to market.”
CONSECO DEPLOYS CONTACT CENTER SOLUTION
With the deployment of the NICE SmartCenter, Conseco Services LLC is leveraging the synergies of its adaptive interaction analytics, workforce management and performance management solutions to improve customer service and drive performance at the agent, operational and enterprise levels.
Designed by Israel-based NICE Systems Ltd., the NICE SmartCenter will be deployed in U.S. and offshore locations, across four contact centers.
NICE SmartCenter’s performance management solution provides KPI-based (key performance indicators) management tools for setting business performance goals and objectives for employees. Achievement of these goals can be monitored on an on-going basis using dashboards, scorecards and workflows. Moreover, the performance management solution is designed to enable Conseco’s management to create a set of integrated reports derived from various operational systems for a unified view of their business operations.
The Carmel, Ind., company hopes to apply the capabilities of the NICE SmartCenter solutions to improve agent behaviors for increased customer satisfaction, address the key business issues that impact contact center management effectiveness and efficiency, and better align the contact center with the strategic goals of the enterprise.
NICE’ s Adaptive Interaction Analytics is designed to enable Conseco to gain insights from calls relating to their health insurance, life insurance, or annuities products and services, which will help drive even further performance and service levels.
Adaptive Interaction Analytics from NICE is designed to provide Conseco accuracy and efficiency in a scalable solution that analyzes 100% of the interactions in a cost-effective manner. This capability will enable Conseco to leverage customer interactions to proactively identify trends, anticipate opportunities, adjust processes to meet business objectives and take action at the right time.
SMIC PROVIDES AGENTS WITH PROCESSING CAPABILITIES
A series of processing capabilities collectively known as AgentXpress is unlocking policy management data stored in Security Mutual Insurance Co.’s (SMIC) legacy system and making it available to agents over the Internet. The system went live after a two month pilot conducted in partnership with the program’s producer, IDP Inc., a Wyncote, Pa., provider of property/casualty management systems. Agents can now access claims and billing information, view policies online and generate loss run and expiration reports, as well as commission statements, via the new Web-enabling program.
According to SMIC’s Tom Ruane, president of the Ithaca, N.Y.-based property/casualty insurer, AgentXpress is delivering time-saving benefits to carriers and agents alike.
“Our (350) agents no longer have to call an 800 number on behalf of insureds to obtain answers on matters such as payment amounts, due dates, renewal dates and basic claims and policy information. Instead, they can access that all online and give it to their client instantly,” reports Ruane.
AgentXpress is designed to save time through reduced call volume, and the use of human resources necessary to research and respond to questions. For example, an agency on Long Island had been calling SMIC three or four times a day, but no calls with routine inquiries, Ruane says.
“Companies of SMIC’s size often have data on a technical platform or in a computer that is not accessible by the Internet,” IDP President and CEO Gary Gilbert says. “Our solution is to export data on a daily basis from these legacy systems and update a Web-accessible database that we recently developed for AgentXpress.”
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