Celina Insurance case study that shows cost reduction and increased productivity - faster, better service to agents and their customers due to integrated systems and real-time collaboration; being “easy to do business with” secures agent loyalty; 50 percent reduction in phone calls and costs due to instant messaging option, and 40 percent reduction in head count while maintaining the same volume of business due to streamlined processes.
IBM Case Study
Celina Insurance Group streamlines collaborative
processes with agents to stay ahead of the competition
Overview
? The Challenge Increase competitiveness against larger insurance carriers by integrating independent agents into business processes and providing superior services and support ? Why IBM? IBM provides the ideal development and production environment for integrated, open-standards based applications that leverage the Web, foster collaboration and speed end Celina Insurance Group, a mutual to-end business processes "The open and flexible, insurance carrier that provides ? The Solution property and casualty insurance to responsive environment A collaborative extranet based on eight states in the midwestern United we can provide to our ® ® ® IBM Lotus Notes and Lotus® ® States, writes approximately US$80 Domino , IBM Lotus Sametime agents and their customers ® million in premiums annually. A and IBM DB2 software running relatively small company of approxi with our Lotus extranet ®on an IBM AS/400 server ? Key Benefits mately 175 employees, Celina sells continues to make us . Policy turnaround times reduced its policies through about 500 inde competitive with much from weeks to days by integrating pendent agencies that deal directly and automating business processes with the end customers. Since each of larger companies." that span Celina and its agents the agencies may represent up to 10 -Rob Shoenfelt, . Faster, better service to agents and different insurance carriers, Celina's Chief Information Officer, their customers due to integrated ongoing challenge is to win and sus Celina Insurance Group systems and real-time collaboration tain agent loyalty as it competes with . Being "easy to do business with" often much larger rivals. secures agent loyalty-a competitive advantage . 50 percent reduction in phone calls and costs due to instant messaging option, and 40 percent reduction in head count while maintaining the same volume of business due to streamlined processes Smart use of the Web enables competitive agent relationships Key Components Celina made an astute decision in 1999 when it recognized the growing power of the Software Web and the implications for business. At the forefront of its industry in seeing the . IBM DB2 Web's potential, Celina decided to use the Web to make it easy for independent . IBM Lotus Domino agents to do business with them, thereby increasing agent loyalty and improving . IBM Lotus Notes services to both agents and end customers. . IBM Lotus Sametime With the rapid application development and integration capabilities of Lotus Servers Domino, Celina built an extranet using IBM Lotus Notes and Domino, IBM Lotus . IBM AS/400 Sametime, IBM DB2, and an AS/400-based inquiry and transaction processing application. The resulting Resource Base of Information (RBI) application exposes information from Celina's insurance processing application to its agents. This allows agents to use a Web browser to access policy data and claims data, process payments, rate customers' credit and update policies, all via integration with the in-house insurance system.
Safeguarding the privacy and security of customer information was a prime consideration from the start, and the potent security features of Lotus Notes and Domino allowed Celina to deliver a security-rich solution. RBI requires every agent to authenticate through the Lotus Domino directory before gaining any access to information. To keep agents from seeing customer data belonging to other agents, RBI uses "reader names" to build privacy partitions. Further, the encryption capabilities in Lotus Notes and Domino and in Lotus Sametime provide Celina with peace of mind in knowing that confidential information going out over the Web has security protection.
Another early Domino application, known as Sales Automation For Everyone (SAFE), yields major benefits for serving the agents and helping to raise sales force productivity. SAFE provides Celina with information such as which agents work where, how much business agents generate, which agents are the largest producers, which competitors agents also work with, and what issues agents have had in the past or are having now. Using SAFE as an information management tool allows Celina to be more proactive in managing the agents and presenting the... [download for more]
