Two alternatives
The first alternative — rewriting a management system as a native Web application is a fairly conservative approach, not likely to fail and not likely to change the world. Because management systems are a well-known quantity, creating one with a new technology, e.g., the Internet, represents an incremental improvement over the status quo. Agents won't have trouble understanding what it is and therefore have a high likelihood, over time, of being willing to buy.
The second alternative — using technology to do something that hasn't been done before — has the potential for greater benefit, but creating a radically new product and then selling it is risky for the vendor and the agent. Most of new Internet-based technology services tend to address a little piece of the agent's problem space — addressing certificates (including tracking from the receiver end), claims, CRM, out-facing services, and other areas that management systems (even new ones) support in only perfunctory ways. Though attractive, these fragmented solutions may not be acceptable to most agents, who are looking for global solutions. And that's too bad because agents will miss out on some creative new approaches.
Integration platform
What would be especially interesting, I think, would be to rethink what an agency management system really is and then figure out how to use the Internet to provide it. My suggestion is that we quit thinking about management systems as fixed software packages entirely provided by one vendor and begin thinking of them as integration platforms; that is, software that connects and makes consistent the appearance of an indefinite number of services that agents, their customers, and their business partners need to make the insurance process efficient and effective.
In truth, the point of a management system isn't simply to provide accounting, policy maintenance, marketing, claims, suspense, and so on. The point is to provide a way to have consistent, integrated access to all the tools an agency needs no matter where they come from — a vendor, a carrier, an Internet site, and so on. From my point of view, the management system vendor of the future may not write or own all the functionality and information content it provides, but will have worked with other vendors and suppliers — in P&C, life, health, benefits, and in any other areas for which independent agents need help — tying those disparate services into one seamless subscription offering. Then agents could have the best of the new but within the consistent presentation of the old.
Even with all the good work vendors are and will do to bring their management systems to the Web, it seems a shame to do the same thing yet one more time, rather than step back, see the function that management systems really perform (i.e., as integration platforms), and then find a way to use technologies like remote Web services and XML to knit together a broader and deeper range of functionality.
After all, the Sisyphean business model only works in Hades.
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