George Nordhaus and his IMMS group have been providing expertise and marketing help to agencies for more than a quarter century. And along the way, IMMS has quickly adopted and taken advantage of new technologies that became available to make the distribution and use of insurance information simpler and more efficient. In recent years, IMMS adopted CD ROM and then the Internet to make more information available faster to more people.
IMMS has paid attention to two specific information consumers: 1) agency principals/managers/producers, and 2) agency customers/prospects. The IMMS library in its various forms has contained an evolving set of articles, instructions, market information, and best practices aimed at agency decision makers, producers, and managers. And IMMS created and continues to evolve agency private-labeled newsletters that have made their way to insurance consumers in various guises for many years.
Over the last year, IMMS worked in the background to significantly overhaul their site, adding new content and services. It's now open for business. Though we'll briefly take a look at what the new IMMS site has to offer agency staff (that is, the in-facing services it provides), we'll be particularly interested in what IMMS has to offer agencies for their customers (that is, out-facing services). With its newly redesigned site, IMMS is also touting better usability - as the "first one-click site in the industry." We'll want to see what that means and how agents might themselves benefit from that kind of innovation.
In-facing services
The new IMMS site offers six different categories of in-facing services: IMMS Services; What's New; Marketing and Management; Guides; Search Centers; and Complete Markets. Some of the IMMS offerings are home grown. Others are supplied via third party business partners.
The IMMS services category includes familiar IMMS publications (Insurance News, Weekly Marketeer, and Plus Report). But it also includes ACORD forms, Agency Benchmarking (The Agency Consulting Group), Certifi-cates (ConfirmNet), Complete Hiring (Nordhaus), five glossaries, Online continuing education (eMind and The American College), Premium Financing (Premium Financing Specialists), Barry Klein's Ultimate Insurance Links, and a Forum (chat and message center).
The Marketing and Management area is basically a library of thousands of articles written primarily by industry consultants. The M&M area is broken down into 13 categories that reflect the ways one would normally think about agency organization. Each category has its own consultant/administrator(s) who manages the content for that area. Each category is then broken down into subcategories and eventually to a list of articles.
The M&M library is enormous. That's both a benefit and a problem. It isn't easy to know which articles are really worth reading, whether they're current, and whether they really address the question at hand. It would be helpful if the lowest level table of contents also contained the author and date written - and perhaps a one or two sentence overview. I can't imagine an agency manager wading through all this content to find the relevant gem in the library.
IMMS is aware of the poverty of riches its M&M library represents and with the new version of its Web site has done something useful about it. They've created a Guides feature that provides links to relevant library material organized around (for now) ten common agency concerns. For instance, first on the list is "SET UP A SALES MANAGEMENT TEAM." Clicking on that link retrieves a narrative page that outlines the entire "SET UP" process with links to relevant library articles. This task based, multi-step organizing concept is a good one and should make the library much more useful. Over time IMMS will undoubtedly add to the ten task categories, eventually creating a road map and background for every major agency task.
The M&M library area could profit from the inclusion of a strong search capability, allowing searches by words, subject, author, and so on. In fact, the site as a whole would be more usable with a search function on every page. Though the M&M area references a "Centers Search," the link did not work. I was told it was under repair. I assume this problem will be fixed by the time you read this.
CompleteMarkets is the IMMS attempt to link agencies to the special markets they're looking for. The site area is broken down into a number of insurance areas and each is served by a page with an alphabetic listing of coverages linking to detail pages. Many of the detail level pages are equipped to deliver application forms and/or email access to the provider. The forms are stored in PDF files and are intended to be printed out to be used. Forms that could support data entry and then electronic transmission would be a desirable evolutionary step. Finally, as I pointed out with the M&M library, a search capability would be a nice addition to the multi-level table of contents browsing arrangement.
A banking section under the CompleteMarkets heading provides links to several banking services - an area of increasing interest to agencies.
Out-facing services
IMMS provides three significant services that can help agencies provide effective out-facing services: private-label newsletters for agencies to send to their customers; Web site building and hosting; and Web site content.
At present, IMMS prepares and syndicates eight electronic newsletters (and six paper newsletters). The IMMS concept is that the newsletters be made available through an agency's Web site. IMMS provides attractive graphics/ buttons for the links that can take an agency site visitor to the current version of the particular newsletter
The IMMS site newsletter background area provides for PDF (Acrobat) samples for downloaded and review. Unfortunately, asking for a downloaded consistently froze Internet Explorer on my PC and I had to terminate that task and restart IE to continue. Probably my problem.
Two comments on the newsletters: 1) It would be worthwhile for an agency visitor to be able to search back issue contents for items of interest, and 2) IMMS or an affiliate could help agencies administer and deliver newsletters or links to them via e-mail mailing lists.
Sites for Less
IMMS has affiliated with Sites for Less (www.sitesforless.com) to build agency Web sites. The Sites for Less Web site features a link to one of the agency sites they've done that includes IMMS content. The sample site, Anderson Insurance Services (see page 10), can be viewed at www.insurmass.com. The Anderson site provides a good example of how IMMS material can be used in an agency site as well as a preview of the services Sites for Less could provide to your agency.
The Anderson site makes use of five IMMS content categories. The first, Our Affiliates, allows the visitor to search for an IMMS-affiliated agency for any city, state, or Zip. The search is smart enough not to return local competitors to the agency whose site is being visited. This affiliation feature is intended to bring credibility to the agency because of its connection to other agencies.
A second IMMS-supplied link on the Anderson site links to a form visitors can use to describe their insurance interests. Several multi-choice fields help define the area of concern and the information is then e-mailed to the agency for response. The form serves to alert visitors to the richness of offerings the agency can provide as well as a more meaningful message to the agency for follow-up than a simple free form e-mail might be provide.
A third link connects the visitor to a form explaining and providing entry into a commercial loan marketplace of 160 lenders.
The Anderson site subscribes to all eight IMMS electronic newsletters. Each newsletter has a contact section at the end the reader can use to reach the agency with a question or concern.
Finally, the Anderson site contains links to two of the three insurance glossaries IMMS hosts: Cyber-Glossary from e-Perils.com (a specialty source) and Insurance Glossary from The National Underwriter. Both glossaries work the same way; that is, the visitor chooses a letter of the alphabet and then scrolls through terms starting with that letter.
Though the focus of this article is not to review the Anderson site, it is worth speculating on the value to the site of the IMMS content and services included. Without the IMMS material, the Anderson site would be a six-page brochure site with a contact form. With the IMMS material, the site appears more substantial.
However, some issues come to mind. To the extent that IMMS is successful in populating agency sites with its content - and provided the agency uses the IMMS supplied graphics - a visitor reviewing more than one site might experience déjà vu all over again. Also, it's not obvious how the IMMS add-ins connect with the agency-supplied material or agency business strategy. To the extent the visitor perceives the syndicated content as just more stuff not integrated into the agency site, the externally supplied content may fail to have the desired effect of presenting the agency as deep in expertise.
It is conceivable that even more of the IMMS content could be turned to the advantage of agencies for out-facing services than is so far provided for that purpose by IMMS. For instance, some of the M&M library and CompleteMarket material might be relevant as is or with slight modification to agency site visitors.
IMMS seems clearly on the right track in packaging and facilitating agency Web site content. Over time, more thought needs to be given to how it can be integrated seamlessly into the site and agency business strategy expressed through the site. Finally, just as IMMS created a Guides feature for the M&M library for agency managers, something similar would be useful for the site visitor. For instance, the State Farm site organizes its material around life events for personal lines. IMMS could do that for the agencies it serves.
The IMMS service is priced at $595 per year (excluding the newsletters) and $595 for the creation and hosting of a six-page agency Web site for one year. For more information, check out www.imms.com.
And finally…
IMMS reports that a number of additional services will be added to their site in short order. These services will be available to agents to add to their sites as well. The projected additions include such items as auto financing, credit cards, merchant services, leasing, on-line stock brokerage, banking services (CDs), annuities, and more.
As George Nordhaus explains, "My philosophy is that the more the agencies can offer in the way of financial services (without having to handle the details, but leaving that up to the provider), the more the agency can be the local 'financial services provider,' which, incidentally, does include P/C insurance."
What about IMMS being a one-click site? When I think of a one-click site, I think of Amazon. If you're a known customer, you can buy a book and have it shipped to you with, essentially, just one-click. You pick the book and everything else gets done automatically. How does that concept apply to the IMMS site?
One way perhaps is that the home page is pretty dense and therefore provides fairly quick access to subsections of the site. Here's what George says: "By one-click I mean that when you get to the 'members' page (after putting in your password) you can reach everything with just one click of the button - no more digging down two or three layers. The subject is there. You click on it. Then there is either a 'gateway' page that tells about it (e.g., loans) or else you are right in the 'subject,' such as in the middle column (marketing and management centers). When you click on any 'center,' you are right in it and you can see the exact 'section' you want, go right to it (one click) to see the documents and articles, and pick out the one you want - one click and you are there!"
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