Insurers cant afford to send their sales force out into the field today unless agents are armed with a solid sales force automation tool. But its not as straightforward as one might expect. Business complexity continues to defy a single system or even a common approachbut not IT ingenuity.

I dont know if its the tail wagging the dog or the dog wagging the tail, but the industry is looking for new ways to capture, secure, and maintain clients and to do that cost effectively, says Joe Galvin, group vice president at Gartner research. He adds this requires gaining insight into the actions, performance, and capabilities of your go-to market resource, and that defines the goals of sales force automation (SFA) technology.

But SFA is not a one-size-fits-all solution for insurers. First, the common and oft-cited roadblocks of legacy system and integration issues, disparate systems, and silos of information present the usual challenges to insurers looking to give their sales forces the customer views they need to sell, cross-sell, and up-sell. Second, the different marketing models of insurersdirect and call-center sales, captive agents, and independent brokerspresent a whole set of different considerations.