Farmers developed its own system, which it calls Agency Dashboard, with some assistance from Cap Gemini Ernst & Young. Riko Metzroth, vice president of business and technology integration for Farmers, says the carrier recognized more consumers were using the Internet, and to be successful, Farmers agents needed Internet-based tools. We needed to move away from green screens, and we also wanted to reduce our expenses, he says. We needed to provide the agents with an intranet site where they could get everything they needed in order to run their agency.

Farmers wanted to make a statement for its agents, and early last year it did so by issuing 12,800 Dell desktop computers to its full-time agents, nearly two-thirds of whom are operating out of their own remote offices or homes. As part of the program, Dell laptops were made available to the Farmers agents, and the agents responded by purchasing for themselves another $3 million worth of computers, a significant portion of which were laptops.

From a mobility standpoint, the agents are no longer tethered to their green screens that are just in the [home] office, says Metzroth. Since [Agency Dashboard] is totally accessible via the Internet, they can do their work from the clients homedo quotes right there in front of the clientprint out the quotes and any brochures the client may be interested in.

Mobile Office

Plymouth Rock has been using Mitchell International estimating software for its claims department since it first went mobile in 1990. Todays version resides independently on each laptop. The company uses Compaq laptops equipped with hard cases and liquid crystal display (LCD) screens. The laptops are mounted in a docking station that is hard mounted into the van so the laptop is secure while theyre driving, says Kelleher. They have the ability to remove the laptop from the van and take it into the house or the shop. For the environment they are in, our laptops stand up pretty well.

The Mitchell eClaim Manager has made the Plymouth Rock claims process totally electronic. Weve always had some electronic transmission of data going back quite a few years, says Arment. Weve managed to improve that with work-arounds between our systems and Mitchells. The eClaim Manager kind of topped things off for us.

One area that was improved was the assignment of claims to the appraisers. Arment says a year ago, assignments would be dispatched by a service representative in the home office. They would contact the insured and set up an appointment on behalf of the appraiser, he says. It was a pretty manual process.
The service representative would input the data into an import file, and the appraiser would access that information either late in the evening or first thing in the morning.

The process since has evolved so appraisers can access that sort of information throughout the day or eveningwhenever they need it. It was a long, involved pro-cess, says Arment of the previous system. Adjusters tended to save that particular step for one particular time of the day. Today, they can do it anytime they want to. When they are on the road traveling, they can upload that information if need be. They dont necessarily do that, but the potential is there, particularly in the case of a claim where we want immediate action, more of an emergency situation. Normally, the appraisers upload their data when it is convenient for them, he adds.

The Plymouth Rock IT staff and the technology people from Mitchell combined their efforts to build what Arment calls a bridge between the claims system in the home office and eClaim Manager. That was always a stumbling block for us, he says. The bridge allows the assignment with all the administrative data to be fed directly into eClaim Manager. We have an old DOS claims system that were changing, but were still saddled with it. Anything that involves DOS is difficult to deal with, particularly state-of-the-art technology.

Kelleher explains it was a multiple-entry process. The claims rep would put the information into the system and then get the information out to the field rep, he says. The field rep would have to re-enter the information into the Mitchell system and, after concluding the appraisal, would send it back to the office where the additional informationfinancial and check information, notes on the claim filewould be re-entered into the DOS system.

What weve been able to do is get a constant feed, right from the initial report of the claim, says Kelleher. Its entered into our claims system and fed electronically to the appraisal system in the van. The appraisal is completed, and then the appraisal, photos, and the eClaim file are uploaded wirelessly. So now, the claims rep in the home office has access to the entire file within 15 minutes of the appraiser seeing the car, depending on the size of the transmission. The number of photographs sent by the appraiser can slow down the process, Kelleher adds.

Speed It Up

The process has picked up speed over the years. In addition to increased bandwidth, systems such as eClaim Manager have overcome many of the problems that field reps faced in the past, particularly interrupted feeds. Joe Clouse, vice president insurance consulting and e-business development for Mitchell, says this is one area that has eliminated a lot of frustrations over the years. When connections were interrupted before, the entire transmission could be lost. Todays systems know when service was disrupted and where to start when a signal reappears.

Insurers also enjoy the fact that the data transmission is transparent. Once the data has been entered into the system, the appraiser can go about other assignments or get in the van and drive somewhere. The data transmission occurs in the background.

Kelleher says transmission of data always has been a stumbling block. Even with state-of-the-art modems, the speed was not something that could be matched by newer air cards. Uploading a file with five or six photos could take 20 to 25 minutes, says Kelleher. Currently, we utilize 1xRTT technology, which is the newer air card speed, and we can upload a normal file from the van remotely via those cards in five minutes for an average file.

The air card runs all day while the files are transmitted in the background. Theres very little down time on the part of the appraisers, says Arment.

Through the Line

While agents dont have the upload problems claims personnel face, slow connections can hamper sales, particularly if the online connection is poor. The agents basic connection is a 56K (modem) line, according to Metzroth. He says there are four factors that impact speed for Farmers agents:
the PC itself;
the quality of the phone line;
the Internet Service Provider; and
the back-end application.

Metzroth says sometimes it is the simplest of problems that need to be overcome. It could be the settings on the PC, or if the user has multiple windows open, that is slowing down the processor, he says. Weve had to do a lot of education with our agents. You cant have 10 windows open at the same time. Its not the Web application slowing things down, [the agents] are slowing down the whole machine.

Kelleher agrees technology in the field can be daunting for people who have relied on other skills to get where they are in the industry. Its forced a lot of our appraisers to grasp onto the technology, myself included, a lot quicker than they would have, he says.

Arment asserts the appraisers have done a fine job of adapting. Generally the background of most of our appraisers is hands-on, body-shop experience, he says. A lot of the body shops are pretty state of the art when it comes to technology, though, so its not necessarily new to them. Because we are so extensively electronic today, they cant escape [technology], no matter what they do.

The Farmers staff has a name for the technologically challenged, Metzroth says. We coined a phrase here, Green Screen Power Users. These people take a little longer to train, but we also have to make it comfortable on their terms, he says.

Farmers received excellent input from its agents for the project, though. Over 1,000 of them provided input into Agency Dashboard. We actually se-questered some of these guys in our labs for a while to help us design it, says Metzroth. We bring them back every time theres an iteration.

Whats My Line?

Farmers is a true multiline insurer, not only selling property/casualty products, but life insurance and annuities as well. Only about 250 of its 12,000 agents sell purely life, according to Metzroth. We encourage the P&C agents to sell life insurance, he says. The more life insurance policies that are sold by the P&C agents, the more they will need mobility. A predominant percentage of those [Farmers agents] who purchased the laptops were the life and asset management guys because they tend to do more illustrations in the customers home, says Metzroth.

Farmers did not make the leap to wireless, although Metzroth says it is under consideration. That is something in our future, but its not within the next couple of years, he says. Aside from the usual security reservations [with wireless], its more a matter of priority. Making sure the Agency Dashboard rollout worked well was the companys first priority. We want to make sure this works with quality and accuracy, so wireless is on the back burner for now, he says. Not that its not on our minds.

Agency Dashboard has been a major step for the carrier, Metzroth says. With 10 million households holding some type of Farmers policy, the Farmers mainframe handles 48 million transactions every day, according to Metzroth. This is a big change for us, he says. The agents are quite pleased. Some of them are a little nervous, as you can imagine, but there were also plenty of early adapters. And thats good.

Jan Jaworski, director of marketing for iAnywhere Solutions, says a successful mobile strategy means getting data out to the field staff. Too much data slows the system. Too little data slows the sales. You have to narrow it down to the critical data they need, she says. Efficiency will be improved by having the right data. Rapport with the customers is less intrusive.

The most important point for insurers looking to adopt mobile technology is to understand the mobile users, whether they be claims adjusters in the field or agents in a policyholders home. She also recommends carriers be clear about the direction they are about to take. Dont confuse mobile and wireless, she says. They arent the same.

IDCs Draper says about 75 percent of current mobile or wireless adopters in the insurance industry arent doing more than mobile access to e-mail, but she adds that such internal communication improvements are a good place to start. Eventually, when the systems are well integrated, theyll go out to the customers, she says. She points out that the insurance industry has a very high need for industry-specific applications. Im not sure if [slow adoption] is because the offerings are not there or if its because, traditionally, this industry is patient, she says. They wont be front-line innovators. Theyll wait and see how well the technology is doing at large.

When he looks to the future, Arment can see the day when technicians will use digital video to inspect a damaged vehicle with the adjusters getting out of the field and sitting in an office, using their skills to handle more cases quickly while less-skilled video technicians drive from claim to claim. He points out some states may have to change regulations to accommodate such a plan.

What Arment doesnt see is the day when Plymouth Rock and other insurers respond to accident scenes with a claims van, although some insurers would like their customers to believe thats possible. Were a little company, but we probably take in a couple hundred claims a day, he says. Thats a lot of people out there sitting around every intersection.

Instant Access to Data

Mobile may not specifically mean wireless, but wireless technology is where mobile workforces are headed in the future. And it is the industries that want instant access to data that are behind the wireless push in Europe, according to Michael Wall, an industry analyst with research firm Frost & Sullivan, which recently conducted a European Enterprise Wireless Survey.

He believes most financial services fields are pushing the wireless LAN technology. Im sure there are insurance companies that would find cellular data services interesting, but from what Ive seen, the financial industry is more interested in wireless LAN, says Wall. It depends on the area of the financial sector, but [financial services] is one of the most proactive in adopting wireless technology, especially the newer technology, because they are bandwidth hungry.

The big issue for wireless remains security, whether you are in Europe or North America. Often, security issues amount to nothing more than activating the security measures that are included in the product, according to Wall. Security features that are shipped as standard are not particularly robust for something like an insurance company that needs to protect customer information, says Wall. Standard security is nowhere near strong enough. Wall believes organizations such as the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers are tackling security issues across the globe.

As exciting as wireless is, Wall doesnt see it surpassing wire lines in the near future. Its always going to be cheaper and faster to use wire lines provided you have the right type of connection, he says. I dont see wireless replacing wire line, but it is increasing rapidly and you can see the benefits.

Financial services and the insurance industry are among those driving the wireless push. People talking wireless are companies that have a need for a mobile workforce, says Wall. They need flexibility.