Speed has been one of the barriers to a full wireless enablement strategy, believes Tim Wiedmeyer, vice president of claims, West Bend Mutual. "We operate with a fairly bandwidth-intensive browser application, so getting adequate speed wirelessly has been a bit of a challenge," he says. "Also, coverage across the five-state area where we have field people located has been an issue."

Larger carriers are using wireless in many of their field functions, particularly claims, but some of the less glamorous functions–such as loss control and premium audit–are becoming wirelessly enabled, too, notes Travers. Communications is not a specific function of insurance, but with e-mail and messaging, it perhaps is the most widely used wireless/mobile function, he points out. "Some of the functions that previously were mobile but not necessarily wirelessly enabled now are being looked at for wireless enablement," he says. "It varies greatly from one company to the next. Some companies still use pencils and paper, go back to the office, and enter the information into their laptops. Others are carrying the devices into the field."

Areas that have been examined for wireless are ones that traditionally have a mobile component to them, explains Travers. "Rather than having to return to the home base, the application is designed to work in the field in a wireless and connected mode," he says. "Not only are you seeing GPS used for dispatch and claims but for data where you can correlate demographics or other kinds of risks into the picture." These technologies are starting to converge, though they aren't prevalent yet. "What we are experiencing with our clients is there are a lot of discussions but not a lot of application," he adds.

The claims department is leading the way for West Bend with its Damage Appraiser system for automobile repair estimates, which Scott Thomas, West Bend's director of claims, describes as a prototype for the company. "They really are the most task intensive of any of our remote workers," he says. "We would like to set it up so they are connected continuously in real time for access to our network. We want to move to that so they don't need an office located at their house and so they essentially will have a complete mobile office. They are the first to do that in the company, but others may follow."

Another project is what Thomas says the company has dubbed West Bend Anywhere, a Citrix application West Bend is rolling out to workers in the field. "Not only does it improve their connectivity remotely, but it will enable everyone not to be tied down to a specific location," he says. "If they have an Internet location at a hotel or an agent's office, they will be able to get to all our applications and work as though they were in the office."

In the past, most of State Farm Insurance's wireless technology was on the voice side for communications, but there has been a recent shift to reliance on wireless data communications. "We've seen the shift from cellular phones to now where we're also using wireless cards and wireless LAN cards to communicate," indicates Darrell Sims, systems analyst, in the wireless development area for State Farm. The current applications State Farm has in the field are used by claims personnel. But the carrier is in the process of rolling out technology to the agent force for sales, reports Sims. "We'll be using the same things we've used in the claims force–wireless cards, cellular cards, and the wireless LAN cards–giving [agents] the same accessibility to the applications they need to run," he says.

One of the main reasons to supply wireless technology to the agency force, comments Sims, is the ability to interface with policyholders while out in the field and to offer service or support. "To use some of the tools, [agents] had needed to be in the office," says Sims. "Now, we can give them these tools while they are out in the local environment."

Productivity and cost are the drivers for insurers using wireless/mobile technology, Harris-Ferrante believes. "It's getting tools and technologies to the adjusters so they can be more productive and do things faster," she says.

Some application vendors, particularly those in core applications, such as claims or underwriting, and back-room systems, such as imaging/workflow, are outwardly supportive of wireless/mobile and even tout features they may offer, Travers contends. However, in practice, some of those vendors are less enthusiastic about the mobile technologies because they tend to complicate implementations, slow them down, and introduce risk. "Sometimes the issue of wireless even can slow down the sale of a system to a carrier," he says, "because the carrier wants to understand fully the relationship between the new system and the mobile/wireless realm." Travers suggests a carrier first design its business processes to deliver the kind of service it wants to deliver and then automate those processes with the right technology, including wireless/mobile. "Using this approach, the requirements for a given functionality (e.g., mobile) are driven and justified from a business perspective, not from a 'technology limitations' perspective," he says.

For claims departments, the biggest benefit to wireless is the ability to do tasks once and then be done with them. "It's real time, so things will be done more promptly, but primarily it's to avoid double entry on their part," says Wiedmeyer. "[Adjusters] go in the field, they do their work, they get home, and they're done. They don't have another two or three hours on the computer to finish up what they did during the day."

Customer service also will stand to benefit, Thomas asserts. "We are able to get the information in the hands of those who need it more quickly," he says. Information is sent to the damage appraisers and then back to the people in the home office who need the information to act on the claim so the claim can be paid and closed and the information returned to the customer more quickly. "We have nine appraisers and about 50 field adjusters," Thomas points out. "The goal ultimately is to get this technology in the hands of the adjusters so they can do the same thing for their claims–primarily property–so they can settle claims in the field and not have that double entry."

As more companies develop wireless/ mobile strategies, Harris-Ferrante contends management often starts at the wrong level. "The problem we are seeing is the industry structure, in particular with big companies," she says. "You have claim departments with such power that when you start looking at how to bring it all together at a higher level, it gets a little more complicated and political. With large companies, they don't know how to back out of these siloed strategies to get that higher-level vision."

When building a strategy, the first thing to keep in mind is what it is you are trying to accomplish, adds Harris-Ferrante. "You can't just focus on operational efficiency because there's only so much you can take out of that equation cost-wise," she says.

"So, there are lots of strategies coming out that cross all the different channels," she continues. "If you are focusing just on adjuster technology without taking anything else into consideration, you are going to be very shortsighted on a lot of what you invest in, both strategy-wise and technology-wise. It may not lead you to the appropriate answer."

West Bend turned to a consultant to help assess its remote computing needs. "We hired R.E. Nolan to help us go through that study," says Wiedmeyer. "It involved meetings with our remote users and people from the home office, across all functional lines of the company–loss control, premium audit, sales, claims–who had remote workers. From that, we put together a road map of how we should increase the capabilities of our people located away from the home office. Wireless was just a piece of that."

West Bend's adjusters in the field have laptops, but they are connected only through the docking stations in their homes or offices. "We haven't been fully enabled by wireless technology yet," Wiedmeyer says. "Certainly, it would be our vision to enable them fully while they're on the road." The company now is testing the Panasonic Toughbook for its field force.

"The goal is to have the field reps do their work out in the field," Thomas adds, "and when they return to the office, the work essentially is complete."

There are different domains within an insurance company, Travers explains. Large claims organizations are going to be exploring wireless and mobile technology, but there also is the executive communications aspect, which typically is how companies dip their foot in the water, and those are two different kinds of applications. "You've got a claims situation where you have a need for more robust technology–probably a ruggedized laptop, maybe touch-screen type of capabilities, and specific applications running on that equipment," he says. "Executive communications–e-mail and messaging–is stock stuff and is pretty ubiquitous. There are two different types of devices, two different sets of requirements, and two different sets of things to support. Those have entered the organization at separate times and are on different maturity curves."

Carriers often discover they have two whole sets of technology in an organization that fall under the mobile and wireless category, observes Travers. "You often have experimentation going on," he says. "You have different parts of the organization adopting these technologies and not under the umbrella of a strategy."

Sims indicates the challenges to turning State Farm's captive agency force into a wireless unit include the size of the State Farm organization vs. the rapid advancements in technology. "Our scalability makes it a little tougher, but we are striving to innovate and execute the best we can and find ways to get technology into the hands of the folks in the field," he says. Hardware and software upgrades to devices in the mobile environment usually take longer to complete compared with users coming into the office every day. Another challenge is the protection of customer and company data. "Wireless security is getting a lot of press and for good reasons," Sims points out.

When workstations are sent out to field personnel, State Farm locks them down so users do not have administrative rights and are unable to add or update software. "That helps us from a security and standardization standpoint, but then again, it also presents challenges," says Sims. "When we do need to get something out [to the laptops], we have to plan around an issuance of software for an upgrade or a revision change."

From a wireless LAN perspective, if users are not at a State Farm location with their wireless LAN card, security requires the workers to use a VPN client, which protects the company data. The security team always is looking for rogue devices that may be plugged into the network, Sims adds, such as employees bringing their new wireless router from home, plugging it into the network, and then leaving it wide open. "We're constantly monitoring for those kinds of activities," he says.

During weather catastrophes, State Farm has faced issues with agents losing network connectivity in their offices. "That's where we utilized cellular air cards or our satellite capabilities to get them back up and in service," Sims says. State Farm has a few RVs outfitted with C-SAT capabilities that are made for catastrophes. "We can go into a location and not rely on the infrastructure being in place from a communications standpoint," he says. "We can create our own. Satellite has been a great tool we've used over the last few years."

The biggest advancement West Bend has made in technology is a mobile office called Responder–a 35-foot Winnebago the carrier had built last summer that is equipped with satellite technology. "It's totally self-contained," says Thomas. "It allows us to drive literally anywhere and deploy the satellite and link up to our systems so the adjusters, appraisers, or responders can work as though they are in their office." The company uses it primarily for catastrophe response to be more efficient and provide better claims service to the policyholders. It has been used on four occasions so far.

"We've got the capability inside for nine workstations and have wireless laptops all hooked up and working concurrently and an additional six connections outside the vehicle," says Wiedmeyer.

West Bend went in this direction because it has closed branch offices in the last few years leaving no remote bases to operate from when catastrophes hit in those areas. "We had people scattered around in different motels, and it was hard to get losses to them and get them distributed," says Wiedmeyer. "Now the Responder serves as our remote command center for handling losses. We also had some really rough working conditions we asked our people to work with–working from a trailer, under a tent–just not the best working environment. This dramatically improves that experience for our catastrophe adjusters."

Travers believes wireless/mobile is having an impact on business continuity and disaster preparedness for companies. Businesses were taken by surprise when an entire area code failed to function after Hurricane Katrina. "Communication was not the thing people expected to be compromised as much as it was," he says. Carriers are looking at communication as an area they need to give more attention to so if the devices are not functioning under certain scenarios they have a backup plan. "It's all a part of business continuity, but it's not something that had been getting a lot of attention," he notes. "You just assume the dial tone is going to be there or the cell phone is going to work. We learned unfortunately that's not always the case."

The best practices for disaster preparedness with wireless are being invented right now, according to Travers. "What we're finding is the backup to a traditional communication method is a blog, which is hosted geographically outside the affected area," he says. "That's not necessarily a best practice; it was invention borne out of necessity. Now, it's becoming a practice."

Insurers affected by the storms were forced to turn to two-way interactive communication systems, such as blogs and message boards, Travers indicates. "One of the aspects of what we saw with Katrina was the need to get the word out to a lot of people and have some interactive communication," he says. "So, it's some mix of Web, blog, and e-mail that can serve as your backup. It's not necessarily a best practice, but it's an area of study right now.

The decision by State Farm to go wireless for agents resulted from feedback from the agents. "They are out in the community a lot, and they wanted to be able to do business from outside their office, so we're trying to make that possible," says Sims. There are differences in the agent force as far as levels of technology use, he points out. Some agents have been early adopters of technology and may be ahead of the curve. There also are agents who don't want to try new technology. "We run the gamut there," he says. "The agents probably best know how to service their policyholders and have a feel for what the policyholders need, so we leave some of that up to the agent."