The main reason for operating any kind of business–including an insurance agency–is to generate profit. While agencies play an important role in society and in our country's economy, their primary purpose is to make a profit and provide income to their owners.

We agency owners and producers tend to think of our technology investment as one element of an overall strategy to maximize profitability, but we rarely consider technology itself to be a source of profit. Most agents and CSRs can, however, help increase their agencies' profitability by using a technology application available at their desktops through their agency management systems.

Real-time inquiry has been around for almost two years, and most agencies with automated management systems represent at least one company offering it. Yet an amazing number of agencies do not use this tool to save time–and therefore money–even though implementation is easy and inexpensive. No other application presents so much profit potential for such a small investment!

Every time a member of your staff uses real-time inquiry for policy detail, billing, claims or loss runs, he or she saves several minutes. Multiply that time by your hourly CSR salary and you can quickly calculate the savings per transaction.

Every agency, no matter its size, can benefit from using this simple tool. Once the first company is set up, the workflow for subsequent companies will be identical. The only difference you will notice will be in the display format. So if concern about multiple workflows has kept you from implementing real-time inquiry, put your fears aside and start using it today.

If you think your staff can conduct billing, claim or policy inquiries faster through company Web sites than with real-time inquiry through your agency management system, try both methods and compare the results. The real-time transaction will win hands-down every time, and you'll automatically receive documentation when it's been completed.

If your first attempt at real-time inquiry falters, your staff may think it doesn't work and try to abandon it. Don't give up, though. Every agency has experienced some type of problem with a management system function, but it typically solves the problem and carries on because that function is essential to agency operation. The same imperative applies to real-time inquiry. Persist until you achieve success and your staff sees that the process works consistently.

Even if you introduce a change that simplifies workflow and increases productivity, you'll need to follow up to ensure everyone adheres to it. We implemented real-time inquiry at our agency and went over it with every employee. A month later, though, we found that some staff members were using the new method as instructed but others were still going to company Web sites to perform various functions. We used our system's report function to track daily real-time inquiry transaction activity and reviewed variances with individual staff members. Within two weeks, everyone was using real-time inquiry and raving about its ease of use, the improved workflow and the automatic documentation of completed inquiries.

If you are an agency manager not yet familiar with real-time inquiry, get someone to install it on a workstation. (Set-up will take less than one hour.) Then compare a company Web-site billing inquiry to a similar real-time inquiry through your management system. Once you see for yourself how such real-time functions work, you'll better understanding the advantages they offer to CSRs.

You may wonder if companies benefit from offering agencies real-time transaction options. Web-based access and real-time agency management system access are two different channels for the same activity, and companies pay the same amount for both. It's primarily agencies that benefit from using agency management system-based real-time inquiry, but if they don't adopt it, companies have no incentive to develop additional real-time transaction capabilities.

No other application provides as great a return on technology investment as does real-time inquiry, and no other topic I have reviewed in the past two years presents as much profit opportunity for your agency. Yet a majority of agents don't use the real-time inquiry functions available to them. I hope you're in the minority–an agency that does take advantage of this technology.

Don't confuse real-time comparative rating with real-time inquiry activities. We are all frustrated with real-time comparative rating, although progress is being made there–but real-time inquiry activity has already been perfected! Real-time is not all the same. Use the proven real-time inquiry functions that work now!

Edgar J. Higgins Jr., CPCU, is the owner of Progressive Management Consulting and the Thousand Islands Agency in Clayton, N.Y. Readers can contact Ed at [email protected].