Customer needs are an important consideration in making the changes. “The efficiencies we will gain will enhance our service,” says Foster. “We feel proud of the service we currently provide, and we think this is another means to improve how quickly we can settle losses, issue payments, and get [policyholders] back to where they were before they had their loss.”

FAMI relied on the Appix consulting firm for guidance through the RFP process. The carrier put together a core group of business leaders to come up with the best options for the multiple systems. “We thought about best of breed or working all with one company,” recalls Foster. “We didn't want to limit ourselves to one or the other. We ended up going the best-of-breed route, which is not really surprising.”

The planning group sat through all the demos for the three solutions but would bring in a cross-section of support staff to look at the individual solutions those staffers would be working with. “We wanted them to have input on what we were looking at and what we were trying to do,” says Foster. “It was more of a group-think than one or two people making the call.”

FAMI will implement its first line of business in October, and Foster reports there are no plans to convert claims that had been submitted prior to the conversion. “We want to start fresh and pick off a line of business in a few states and roll from there,” he says. “In the long run, we may have to migrate forward some older claims.”

For example, FAMI has a handful of workers' comp claims, and Foster points out the carrier no longer writes that line of business. “So, we'll have to figure out some way to move those forward,” he says. “Fortunately, we don't have to worry about that today. There will be just a few claims we have to make a decision about to move forward.”

FAMI writes mostly farm business, according to Foster, along with personal lines–homeowners and personal auto. The carrier also writes a small amount of commercial business, such as BOP.

Work on the implementation with Blue-Wave has been interesting as both sides deal with time differences. FAMI is located in Kansas, while BlueWave is headquartered in Hawaii. “Our workdays overlap only in the afternoon, and that's when we have our meetings,” says Foster. When the meetings are over, the staff at FAMI goes home for the day while the BlueWave staff goes to work on what was discussed in the meeting. The following morning, the FAMI staff is back at work with the adjustments made by BlueWave already in place.

What Foster likes about the claims system thus far is the claims staff is quickly picking it up. “Everyone gets intimidated when you talk about a new system, but when [users] see how it works and what it does, the system seems to flow really well. Once we get the first line of business on, there will be subtle changes from state to state and by line of business, but once you've done one, they should be pretty similar after that.”

The biggest benefit to FAMI will be the efficiencies gained, indicates Foster. “It's clear at least to me there will be huge benefits to our customers, our employees, and our agents,” he says. “There is a lot of capability we didn't have before people will be excited about.”