Applied Systems announced the release of a new way to measure performance and evaluate their place in the market.
With the release of Applied PerformanceManagement 2015 to U.S. and Canadian insurance agencies and brokerages, insurance executives will gain greater visibility into operational performance based on their organizational structure, clients and geographies, according to Michael Howe, senior vice president of product management for Applied Systems.
“Changing market conditions and client experience expectations are redefining how insurance agencies and brokerages evaluate their business operations and book of business to more quickly identify opportunities to accelerate growth and profitability,” says Howe. “With Applied PerformanceManagement 2015, insurance executives gain additional levels of organizational insights, enabling users to extend traditional reporting from ‘what happened’ to ‘why something happened’ through enhanced graphical dashboards of an agency or brokerage’s book of business, employee operations and insurer relationships.”
Access to this broader range of information allows executives to more easily identify new business, active business, attrition, renewals or net growth based on all employees, clients or lines of business associated to an agency or brokerages’ key performance metrics, according to Applied.
"By delivering client-level analysis, agencies and brokerages gain a clearer level of client understanding at the Department, Policy Type, Employee, Geography, and Insurer level. With this information, agencies and brokerages can more quickly identify client trends, such as clients within a specific region using one insurer more frequently over another, and opportunities for cross-sell and up-sell to their current client base to drive business profitability," said Howe.
Applied PerformanceManagement is the first business intelligence solution built specifically for independent insurance agencies and brokerages.
Fully integrated with both Applied EpicOnline and Applied TAMOnline, Applied PerformanceManagement allows executives to obtain greater business insights from their existing management system data to make quicker, more informed business decisions.
Applied PerformanceManagement presents data in an easy-to-understand visual interface with graphical dashboards that deliver multiple levels of analysis on key performance business indicators for an agency or brokerage’s book of business, employee operations and insurer relationships to drive greater employee productivity and increase profitable relationships with clients and insurers.
Applied PerformanceManagement is a cloud-based business intelligence solution that can be implemented quickly into agency and brokerage operations through seamless integration into Applied EpicOnline and Applied TAMOnline.
Key Applied PerformanceManagement 2015 enhancements and benefits include:
- Greater organizational insights: Revenue Per Employee (RPE), a critical industry benchmark, is now represented in Applied PerformanceManagement 2015 as a trend analysis over time, enabling managers to more easily view the current month’s RPE and a 13 month history and trending of RPE. Agencies and brokerages can now also trend their RPE for subsets of their organization by identifying the number of employees associated to an agency/brokerage, branch or department and calculate their corresponding RPE, allowing management to evaluate which portions of the business are driving RPE and closely monitor performance against this essential metric as it changes over time.
- Enhanced agency, brokerage and client level detail: Applied PerformanceManagement 2015 now delivers client level analysis within the organization, employee and insurer dashboards, enabling an agency or brokerage to quickly identify clients’ value, size, policy mix, and trends over time. Additionally, users can filter all dashboards to the Agency or Brokerage level of structure within their agency or brokerage management system, allowing users to isolate single or multiple selections within the agency or brokerage structure of their organization.
- Expanded geographic capability: With enhanced views, Applied PerformanceManagement 2015 offers more detailed geographic information about an agency or brokerage’s business by showing a user the full range of clients, policy types, employees and postal codes listed by their monetary value within a geographic area. Additionally, Applied has enhanced the geographic details, including surrounding postal codes and a territory management feature, to more easily identify business opportunities, manage attrition and net growth, and review employee business activity in nearby regions.
So far, feedback has been promising.
"Response so far has been overwhelmingly positive," said Howe. The concept of Big Data continues to enter into mainstream conversation, and agencies and brokerages are beginning to evaluate how they can incorporate Business Intelligence into their strategic operations. Once an agency or brokerage recognizes the value of a BI solution and implements it, agency or brokerages can refine their business decisions based on the insights of the solution, enabling them to recognize efficiency and new business opportunity gains."
