10 Impactful Ways to Keep Your Book of Business Organized

Keeping Your Book of Business Organized & Your Employees Productive

Amongst the countless productivity stats out there, a common theme emerges: employees need to feel engaged with the company in order to be productive. There are several ways to increase employee engagement, and a big one is providing the tools necessary to help employees do their job efficiently and effectively.

With the right tools, your agency feels organized, efficient, and productive. 

In this blog, we’re going to introduce 10 small, but impactful ways the right agency management system (AMS) can keep your book of business organized and your employees engaged.

1. Consistent, Reliable Data

This is first on the list because it’s probably the most important. Consistent, reliable data is achieved when everyone who is entering data into your book of business is following the same “rules”, like what to capitalize and which abbreviations are or are not used. 

For your agency management system to run correctly, you have to have the right data in the right format.

With an AMS that has industry-specific fields and uses drop-down menus and other pre-populated data field options where possible, consistent data entry is much more likely, cutting down on manual entry errors.

Having uniform data makes it easy to use things like global search (as we’ll discuss later) that help you work more efficiently.  

2. Connected Individual & Group Records

Depending which products you sell and services you offer, you might work with both individuals and groups. And if you work with groups, you know that there are many employees within that group that you need to keep separate within your book of business.

To work at peak productivity, use a system that allows you to track and manage individual and group records separately, but can also tie them together. 

In AgencyBloc, this individual, Thad K Bridges, is tied to the group, Olympia Cable. You can view Thad and his data separately here in his individual record, and he also appears as an employee on Olympia Cable’s group record. All policies, enrollments, elections, and relationships are also connected.

When data is tied together, it makes it easy to move through the information and keep everything organized, no matter who is viewing or editing the record.

3. Security Groups

Security groups within an AMS control what a user can see and access in the database. Not only is this necessary for ensuring agents or staff can only access their books of business, but it’s also helpful to cut down on information overload and accidental data changes. By creating security groups, you can decide who can view and/or edit what data. 

4. Teams

Add several people to a “team” and then assign activities to that entire group of people. Each team member will see the task on their dashboard. Examples of common teams created are the Sales team and the Client Support team.

In AgencyBloc, this new lead, Blake Wilson, will show up for any users who are part of the Sales Team. You can create teams however you’d like, splitting people up by departments or by even smaller groups of people (like one customer service rep and one agent).

5. Pre-populated Field Sets for Coverage Types

As you probably know, there are people on your team who are better at thoroughly filling in records than others. When you use predetermined field sets that are assigned to coverage types, it makes it straightforward what information needs to be filled in. This also keeps your policy screens looking clean, without a bunch of fields you don’t need for that specific coverage type.

In AgencyBloc, when adding or editing a policy, you select which coverage type the policy is. Then, a certain field set will show for that policy. You can see below how coverage types can be assigned field sets.

By assigning field sets to coverage types, your policy screens show only the relevant fields. The dental group policy below, for example, is using the dental field set.

6. “Pinned” Notes on Records

Especially when several people in your agency might be accessing the same records, pinning important notes is an easy way to ensure everyone who opens that record is quickly brought up to speed.

Things agencies typically “pin” to records in AgencyBloc include:

• Personal notes - “Bob and Jenny just welcomed their first grandbaby, James; be sure to say congratulations!”
• Business notes - “When working with this employer group, ask to speak with Kerrie. She is filling in for Kara who is on maternity leave.”
• Internal notes for your team - “We’re still waiting on quotes for this individual. It is taking longer than expected.”

When someone opens the individual, group, or policy record, that note will appear on the side panel as a quick reminder of the important information.

7. Personal Dashboards

The data you care about and need in order to make decisions in your position is unique to you. That’s why creating a personal dashboard can be so helpful.

Personal dashboards are what you see when you first log in to your AMS or CRM. They typically contain your activities or to-dos for the day, but from there, you can personalize to show graphs or charts of data that’s important to you and also saved searches for information you need each day.

Example in AgencyBloc: If your role focuses on working with commissions and analyzing revenue, you might consider setting up your personal dashboard with these real-time charts:

• Top Commissions Received - By Carrier
• Top Commissions Received - By Agent
• Actual vs. Projected - By Month
• Actual vs. Projected - By Coverage Type
• New Policies - By Coverage Type

8. Shared Reports

Along the same lines as personal dashboards, shared reports can save your agency time, as well. Create a report, name it, and share it with coworkers that also need that data. Each time it’s run, it uses the latest data.

Commonly shared reports might include production reports, pending policy reports, and group employee census reports. See more report examples in our downloadable, The Big Book of Custom Report Recipes.

Having a way to share reports within your AMS ensures everyone is looking at the same data and is pulling it the same way, which reduces data silos where only certain people have access to specific information. 

9. Saved Searches

Think about the data you look up on a daily basis. Now, think about how much easier it would be to have a space on your dashboard with that information at the forefront each time you opened your AMS or CRM. This is where saved searches come in!

A good example of this would be a producer looking at new leads or recently-converted clients. This might be information they want to see each day as they’re working leads and as a motivator to continuously convert them into clients.

Identify the things that come up on a regular basis that you need to see and create saved searches to efficiently monitor that data.

10. Global Search

Last, but certainly not least, we have global search or “search all records”. Global search is simply a way for you to search across your entire book of business. You can search for groups, individuals, policies, and agents. Then, sort and filter your data to see only what you need.

Example in AgencyBloc: Searching for "Thad Bridges" will find any matches in Groups, Individuals, Policies, and Agents. The screenshot below shows that Thad Bridges and Thad Bridges, Sr. are both individuals in your book of business with multiple policies tied to them.

This serves as a really fast way to look a client up when they call in (you can always search for phone numbers!), research a prospect before you call, and more. 

Get Your Team in the Right AMS

If you’re looking at this list of items and noticing your current AMS or CRM lacks in these areas, it might be time to consider looking into a new one. 

AgencyBloc is the #1 Recommended Insurance Industry Growth Platform serving the health, benefits, and senior insurance space.

To learn more about AgencyBloc, check out this 5-minute overview video.

Posted by Kelsey Rosauer on Friday, February 19, 2021 in Insurance Agency Management System

1. data management
2. productivity