In recent years we put in a lot of hours helping insurers figure out how new solutions such as CRM can move their business forward.

And they listened. In fact they did more than just listen.

They also took notes and compared those notes with friends, even rivals.

Increasingly these started finding their way into plans, strategies and eventually RFPs.

That sounds like great news for vendors like us.

You tell a customer about your product, they like it and decide to buy it.

However all these notes on functionalities and features are so wide spread, anyone from two guys working out of their basement reselling a cloud CRM solution to a Fortune 50 company can apply to that RFP.

And all of them can easily clain that they have the insurance specific, proven, customized solution that will generate more business, improve productivity and accountability, keep clients happy and leverage the power of digital customer journey.

Those things are easy to claim because talk is cheap.

And claims like that are not just written in every vendor brochure, website or podcast, they are also the central themes of industry papers on trends, analyst forecasts and events. So how do you separate the wheat from the chaff?

The insurance company buying the CRM or upgrading a CORE has to deal with a huge task of carefully weighing, deliberating, working through the nuances of product, implementation, support and warranty.

After a few month of product and vendor dilligence, they will pull the trigger on whatever comes up best in their excel scorecard.

Here at IN2 this actually works in our favor. We are focused only on insurance. Are a top Microsoft partner. 

Our INsurance2 CRM has insurance specific functionalities developed on top of MS Dynamics. 

If you're buying CRM for insurance, the 3, 4, 6 month diligence, pilot and closing process of a deal will bring you to the conclusion that we're the best at this game in a radius of 2 thousand kilometers.

But recent experience shows that it's not the best idea to just buy CRM or just buy CORE or just buy an integration platform.

Before committing to one solutions, you want to look at it how that solution helps you achieve a fast and powerful operations behind the scenes, while providing clean, simple, efficient and appropriately branded touch points with customers, prospects and even internal users.

Facebook, LinkedIn, Google and Amazon don't have an app for users and a separate colutions for their agents, staff and executives. It's always the same one app, just the views and access levels are adjusted for a person's level of authorization.

But Facebook, LinkedIn, Google and Amazon do have a wide range of powerful, fast and intelligent technologies that give them insight, scale, prediction and power to execute just about any business scenario they come up with. CRM for example may be what you're missing. It may not. In order to understand what you really need, you need more than the next RFP.

The best practice we've seen in recent years is designing the so called "TO BE" architecture of your insurance technology. 

This is different than just adding a new technology element or improving a set of processes. It's much more about the big picture.

Once you understand how the big picture works to satisfy your customers, team and business goals, then it's relatively easy to define the type of IT changes are needed in the next year, two years, five years.

Doing it this way, you don't have to way between which solution/vendor package will come closest to the features and functionalities you need.

You will be able to demand all the functionalities you want and then deliberate on which vendor proposes the best, most flexible, low risk way to get your there.

The vendor you need is someone who understands how every single solution, functionality, transaction engine, user interface comes together over time to form a congruent, consistent and efficient IT organism.

Maybe we would make a good fit and work well together, maybe not. But regardless if we do or don't, the key thing today is transitioning to solutions which are engineered, built and designed to come together naturally.

And that these solutions also allow insurers to quickly add, expand, incorporate new apps, products, services and partners from elsewhere. 

Blending together functionalities that were once segregated into CORE, CRM, INTEGRATION, FRONT END, is the best bet to achieve efficiency, industry compliance and higher growth.

The best wey to generate results that move your insurance company forward.

To learn more about this, check out our combined CORE, CRM and DIGITAL platform solutions or reach out for a quick connect.