Best Practices – Procedures

A PROCEDURE is a series of steps followed in a regular and defined order. Consider your renewal process. There is a beginning and an end to the process. It might look like this:

This procedure is made up of a number of steps and each has its own workflow. The workflow for each step might need to be amended due to the outcome of the previous step. An important thing to remember about documentation of such a procedure is, that if a step is skipped or changed, the reason needs to be documented in the agency management system. Everyone should be able to look at the agency management system to determine the status of any procedure.

However, your agency’s management system might not have a marketing/submission module. If this is the case, you may keep this documentation outside the system. If so, it is important that your procedures and workflows indicate where such documentation is maintained. If you system does not have a marketing/submission module and you don’t use an outside system, there are a number of ways to keep track of this process.

While the system’s activities/actions could be used, I recommend a marketing/submission document.

• This may be either an excel or word document.
• The document should have an appropriate name so that everyone knows what to look for so that they can easily find it.
• The document should remain in a draft status until the renewal process is completed.
• The document is updated at each step of the process.

This provides you with the electronic document that can be viewed by those involved with the account at anytime they need to know the status. Any process needs to be well thought out. It must be reviewed and updated from time-to-time to meet market conditions and to comply with changes in insurance carrier processes.

What questions do you have about creating and documenting your procedures. Do you have great tips to help others?