Agency Management System for a Commercial Agency

[CALCO]

Can anyone recommend an Agency Management system other than AMS360 or Allplied/Epic. AMS360 is too slow and is really outdated in my opinion. The Epic is nice, except the start up cost is $8,000. We are a small commercial insurance brokerage. Most of our business is written through wholesalers. We write entertainment, GL, E&O and BOP's.

Thank you!

Sarkis Kaladzhyan

[pita3333]

there are several long and detailed threads on this subject. Search for them and you will find some other options depending on what you are after.

I find it amusing that you say 360 is outdated, since it is one of the top systems in the industry...and is constantly updated. Yes it and any other system may not be EXACTLY what you are after, but unless you are willing and able to build your own, you will never get everything you want. Speed issue could be related to your internet connection or less than realistic expectations.

Have not personally viewed Applied's new Epic system. $8000 does sound a bit pricy...but remember that as with everyting "You get what you paid for".

Might also help to know details about your agency:

Commercial/Personal split (revenue, premium, client/policy count, etc)
Location
Number of users
Number of locations
What do you want it to handle
What are you on now

[jbinsure]

Having been a long time Applied / TAM user ( from back when it was referred to as DosTam)...I really only wanted to use that product. However, startup costs combined with monthly fees and huge costs to add users really was not an option as a startup agency. We recently purchased the QQ Enterprise online system. After using it for about 1 month, we are really quite pleased with the performance. Obviously, it's not TAM but it has really performed quite well. I am not happy with the way to print Acords and it occassionally runs a bit slow, but overall we feel that we got a really great deal. With up to 5 users, I think our intial investment was like $600-$700, and we pay around $100-125 per month.

I hope this helps.

jbinsure

[HSA Insurance]

For Different types of agency management software plz visit the following website

http://www.agencysoftware.com/

[memcom]

You can't beat DataTracker from dbCache.com. See a demo at http://www.dbcache.com .

[TheInsKid]

You may want to look at the Nexsure product (http://www.xdti.com) The start up costs are very moderate but the one of the best things I have found is that the 5 years that I have had the system, I have never received an increase in my yearly maintenance fee !! I also am not charged any set up fee nor any maintenance fee for commercial or personal lines downloading, so I am saving money in both areas. I wonder if any other system can say that?? So the upfront price is not the only pricing issue you may want to look at. My cost is based upon the number of users which I have found to be fair.

[CALCO]

Thanks to everyone who took the time to reply. Has anyone heard anything about www.qqonline.com? Please do tell me about the Pro's and the Con's.

Thanks!!

[jbinsure]

Please see my posting above regarding QQ.

We purchased 2 months ago, and overall it has been good. It's economical and quite functional. The two major issues thusfar have been that the speed of getting around is a bit slow. It lags going from screen to screen but this has been workable. The other issue we have is printing Acord apps to pdf files. The function works, but it prints each page individually and saves it as a file. So, if you are doing 12 pages of apps you end up having to take the time to combine them into one document which is not very efficient.

Despite those issues, I would still highly recommend the system particularly if you are on a tight budget!

jbinsure

[SEANMYERS]

I too have the 1 page at a time QQ problem when I convert to pdf via "cutepdf" which does not make companies I send acords to very happy. If anyone has a solution to this problem I'd be most grateful. In addition, if you are familiar with QQ built in accounting system (especially for sub-agent commission tracking) I would love to talk to you.
And yes, moving between screens is slow, if any QQ support folk are reading this, I hope you are working on both issues.
Other than that, great system.

[Ravisseur]

I found a decent workaround for the Acord printing problem in QuickFile. I'm on the Enterprise Edition. Instead of printing to create the pdf, choose email, then email the acords to yourself. It will then create one pdf document with all pages instead of the one page at a time thing. You can then copy the attachment from your Sent Items folder immediately (I use Outlook); you don't have to wait to receive the email.

Be careful to change the email address on that screen to your own from the default that is pre-filled with the insured's or you will be sending the acords to your insured.

Overall, I am very happy with QuickFile for my small, mostly personal lines agency.

[Russmann]

Another workaround would be to print the documents to PDFFactory. As long as PDFF is open, it will combine all documents sent to it into a single saveable PDF file.

Seems unimaginable that there is not an option for this to create a single file. What were they thinking?

[aharmon]

Hello, I am with QQ Solutions. I agree that the printing of a .pdf one page at a time is very time consuming and needs to change. It is one of the features we are currently working on to improve with our new management system QQ Evolution.