AMS Responds to Customer Wants with PS4 Plus Version 2.5

Responding to a wish list of customer wants, AMS Services Inc. released Version 2.5 of PS4 Plus, chock full of new features to make agent’s lives a little bit easier. PS4 Plus is a commercial point of sales process for a producer.

Designed for both the new and seasoned agent, PS4 Plus helps the agent become an “instant expert” for a particular risk, allowing the agent to become familiar with the coverage for a particular client, according to Becky Clegg, PS4 Plus sales manager and carrier accoints manager. “If I’m an agent that’s never written marina, how do I become professional and in-the-know with that marina owner so that I’m asking him questions applicable to his risk and not just some generic questions or using my ACORD application to collect that information?”

“It walks [an agent] through that commercial sales process from survey to submission to a proposal and some post documentation,” Clegg said.

AMS has over 650 risk categories in PS4.

“It really is kind of adding that extra arrow to your quiver,” Clegg said. “We’ve got a coverage library built into PS4 that encompasses over 1,300 coverages put into laymen’s terms. So if you have to describe to a plumbing and heating contractor what a particular coverage is—like business income and extra expense—it helps me say it in a way that he can understand without using a bunch of legalese.”

PS4’s newest release—Version 2.5—offers plenty of new features to assist the agent in the commercial sales process – many of them by request from the agents themselves.

Among some of the new features:
• “Mail to” feature allows the producer to e-mail all files associated with a client or prospect, with the exception of the checklist and safety program.
• Submission or certificate forms will be automatically reformatted into a portable document format (PDF).
• Agents can create submission files entering the effective and expiration dates for all forms at one time, and can update effective and expiration dates at one time by rolling them to the next term.
• A certificate creation wizard pulls data from one or more submission forms to create certificates, eliminating errors.
• Agents creating a new certificate file will enjoy the auto fill of the “Days Notice” field. An asterisk (*) will be placed in the “Days Notice” field of any attached holder, signaling PS4 Plus to print the numbers on the master certificate.

Other features implemented include a market finder tool, data links, auto ID card creation and links to SilverPlume Sage.

Clegg said the PS4 team strives to please its customers—”We’re insurance people in the insurance software industry—many of the people on my team were either agents, agency owners, underwriters or MGAs. So many of us have kind of walked in their moccasins.”

Version 3.0 is expected to be released in the first quarter 2004, with a briefcase model, which Clegg says has been requested by the larger brokers.

Clegg said to also expect a revamp of the submission tracking tool—she dubs it “the Monday Morning Armchair Quarterback.” The tool will allow the producer to run a quick report on their clients to show them what they have been working on.