As agencies plan their 2026 budgets, they face an exciting opportunity to unlock more value through technology.
My advice to agency leaders? It’s time to streamline your tech stack. What does this look like? Streamlined technology connects tools so information flows smoothly without extra work. It means faster processes, fewer errors, and more time spent on growing the business.
By integrating your top products, you can create a better data environment and user experience, unlocking four key benefits across your agency.
Benefit 1: Optimized Business Strategy
Streamlining your technology often enables better integrations so data can flow seamlessly between systems. That equates to data that is consistent, easier, and faster to update, reducing duplicate work and costly errors.
Equally important, better data means agencies can access better insights about their business and make strategic decisions for the long term. Is there a line of business more profitable than expected? Or a geographic region seeing prices crawl higher and higher? By having an end-to-end view of your data, it’s easier to see opportunities to drive agency revenue and growth.
This also ensures agencies can focus on what matters at the right time. For example, most carriers are required to provide a 45-day notice if they’re not renewing a policy. Those 45 days fly by fast, and in the worst cases, leave an agent working overtime and a policyholder without proper coverage. With connected technology, agencies can analyze risks and renewal data in real time. This lets agents proactively shop for new policies for their clients before receiving any notice from a carrier.
Streamlined technology transforms scattered data into powerful insights, giving agencies the edge to grow faster, make smarter decisions, and capture every opportunity.
Benefit 2: Employee Efficiency and Success
Large agencies use an average of 10 solutions to run their business. Adding more technology platforms drives up training cost, complicates change management, and often makes it less efficient for agency employees who are navigating disconnected and confusing tools.
Think about when a new hire starts on day one. The technology they use will factor into their onboarding experience and ultimately how fast they get up to speed and can start selling policies. This will not only contribute to employee success, but it’ll save the agency time and money on training costs.
When information flows seamlessly between systems, employees can feel confident in getting exactly what they need when they need it. This clarity reduces errors, boosts confidence, and helps teams deliver better results with less effort.
Benefit 3: AI-Readiness
Right now, we’re seeing three key use cases for AI in insurance workflows, and integrated technology makes them smoother by connecting data and tools in one place. This allows employees to access insights faster, reduce manual work, and make more informed decisions.
The first common use case for AI is workflow management, which includes streamlining common tasks with AI automations and tools.
For example, independent agencies rely heavily on email as part of their workflow. Most new tasks begin with an email, whether that’s an inbound from a new prospect or a request for a policy change from an existing customer. Integrated software products, enabled with AI automations, can ingest the details of the email, identify the client in the AMS, and then create and assign the task.
The second most common use case we’re seeing for AI is predicting risk renewals. Smart agencies are using AI and machine learning to dive into claims history and pull insights from the patterns, like areas that are more likely to have carriers pull out, or policies most likely to see an increase on premiums. But for AI to help effectively predict risk, it needs access to data across multiple software tools. Without integrated data, insights fall short, lacking vital information that helps agents understand the full picture.
Automated data entry is another common use case for AI.
At the end of the day, an agency management system is only as good as the data within it. It allows agencies to quickly access important client information and benchmark their data against industry standards. But entering all that data is tedious, error prone, and keeps employees away from revenue driving activities.
Data entry can be handled by AI, which reads and populates information into the system. This not only improves accuracy of the data but also speeds up the process, decreasing from around 45 minutes to only seconds.
Benefit 4: Poised for M&A
While you may not have a current appetite for acquisition, preparing your business for any M&A activity that comes your way opens the door for strategic deals in the future. Connected technology is key to starting off on the right foot.
To begin with, any M&A process requires agencies to provide a lot of data reporting and full transparency into an agency’s book of business. This includes data about the company’s financials, the markets that are currently profitable, and what opportunities remain. If an agency is using multiple different management systems across different locations, it’s difficult and time-consuming to show the full picture. In fact, the speed of this reporting can make or break an offer, as the buyer might opt for another agency that can report on the data more quickly. But when an agency’s data is centralized, they can show value right away, leading to an easier acquisition and improved valuation.
Investing in People and Technology
Ultimately, efficiency is about investing not just in your technology but your people, as well. Start by studying your best-performing teams. Understand their workflows, the tools they rely on, and how they use technology to reduce manual work and focus on revenue. These insights will show which systems deliver the most value and how to leverage them across the organization.
Once best practices are clear, make these workflows the standard for everyone. High-performing teams can serve as a resource, offering guidance and support to help peers adopt new processes successfully.
By focusing on your team first, identifying high performers, and standardizing operations, you can confidently roll out the best processes across the organization. When teams and tech work in tandem, the possibilities for independent agencies are limitless.
Ivey is the vice president, Product Management at Vertafore. Ivey brings over 15 years of experience in the technology industry. Her expertise spans multiple domains, including software, hardware, mobile, and web-based products.
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