Here at Surer, we pride ourselves on our solution to help General Insurance drive their business efficiency. To ensure we are building for what matters, we constantly reach out to and speak with our users During these chats, we came to realise that many agents held on to certain myths about business productivity solutions that are quite untrue. So, in this article, we try our hands at debunking some of these myths… NOT TRUE Okay, we will try to not start every section with this. This is a common misconception, and nothing could be further from the truth. Well, if you do come across a productivity solution that complicates processes or builds silos within your network, drop it like it’s hot! Productivity solutions should be removing silos and encouraging productivity by streamlining complicated or mundane processes such that more business can be done FASTER and at SCALE. For example, a typical General Insurance typical deal process done in the traditional way is somewhat as follow: Starting with the tedious process of quote sourcing, either through various independent insurer systems or via communication channels not built for this purpose (like whatsapp or emails) This process gets even more tedious should your client want more than three quotes or if your Principals do not want to quote for a particular cover. After getting these quotes, you then have to organise them to present to your clients – and god forbid, if there are changes to his/her initial requirements you pray that you have everything well tracked somewhere. When the client is finally happy with the quote you have provided, you then have to go back to the Insurer or the agent you worked with (in the case of a Referral) to finalise the policy. You then have to inform all the other Insurers and agents that the quote they have gotten was not accepted by the client. Once the Insurer generates the policy, you then have to carefully store this policy and make a note somewhere of its renewal date. And this, we understand is already a straightforward case… To cope with having to go through the same tedious process for every single deal, agents tend to limit the scope of where they source for quotes and who they work with. While there is nothing wrong with that and deals are still being done, productivity solutions like Surer allows you to save 95% of your time managing this process AND allows you to track your business at the same time! Yes we know we are blowing our trumpets a little here… but the point we are trying to make is that Surer is an example of a business productivity solution in General Insurance that debunks this myth. First myth to debunk here – the act of multitasking has been proven to make someone less productive – a good multitasker might not be a productive person! We actually lose about 40% of our productivity when we multitask. Soooo… what then? Productivity solutions or tools are here to help you take care of repetitive tasks or automate processes to ensure you can… TAKE YOUR MIND OFF IT At Surer, we make it imperative that the product helps you keep track of multiple tasks NOT make you do multiple tasks at once. This then allows you to then have a peace of mind and concentrate on what is likely another hectic day of running about meeting clients. Like. We followed a user to understand what one day in the life of a General Insurance agent is like… IT WAS LEGIT HECTIC. Two things here. One, task tracking is tedious. Well, yes. UNLESS IT IS AUTOMATED. Two, task tracking is highly valuable in both the short and long term. In the short-term, automated task tracking helps you relax in the knowledge that your attention is not needed unless prompted. It also allows you to entirely forget about something and be able to pick up on it immediately, when needed. What we often forgot is the longer term benefits of task tracking. Task tracking allows you to look back at past deals and give you a full picture of what transpired for a particular deal – who was the fastest to provide you with a quote? Was there a quote a client rejected? Why? Who was able to provide the best quote? Why did the client accept one quote over another? What is the policy about? When is it due? Yes. Task tracking basically allows you to answer any one of those questions even if it was for a deal that happened 300 years ago (okay, we exaggerate). As a General Insurance agent using Surer, you can rest assured that all your tasks are being tracked and can be referenced at any point in time, from the moment you send a proposal. It is true that having constant connectivity distracts us from reality. We read that according to a recent study, overconnected people suffer temporary IQ drops equivalent to losing a full night’s sleep or taking too many hits of marijuana. So, yes, being digitally overloaded really does make one stupid, quite literally. of course there are many reasons someone can see a drop in their IQ – please don’t flame this writer for being overly simplistic. But the myth to bust here is that contrary to beliefs, these productivity solutions do not want you to be connected all the time – they want to help you shut down, with a peace of mind. For example, Surer helps you track your deals once you have sent out a proposal So, after sending a proposal you literally just relak… because we automatically generate a ‘case file’ or ‘in-progress proposal’ as we call it. Here you just have to drink kopi and wait to be notified when a quote is received. When you see that a quote has been sent back to you, you can simply create a quote presentation to send to your client with the click of a button! One of the feedback we got from our users was that because they know that Surer marks out important junctures of a deal, they literally just tell themselves to disconnect for a couple of hours, do something else like cook a meal and then check back a couple of hours later. This is by far the biggest myth of them all. We realised this stems from the idea that these solutions are built in a cookie cutter way to suit the vast majority and thus is not customised to how one goes about their work in their own specific way; and if I cannot use a product the way I want, it gives me less control. Of course, if a user is unable to use a solution to solve their problem specifically, then once again… cue Snoop Dogg It is for this reason that at Surer, our product team goes out of their way to fully understand how a General Insurance agent conducts his/her business – the idea here is NOT to CHANGE your business but to FACILITATE and make it MORE EFFICIENT. It is fuss-free. No credit card or payment required.Myth #1: These productivity solutions add more layers to and complicates tasks
Myth #2: These productivity solutions help you multitask
Myth #3: These productivity solutions overly up-play the value of task tracking
Myth #4: These productivity solutions overload us with information and forces us to be ‘always-on’
Myth #5: These productivity solutions give me less control
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