Sherry Burrell This is Me

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1. 1. insurance, Georgia, Decatur, Atlanta, Duluth, Gwinnett County, JATC, Directors & Officers, Dentist, auto insurance, homeowners insurance, workers compensation, business insurance, financial services, professional liability, agent, life insurance, Flagship

   www.grimesins.com/contact.asp - [Cached]

   Published on: 12/1/2006   Last Visited: 12/28/2007

   Sherry Burrell President sburrell@grimesins.com

2. 2. www.ascnetquarterly.org

   www.ascnetquarterly.org/NewArt - [Cached]

   Published on: 11/2/2007   Last Visited: 11/2/2007

   Sherry Burrell is president of this 14- employee Duluth, Ga., agency and president of the Alabama-Georgia TAM Users Group. Her agency was already using real-time functionality,or so she thought,when she began serving on an automation council for one of her carriers. The carrier kept records on each of its agencies' use of real time. "When I saw our numbers, I was pretty embarrassed," says Burrell.
   
   Unless management can clearly explain the benefits of changing any portion of an established workflow, employees aren't likely to embrace the new processes. At one point, Burrell thought she had convinced her CSRs to use real-time processes. But as she says in retrospect, old habits die hard. "I think they used it in the beginning," she says, "and then they got out of the habit."
   
   Not only does she monitor CSR activities now; she has included information about Transformation Station in the agency's procedure manual and added a rating that pertains to it in performance reviews.
   
   Today Burrell spends part of her time lobbying carriers for greater use of Transformation Station. Most of her companies use download for billing and claims inquiries, but few yet offer significant real-time rating functionality. "Rating is going slowly for companies," she says, and as a result, many agencies are turning to third-party rating products.
   
   This creates a Catch-22, she observes, because the more agencies use these products, the less motivated carriers will be to begin using Transformation Station. "Agents, through their user groups or directly, need to emphasize that we want to go the Transformation Station route," says Burrell. Transformation Station costs Applied Systems agencies nothing additional, while third-party products must be purchased. "It's up to us," Burrell confirms, "to make noise about this."
   
   Of the seven carriers Grimes Insurance represents, four provide some degree of real-time rating in commercial lines, and all have real-time functionality for billing and claims inquiry. Notably, a regional company (Allied) owned by Nationwide offers the largest number of capabilities.
   
   Biggest Mistake: She considers her failure to monitor employees' actual use of real-time capabilities to be her biggest mistake. "I came back and held a second meeting with them, and now I monitor their usage by running activity reports," she says. To facilitate the new processes for CSRs, Burrell used information on Applied's TAM Web site to create a color-coded chart listing each of the agency's carriers and their real-time capabilities (see chart at bottom).
   ...
   Remember, says Burrell, "You have nothing to lose by trying it."

3. 3. www.ascnet.org

   www.ascnet.org/AM/Template.cfm - [Cached]

   Published on: 11/19/2007   Last Visited: 12/11/2007

   Sherry Burrell Local Chapter President/Chairman, Alabama/Georgia TAM Users Group PHONE: (770) 623-2930 FAX: (770) 623-8709