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Vertical Applications
- Financial
Industry -
Insurance
& Financial Planning
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Current client portfolio information via
wireless-connected devices
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Sales illustrations, created, printed and
presented to customers on the spot
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Corporate data retrieval from the client’s office or
home
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Wireless E-mail Access for busy
professionals
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Details...
The insurance and mutual fund industries have begun
equipping their sales agents with notebooks that can display and analyze
current product and price information right before their customers’ eyes.
Sales illustrations can be created, printed and presented to customers on
the spot. Sales closure rates are higher when this information is presented
on the spot. With a modem connection, additional information stored in central
databases can be retrieved from the client’s office or home. Health and
EKG data can be transmitted wirelessly by nurses. The overall
effect is a measurable increase in sales productivity.
In an extensive business-process
reengineering project in late 90s,
Merrill Lynch spent several hundred million dollars to equip 25,000 agents
with Pentium-class multimedia notebooks connected to UNIX servers running
Sybase. The notebooks are loaded with Windows NT and a financial planning
application called Trusted Global Advisor. The software features new
analytical and presentation tools that help customers understand different
investment scenarios more easily. One of the key features of the new
application is the ability to integrate customer data residing in multiple
accounts into a single image and to provide reports in an ad hoc fashion as
needed. The notebooks will make Merrill Lynch’s financial consultants
fully mobile, freeing them to visit their customers' offices or homes.
Recent Initiatives in insurance (circa 2000)
Apart from allowing their sales force to use mobile devices (primarily
notebook so far) to access corporate information, a few personal property
insurers have started evaluating use of handheld for allowing their customers
to access their personal information from the web through handgeld
devices. One such insurer is Progressive Casualty Insurance Corporation
of Ohio, USA. They are using WAP-enabled devices to access this
information. The consumer can find a local agent from the smartphone browser
and then make a cellular voice call - a sort of voice & data mode of
obtaining information.
Among the major insurers, Allstate was not
ready. On the otther hand, State Farm was strategizing future use of handhelds
for a similar application.
Property & Casualty Insurance - Reporting From the Scene
of Accident
Several public safety agencies responsible for reporting car accidents
have developed on-site accident reporting application software. Now
property insurance industry is collecting information about accidents in the form of a picture
of the vehicle either from the scene of the accident or from the garage where
the vehicle might get towed to. This information along with an
electronic photograph is then sent to the
claims processing center for faster turnaround.
Kemper Insurance Company of
Jacksonville, Kentucky in USA has started piloting such an application in
2000. For more information on this application, go to insurance
case study information.
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