Prudential moves agency force to the next level with Palm technology.

Mobile Palm technology creates real business efficiency for leading insurance provider.

Selling life insurance plans has become a quicker and simpler process thanks to mobile technology from Palm. Leading life insurer Prudential Assurance Malaysia Berhad found that implementing technology based on the Palm Treo smartphone and a software solution from a software vendor, Dynafront Systems Bhd, has created many new business efficiencies, helping its agency force become more effective in generating sales and servicing customers.

The software solution, which provides robust personal information and client management features while 'offline', is enhanced further thanks to the Palm Treo's wireless capabilities, allowing agents to check and send e-mails, access client databases and retrieve policy information while on the go.

For Prudential Malaysia, this translates into greater business efficiency and improved productisvity. Within just six months of implementation, Prudential Malaysia had quickly reaped returns from its investment into this new technology, with its agency force becoming more connected and integrated than ever. Prudential Malaysia is currently the largest corporate user of Palm Treo.

Needed: Instant information on the go
Life insurers like Prudential Malaysia rely on teams of agents to reach the end customers and sell insurance plans. Called the 'agency force', these teams are highly mobile and constantly on the move, making integration and consistent communication a key challenge.

According to Bill Lisle, General Manager of Business Distribution, Prudential Malaysia, the company considers achieving maximum communication efficiency the key reason for adopting a technology solution.

"Our primary concern was to ensure communications was at an optimum level between both Prudential and our agents, and subsequently, between our agents and their clients despite the fact that our agents are on the get-go most of the time. This is our 'Truly Mobile' strategy," he says.

"Before implementing the Palm Treo solution, Prudential was a very paper-based company when it came to communicating. The significant period of time required to communicate new products, promotions, policy changes or internal news to our agency force meant a loss of time that could have been used to acquire new clients. We needed to find a way to minimise this loss of time," Lisle adds.

Another key challenge for Prudential was to ensure agents have speedy access to information to better service their clients. To respond to clients' needs, agents would require information on policies, products and processes. And, the faster they got access to this information, the better!

"Having the right information at your fingertips is a crucial factor to the success of our agency force. What this means is that our agents don't have to tell their clients that they'll get back to them later on a certain query. Therefore our clients can have the answers they want immediately. It also means, our agents can have the confidence to meet clients throughout the day, without needing to step back into the office to pick up documents. This translates to greater efficiency," says Lisle.

Prudential had met this need through its call centre, where agents could dial a phone-number and retrieve information from call centre staff. While the call-centre provided agents with instantaneous information when needed, maintaining a call-centre to support a fast-growing agency force required heavy resources.

"We realised that many of the requests put through by agents to the call-centre were basic requests for information that could be better managed via a self-access system. Thus, in addition to providing ourselves with a way to communicate effectively with our agency force, we were also looking for a solution that would help provide our agency force with access to information and relieve some load from the call-centre," Lisle adds.

Increasing productivity for a mobile force
The combination of the Insurance Solution coupled with Palm Treo technology proved to be the technological answer to the seamless communication Prudential Malaysia was looking for.

Lisle explains: "The comprehensive insurance solution provides us instant communication with our agency force and enables simpler communication for our agency force with clients. Together with the Palm Treo, our agents are now instantly updated of any new information pertaining products, promotions or policies as we push communications out. They have become truly mobile."

"As a result of this, our agency force has become better integrated and more tightly aligned with our business objectives," he adds.

The Palm Treo is also integrated with PRUpartner, a web-based portal which allows agents to quickly access e-mails; hence, the ability to communicate instantly with Prudential Malaysia and their clients. In addition to being a communication tool, Palm Treo also enables agents to easily access information on policies and products on the go via Prudential Malaysia's information system called PRUnet.

"Speedy response times are what make a company's customer service truly stand out. With the insurance solution, our agents are able to quickly retrieve client information, such as the status of a policy application, and provide their clients with instantaneous status updates. This way, clients are no longer kept waiting for answers to simple queries," says Lisle.

Easy access to information also works to an agent's benefit when approaching potential clients. Included with the insurance solution are tools for performing financial needs analysis, financial calculators and generating sales quotations.

"Customisation is extremely important with life insurance policies as each individual client is different. Thanks to the suite of tools provided with the insurance solution, our agents now have enhanced ability to make a sale at the point of meeting. They are able to immediately prepare an insurance policy that meets the clients need. This not only translates into increased sales, but also increased efficiency as our agents only need to meet the potential clients once to be able to present a quotation," says Lisle.

Prudential Malaysia has deployed 3,600 units of the solution among its 7,000 strong agency force, with a nationwide deployment covering major urban centres like Kuala Lumpur, Johor, Penang and Kuching. Top performing agents are rewarded by being assigned units, making the Palm Treo a testament of an agent's good work.

According to Lisle: "We did not expect such a high demand within our agency force for the Palm Treo units, and this has worked for us in the sense that it has also become a motivational tool for our agents to perform better. This also surprised us as the uptake of units showed us high IT competency within our agency force, a goal we wanted to achieve as well."

Achieving tangible results
Ultimately, the success of a technology solution lies in its ability to produce and influence the production of results. Here, Dynafront's the insurance solution with Palm Treo technology boasts a myriad of impressive advantages: