Foremost Insurance and Oncontact CRM Software

Foremost Insurance was in search of technology that could simplify the weighty sales process its mobile sales force was juggling. Foremost found Oncontact Software . . . and more than a million dollars in reduced operational costs.

Foremost Insurance - The Customer
Foremost is the largest specialty insurance carrier in the U.S. Foremost leads the industry in insuring products such as mobile homes, motor homes, travel trailers, dwelling fire, motorcycles, off-road vehicles, snowmobiles, boats, personal watercraft, and collectible automobiles.

Our Challenge
Foremost's mobile sales force recruits independent insurance carriers to sell its property and casualty insurance.

Prior to implementing Oncontact's customer relationship management (CRM) application, Foremost's mobile sales force was completely unautomated and its system for managing territories was a logistical nightmare. On a monthly basis, support staff at Foremost's home office would overnight a 500- to 1,000-page report to each mobile sales representative. The report consisted of one-page summaries of each account in the territory. That report was the only tool the rep had to work with and voicemail was the only mode of communication between the home office and the sales force. The reps had no way to analyze their territories and no way to efficiently collaborate with management at the home office.

Fed up with the inefficiencies of the system, Foremost made a commitment to overhaul its mobile sales strategy and chose Oncontact's CRM application as the vehicle for change. Along with implementing Oncontact's CRM system, Foremost equipped its mobile sales force with laptop computers, email and portable printers.

How We Helped
Oncontact's CRM application eliminated Foremost's cumbersome dependency on mail, fax and voicemail communication by giving mobile and home-office users a shared view of every customer and prospect.

Oncontact's CRM application banished the cumbersome reports mobile sales reps once relied on, maximizing the value of the information contained in the reports. Foremost now downloads the reports from the mainframe directly into CRM. Once the reports are in Oncontact's CRM application, sales reps can query the content to derive meaning from the vast amounts of data, allowing reps to analyze their territories with the click of a mouse. Downloading reports to CRM saves sales reps hours of time each month and allows them to manipulate the data to develop successful sales strategies. Information that was previously viewed customer by customer can now be sliced and diced to identify strong points and areas that need improvement.

For example, a rep could search Oncontact's CRM application to find all accounts with production up 10% for the month, zero in on those accounts to learn what factors led to increased production and then apply those successful tactics to other accounts. A Foremost sales manager once queried CRM to find every agent with a loss ratio greater than 75%. He then emailed the entire mobile sales force instructing them to examine the high loss ratio and advising them to work with the problem agents lower it.

Mobile sales reps no longer have to update managers at the home office because managers can see what is going on with each account simply by viewing the record in Oncontact's CRM application. Conversely, managers can use CRM to instruct mobile reps on how to proceed with an account. Prior to installing Oncontact's CRM application, managers had to track down reps to fax them a project or leave a voicemail message with verbal instructions, an inefficient process with a huge margin for miscommunication and missed opportunities. Now managers can simply assign reps a task and it will automatically appear on the reps daily to-do list.

Oncontact's CRM application has also improved communication between mobiles reps and the insurance agents. The reps use CRM to record all the steps they need to take to keep their agents satisfied. Tasks no longer slip through the cracks because CRM gives the reps a daily to-do list to remind them of the day's activities. Oncontact's CRM application gives the reps access to all the information they need to effectively manage their accounts. CRM provides access to each agent's production, product mix, profit picture, license/contract status, and key contacts - without the need to page through reports or rely on others to retrieve information.

Oncontact's CRM application enables sales reps to identify a competitor's position within an opportunity. Keeping tabs on competitors enables Foremost to develop effective strategies to box out competition and close more deals.

Oncontact's CRM system provides new reps with a comprehensive overview of the territory and a full history of each account. This background material reduces training time and the time it takes to become productive members of the sales team.

Currently, Foremost Insurance has over 200 users utilizing the Oncontact CRM system. Half of these users are remote users that synchronize their data every day while the other users utilize the CRM system directly from Foremost’s offices in Grand Rapids, MI and Baltimore, MD.

The Payoff
Implementing Oncontact's CRM application has produced an impressive ROI for Foremost. Foremost calculated a cost-benefit analysis of the automated system and determined that the savings from reduced operating costs total more than a half million dollars during the initial implementation. That figure even includes the absorption of all expenses associated with the new system. In the first year that Foremost utilized the Oncontact CRM solution, Foremost had a ROI of over $1.2 million. Here's how the savings break down:

• Foremost used to spend a fortune on paper documents and the resources it required to support their production
  • Foremost incurred huge faxing and postage fees to distribute documents to mobile sales reps. Correspondence and sales material can now be accessed for free in Oncontact's CRM application.
  • Word Processing fees were outrageous because Foremost's support staff had to retype reports every month and retype supporting documents, such as letters and memos, because there was no electronic template. Oncontact's CRM application has facilitated electronic templates and allows the sales reps - not support staff - to fax or email documents directly from CRM or print labels for mailings.
  • Oncontact's CRM system has eliminated the need for paper training manuals and newsletters because those items are now available electronically in CRM.
• Oncontact's CRM application has trimmed travel and automobile related expenses by enabling reps to manage their territories more efficiently. Reps can target all the agents in a particular area and plan their meetings accordingly so they're covering areas of their territory at once rather than driving back and forth to agents located throughout the region. Less time on the road not only saves travel and automobile expenses, but also frees up more time for the reps to recruit new agents and manage current agents.
• Staff attrition was a major source of cost cutting for Foremost. With Oncontact's CRM application in place, sales reps can independently perform almost all the tasks they had previously relied on support staff to complete. Foremost did not force out any members of the support staff. Rather, as staffers left the company on their own to pursue new opportunities, Foremost did not have to hire new employees to replace them.
• Foremost has been able to more diligently serve its customers by responding to the market when a competitor decides to leave the marketplace through its extensive tracking with the Oncontact CRM system.

Oncontact's CRM application has truly revolutionized the way Foremost's mobile sales force does business. Foremost continues to this day to receive additional ROI on a continual basis.

Another Satisfied Customer
"We have a state-of-the-art system, far exceeding our early expectations. This system has long-term implications on the way we manage accounts, manage and evaluate our sales force and has literally empowered our individual sales people as we could not have imagined two years ago. This project has made a major, long-range contribution to the good of the entire company."

Kammi McDermott
Director
Foremost Insurance Company