Get to know our experts. This series discusses how Vertafore leaders work for our customers.
Daniela Ivey, VP of product management, is responsible for keeping Vertafore’s projects on task and making sure they continue to serve the customer.
Lately, she’s been focused on implementing some of the efficiency features of AgencyOne, the insurance software integration platform that connects Vertafore solutions across an agency. She does that by staying focused on customer outcomes and how AgencyOne brings together disconnected systems at insurance agencies.
Modernizing the independent agency workflow
Daniela says her job is to reduce friction, eliminate duplicate work, and create user experiences that feel like everything works together seamlessly. "My job is to bring all these products together. At the end of the day, it’s about better workflows and better data access, all with the outcome that agencies can serve their clients faster and more accurately,” she says.
When working for our customers, outcomes come first
That’s the mindset Daniela adopted after working at a previous employer on a challenging product launch for a company that created software for 911 dispatchers. "On paper, it was very efficient, it was logical, it was going to save them hours of time, it was going to cut down manual steps, and it passed every test,” Daniela says. “But post-launch, the adoption was nonexistent. Nobody used it.”
After talking with billing leads about the product, she found the answer came down to trust: The people, not the product, were responsible for everything working, and they weren’t willing to trust the product with their jobs. “That really hit me,” she says. “We missed the outcome. That changed how I approach everything.”
Now, her focus is less on what a feature does and more on whether it delivers the results users need.
Integrated solutions help agencies cut manual work
With the myriad tasks that need to happen to get quotes, process claims and everything else surrounding insurance work, agents often spend more time doing manual tasks than they do interacting with clients.
Ultimately, AgencyOne helps our customers spend less time jumping between systems and more time actually working,” Daniela says.
Many agencies searching for efficiencies want to know how many carriers their agents quote or how many rates they need to sell a line of business. Without a system to centralize data, there is no easy way to run a report showing an agent needed 15 carriers and 20 different rates to issue one line of business. "We’re bringing the data together, we’re simplifying the workflow, we’re tracking how long it takes to be able to do these activities, and we’re creating one reporting solution so that agencies can show their clients all the work they do to support them.”
AgencyOne’s certificate solution will streamline work for servicers
Daniela is focused on faster certificate issuance, cleaner holder management, and self-service capabilities for the end-insured. "Being able to make CSRs’ workflows more efficient means they’re better able to service clients, they’re able to organically grow, they’re able to offer cross-sell opportunities to their producers.”
Agencies with large commercial clients might issue 500 to 1,000 certificates during renewal for every one of a client’s holders. Automating that process could be transformational.
“None of that work is actually driving revenue or growing the business—those policies have already been issued, the commissions are already coming in,” Daniela says. “The more efficient we can make that process, the faster they can move through it, the more they can focus on driving revenue.”
Exciting things are coming in AI for insurance
The goal is to train models on an agency’s data to recommend cross-sell opportunities, predict renewals at risk, and make routine tasks faster and easier for everyone involved. "We are very interested in how we automate some of that stuff—like the certificate workflow—that our users have to go do a thing and then they have to go tell their workflow I’ve just done a thing. We should just know they did the thing.”
The goal is not about replacing people but elevating them, Daniela says. The outcome will be making everyone more efficient and taking away daily pain points to help agencies grow organically.
Vertafore power users rely on data and automation to grow
The most successful agencies are centralizing their data, consolidating their solutions, automating tasks, adopting dashboards, and using data to make informed decisions. “I think these are the players who are shaping the tools to serve the needs of their clients. They’re not using the tools to shape their workflows,” Daniela says.
For large agencies juggling multiple systems, it’s a challenge to compare performance and identify which teams are truly best-in-class. Even if one group has a workflow worth replicating, it’s difficult to model and share that success when the underlying systems aren’t aligned.
When your data is centralized, your systems are consolidated, and you can answer the questions that will then help you drive the business outcome you’re seeking.”