How Taylor Insurance Services Drove $120,000 in New Revenue with…

At Taylor Insurance Services (TIS), managing more than 85,000 insurance policies covering 50,000 people was more than the company's Microsoft Access database could handle. After switching to Quickbase, TIS has been able to make its data work for the company - not the other way around. The result was an immediate revenue boost of $120,000 in just one quarter.

Challenge

An overloaded Microsoft Access database crashed frequently, and modifications were too costly
No real insight into policy and claim data
Off-the-shelf Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems, including Salesforce.com, did not support business processes

Solution

Quickbase CRM app
All policy and account info accessible from central source of data
Web-based access keeps field staff connected
Advanced reporting revealed valuable business insight

Benefits

New policy insight yielded $120,000 in additional revenue in one quarter
Mobile functionality reduced inbound field staff calls by 21%
CRM worked with staff workflows, not against them
Support from Quickbase Solution Provider Sympo ensured a successful implementation.

Based in Valdosta, Georgia, Taylor Insurance Services (TIS) is a family-owned employee benefits and financial services firm with a focus on client service. With more than 85,000 policies to manage - and a modest IT budget - TIS struggled to wrangle its most important data.

The company relied on a Microsoft Access database to run its customer relationship management (CRM) process, but that system was overloaded, crashing constantly. Worse, each modification to the system required costly development work.

After evaluating alternatives like SQL and Salesforce.com, TIS opted to build a customized CRM on Quickbase. According to CEO Trey Taylor, Quickbase gave TIS the best opportunity to arrive at a solution quickly and maintain the flexibility to change on the fly as business needs change.

"Our system isn't overly complicated, but there are a few things that we need the solution to do a certain way, otherwise there's no point in having it at all," says CEO Trey Taylor.

Managing and accessing growing volumes of data

To implement its CRM solution, TIS turned to Quickbase Solution Provider Sympo. Sympo president Emi Gwin says moving the company's historical data into Quickbase was critical to the project.

"When you are migrating from an existing system and you need to keep the data intact, you have to find creative ways to move data without losing the relationships. Trey had customers related to policies, claims, documents, notes, and more. It was a giant spider web that had to be moved without breaking it," says Gwin.

Once the project was completed, TIS was able to seamlessly manage data and documents related to its policies, claims, and payments - including 260,000 scanned policy images - all from one Quickbase app.

Because Quickbase is web-based, TIS field agents gained the ability to access policy data and customer information from anywhere on any device, eliminating the need to call the home office to track down the information.

And Quickbase's scalable architecture made it possible for TIS to store growing amounts of customer data without the need to invest in additional hardware. "They now have software that they can control, versus their old database which controlled them," says Gwin.

Insights to boost the bottom line

With all of its data stored, managed and accessible within Quickbase, TIS can now optimize policy, claim and payment data in ways it couldn't before. Not only can TIS track data down to the policy level, but with built-in reporting capabilities TIS can leverage that data to spot new opportunities. With better insight into which products its customers had (and had not) already purchased, TIS was able to drive additional revenues.

"As a benefits company, it's important that I know which products you've bought. If we sell six products and you've bought four, now we know which two products we should be offering you," says Taylor. "The reporting we can do in Quickbase led to $120,000 in additional premiums this quarter."

Not only have revenues gone up, but costs are down as well. Taylor estimates that inbound phone calls from field workers to office staff have been reduced by 21%, increasing productivity and reducing time wasted chasing single data points.

And now that it has found a trusted partner in Sympo, TIS can finally be done with the roller coaster of failed implementations that had plagued the company for so many years.

"We didn't want to change everything we had done so well for decades," said Taylor. "Quickbase gave us a solution that fits the way we need to work."

The Partner Perspective

To achieve its dramatic results, Taylor Insurance Company teamed up with Sympo, a Quickbase Solution Provider. Sympo president Emi Gwin shares her insights into the TIS project, the approach, and why Quickbase was the right solution for the long term.

What was the challenge Trey presented you with?

Trey came to Sympo in search of a stable, scalable platform that would be able to replace his almost 20 year old Microsoft Access database. He and his team were growing frustrated with the database as it would crash on a daily basis and was very slow. In addition, it was very rigid and not easy to expand. They were boxed in with what they had and constantly at the mercy of the database. It seemed to be a constant interruption to their daily operations.

What was your approach to solving the challenge?

First, we needed to understand if we were dealing with a breadbox or a refrigerator. From the surface, it seemed pretty straight forward. However, once we started to dive in, we realized there was a lot more to his database, especially with data. Trey had previously tried to migrate to different software, only to hit a wall resulting in the loss of thousands of dollars. I knew it was important that we minimize his risk and do everything we could to prevent hitting yet another wall. Trey and I agreed to proceed with a proof of concept first to make sure Quickbase was the right fit. Through the proof of concept, we encountered several hurdles, but successfully cleared each one. Once the POC was complete, we were able to confirm that Quickbase was the right solution and was going to work.

Why was Quickbase a good choice for Taylor Insurance?

Quickbase is scalable, flexible, and sustainable. These were features that were important to Trey. In addition, Quickbase's robust reporting features gave Trey visibility into his company he didn't have previously. It was as if Trey went from a black and white television to a 3D high definition television. The view and experience were totally different.

What was the most important thing for getting this project right?

Mapping and calculating data. Trey had 20 years of data in his old database. This was a lot of information and it was critical we migrate his data without compromise. In addition, we had to pay attention to the volume of data and keep it within reason so as to maximize performance of Quickbase as well as stay within table limits. Also, we needed to understand his company's behavior. We always try to understand a company's behavior - how do they perform their job every day? If an application does not parallel a company's workflow, it will more than likely fail. We had to understand how Trey's team worked and how it would be replicated in the application.

Where there any particularly difficult aspects or challenges in this project?

I would say it was the data and the relationships. When you are migrating from an existing system and you need to keep the data intact, you have to find creative ways to move data without losing the relationships. Trey had customers related to policies, related to claims, related to documents, related to notes, etc. It was a giant spider web that had to be moved without breaking it.

How would you describe the benefits of the solution you created for TIS?

TIS now has a solution that will grow with his business. Time previously spent waiting for the old system to reboot has been reallocated to do things that are more productive for the business. They are now able to run ad-hoc reports on their business and see data in a new light. Their investment in Quickbase will continue to have tremendous returns for several years to come. They now have software that they can control vs. their old database which controlled them.

Emi Gwin
President, Sympo

How Taylor Insurance Services Drove $120,000 in New Revenue with Quickbase