HELP HELP HELP !!!

[DawnC]

Hello!  Thanks for taking the time to read.   I've been working with TAM for a little over a year now; and I'm not sure if we are doing things incorrectly or if it's just TAM.  I have been in the industry for 20+ years and have used AMS from the old DOS days to Vertafore Online.  You wouldn't think there would be so many differences between management systems!  It seems there is a lot of duplicate work.   I have never manually attached documents.  For example, workflow was: process change, make activity (insd phoned in, do whatever with whatever add'l prem....)  the activity automatically made a suspense, see if download came in, review change, close suspense. 
NOW: Activity, Process Change, print screen showing change processed, attach screen, pend, attach endorsement if no E-Doc. (and this is another activity - so there are a bunch of activities for the same transaction; which does not make sense to me), AND Label everything in Activity & Attachments ??  Is there a webinar or training or SOMETHING that shows how to use this system?  It just seems like it is taking me a lot longer to do things, there are a lot more steps, and I am way confused.  Do you have to make an activity and attachment for the same thing???  Shouldn't we be utilizing the policy history?   Can download activities be turned off?  They were able to be turned off in Vertafore.   After download was processed, we would print up a .pdf of the report and email it to each CSR and Producer; so you would go to your name and see what was assigned to you - but there were no activities made.   I hope this makes some sort of sense.  Again, thanks for taking the time to read.   

[Ric]

Dawn,

It sounds like the agency you are working for needs to revise their workflow to be more efficient and effective.

Hopefully someone has more specific feedback but I wanted to give you an outsider's viewpoint.

Good luck.

Ric

[Tom Fisher]

Like Ric said, it all comes down to the work flows, agencies vary on what they do and why they do it.  It would probably be a good idea to have a review of your workflows to see what might be simplified.

I will add that download activities are useful to see what has come in via download when trying to troubleshoot download issues.   I believe you can just have these activities automatically close.

[Jim Jensen]

When we started downloading policies, we all had to ask whether we still needed copies of the declarations pages or not. If your download is working correctly, you shouldn't need a dec page at all. It sounds the agency is maintaining 2 sets of data - the electronic version in Applied by download AND either a paper copy, or the electronic PDF version of the paper declarations page.  Are you attaching some type of verfication that the change was completed or a copy of the change? We keep a copy of the change request, in the event there is a discrepency between what was requested and what was done, but that's less of an issue today since most of the time, we're entering the change in their system and it spits out exactly what we put in.

Our change workflow is to attach a copy of the change request (when we're able - some carrier systems don't give us the opportunity to save a copy of the change submitted), then attach that, which creates a change request activity (brief descriptionm of the change requested), then when it's completed, we close the activity as completed. If the pended time comes up and it's not completed, or not done correctly, we'll add to that change with a new pending date, or close it and add a new activitiy, but we do not add an activity to indicate the change was done. The presence of an updated copy of the policy and closing the activity indicates that.

[DawnC]

Thank you all for your time!   Those are my thoughts and from previous experience with electronic document management.  I just wasn't sure if things were different in TAM.  I will keep on - have a great day!!! 

[Jim Jensen]

I left out my activity entry peeve. I've had people that enter the change request activity and then add to it "has change come in?"  and /or then add another entry on top in the same activity "change received". This makes it tougher when looking through to find a specific change request. If I scan through each CHGR activity in the list and the quick look always shows "change received" or something else similar to that, I have to open every one of them up completely to read it. I have the same issue when every letter in the attachment list has the same title ('general letter' or 'letter to client').

[Ric]

I left out my activity entry peeve. I've had people that enter the change request activity and then add to it "has change come in?"  and /or then add another entry on top in the same activity "change received". This makes it tougher when looking through to find a specific change request. If I scan through each CHGR activity in the list and the quick look always shows "change received" or something else similar to that, I have to open every one of them up completely to read it. I have the same issue when every letter in the attachment list has the same title ('general letter' or 'letter to client').

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh I so feel your pain!!!

[Heather Reetz]

I left out my activity entry peeve. I've had people that enter the change request activity and then add to it "has change come in?"  and /or then add another entry on top in the same activity "change received". This makes it tougher when looking through to find a specific change request. If I scan through each CHGR activity in the list and the quick look always shows "change received" or something else similar to that, I have to open every one of them up completely to read it. I have the same issue when every letter in the attachment list has the same title ('general letter' or 'letter to client').

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh I so feel your pain!!!

Me, too!  Lack of consistency ends up wasting so much time.

[Jan Regnier]

The only people that don't put in GOOD information in the subject line are......the agents!! (at least in our office)