Page 133 - The UnCaptive Agent

106 THE UNCAPTIVE AGENT

they range tremendously in sophistication, complex-
ity, and pricing. The two dominant companies in this
space are Applied Systems™ and Vertafore Insurance
Solutions™. Both companies offer cloud-based sys-
tems designed for small agencies all the way up to very
large, multiple-office agencies. The advantage of going
with one of the market leaders from the beginning is
that your data will always be in a usable format. The
disadvantage is that they tend to cost more than other
systems.
Two other excellent small agency systems are pro-
vided by EZLynx™ and QQCatalyst™ (owned by
Vertafore). Both systems are lower in cost but offer
one disadvantage: accounting is not included in their
systems, so you must rely upon QuickBooks™ for your
agency accounting.
An advantage both EZLynx™ and Vertafore™ offer
is that they both include personal lines multi-carrier
rating systems as options. If you sell personal insurance,
a multi-carrier rating system will be critically important
to you. And the ease with which you can integrate it
into your management system is an important feature.
Other things to consider is whether having account-
ing included will be important to you. The ability to
create financial documents easily as a byproduct of the
day-to-day work in the agency is critically important.
Both Applied™ and Vertafore™ offer this capability.
Other systems can download data to QuickBooks™.
QuickBooks™ is an almost-universally-used small busi-
ness accounting system and may be adequate for your
agency for many years. But its use requires additional
setup and additional monthly manipulation of the data
to produce financial reports. You should, at a minimum,
ask for this capability to be demonstrated to you before
you make any purchase decision.