The insurance industry is on the rise despite multiple challenges emerging from growing inflation, market volatility, and an economic recession. According to the Insurance Global Market Report 2022 published by Research and Markets, the global insurance market will grow to $8,398.11 billion in 2026 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9.1%.
However, such quick growth inevitably comes amid more fierce competition. The reason is that increasingly more insurance organizations are trying to snatch their pieces of the pie and gain the upper hand. According to IBISWorld, in 2022, there were 415,446 insurance businesses in the US alone, and the number is steadily growing.
In this context, investing in digital tech, which often implies ERP software development, has become one of the most practical ways to gain a competitive edge and adapt to changing market conditions. After all, by integrating ERP in insurance, enterprises may unify various workflows, leading to improved operational efficiency, enhanced customer satisfaction, and increased sales.
This article specifies how implementing an ERP and equipping it with the proper functionality may help an insurance enterprise boost sales.
Enhancing the performance of insurance agents and sales reps
ERP unifies multiple enterprise work processes, such as claims management, customer service, and sales, including data and documentation workflows. With an ERP solution integrated into the corporate digital ecosystem, the data from all departments is standardized and stored in one central repository.
That, in turn, means that any relevant data typically distributed among multiple business systems is available and accessible to enterprise employees via ERP’s interface. Given the above, it is not hard to formulate one of the primary insurance ERP advantages – convenience.
Using ERP, sales reps can access any data they need during their work in a few clicks, be it invoices, contracts, compliances, subscriptions, or other types of information and documents. This saves the time employees typically spend switching between multiple software solutions and thus helps concentrate on things that really matter, namely, sales.
Among other things, ERP may also be equipped with automation functionality, which helps reduce manual labor and makes sales specialists and agents even more productive. For example, ERP developers can implement insurance policy management workflows to expedite insurance policy generation, tracking, and approvals.
Moreover, an ERP may be configured for automated quote calculation, risk assessment, and compliance monitoring. The latter, for instance, enables an ERP to assess compliances in real time, thereby speeding up the work of sales reps and agents since they do not have to perform this task manually.
Improving customer relationship
Often, developers equip ERP solutions with built-in CRM modules or integrate ERPs with existing CRMs, which may give insurance organizations additional advantages from the sales perspective. Here are some considerations of such business advantages.
On the one hand, if an ERP is empowered with the proper functionality, sales specialists can use the solution to create and customize stages of their sales funnels, create and schedule tasks, and monitor their work progress via ERP’s interface. Thus, employees can approach sales more systematically and consistently, which helps them work more effectively.
On the other hand, the built-in CRM capabilities allow sales reps to use ERP for tracking critical customer data such as demographics, purchase history, and active subscriptions. This advantage results in more personalized service and helps sell more to existing customers. In addition, it allows insurance enterprises to cut costs on acquiring new customers.
Finally, relevant data availability helps sales specialists see the complete picture of their interactions with customers. This allows employees to identify the most problematic stages of a sales process and improve them. As a result, ERP implementation enhances sales efficiency and positively affects an organization’s revenue.
Empowering analytics and reporting
Since enterprise resource planning software connects multiple data sources, it accumulates vast amounts of data that may be essential for increasing sales and speeding up business growth. Therefore, ERP developers implement specialized analytics features to help organizations reap the benefit of this data. Data analytics often implies using technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning.
For example, with in-built analytics, sales specialists can analyze historical data, such as subscription history, to better understand segments of their customer bases and determine the most profitable customers. Alternatively, an ERP may explore customers’ purchasing history to predict future demand, allowing employees to adapt timely and adjust their sales strategy even in real time.
Specifically, an enterprise may instruct developers to equip an ERP with pricing analytics. With this feature, an ERP may analyze historical data on purchases of specific service categories and types of subscriptions and apply predictive models to generate more accurate prices automatically. Employees may use these recommendations to optimize their existing pricing strategies and sell better.
Moreover, ERP may provide intuitive data visualization dashboards and reporting features that may help sales teams quickly generate data-based insights without technical experts involved. In particular, if there is a required functionality, sales specialists may define the most critical KPIs – for example, the number of sales by month. Then an ERP may automatically generate reports that allow employees to track and improve the established sales parameters.
Final thoughts
With ever-increasing competition, insurance enterprises should consider investing in digital technology to remain efficient and adapt to ever-changing market conditions. Therefore, transforming traditional enterprise resource management and developing a reliable ERP system is a natural step for any insurance company aimed for growth.
ERP solutions combine many work and data flows, allowing organizations to automate and optimize back-office processes (such as inventory and supplier management) and sales. In particular, an ERP may improve the productivity of insurance agents and sales reps, streamline analytics and reporting, and enhance customer relationships, all resulting in increased sales.
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