R&R Insurance Services Tracks Departmental Financial Results in Real Time with Informer

Challenge | Extracting Relevant and Timely Data to Create Departmental Production Reports

Since 1976 R&R Insurance Services, Inc. has grown to be one of the largest independently owned insurance agencies in the Midwest. They represent top rated national and regional insurance carriers and are using Vertafore's AMS360® agency management system.

R&R had three main reasons for seeking out an application like Informer. First, they were struggling to extract data and / or capture specific data within their AMS360 database they felt was relevant in helping them make informed decisions on a timely basis. Second, they were looking for a tool that would allow them to create custom reports and save those parameters without having to always recreate the report from scratch. Finally, they needed a system with a delivery mechanism. "We needed a way to schedule reports and get the information into the hands of the users quickly and efficiently," said Michael Franz, CFO at R&R Insurance Services.

Solution | Track Department Spending and Automatically Distribute to Decision-Makers

Like most businesses R&R is broken down into departments that are each responsible for their own budget. "Informer has enabled us to better understand specific departmental spending in relation to the charges that have been expensed to that department," says Franz. "We have created a report that shows their spending on a monthly basis by line item."

With Informer, R&R is scheduling the majority of reports including Accounts Receivable, Monthly and YTD production numbers, Expiration Lists and General Ledger detail by department. These reports automatically get emailed directly to individuals with real-time data relevant to them.

Results | Less Time Creating Reports; More Time Growing Revenue

In R&R's AMS360 database, a customer is either a business or an individual. Using Informer's calculated column feature, they easily created a new "calculated" field in several reports that looks at the department. If the department is Commercial Lines, Informer pulls back the Business name. If the department is Personal Lines, then Informer provides the Individual's name. They also have created a standard AR Aging report that they have scheduled to email producers every 15 days.

"Informer has not only helped us address our reporting needs, but we have started to realize additional bandwidth within our department because we are spending less time creating and recreating reports and more time working on other business needs," says Franz.