Insurance brokerage uses

[wheel]

I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed with all the documentation and not knowing all the terms to find what I need. I'm hoping folks will overlook my fairly generic questions and give me a bit of a pointer in the right directions.

We're considering using Sugar OS for a small life insurance agency (myself and one other agent for now). Leads come in from my website in a pretty good volume daily and need to be put into a database, then sent to an agent for an immediate callback, and potentialy a series of regularly scheduled callbacks. I'm wondering if it will handle the following workflow:

1) leads come in from my websites via either email or an http POST; I'd like to have them populate a lead record in Sugar, then immediately end up in front of the sales rep, perhaps on their calendar as someone to be called right away? I think this actually begs a number of larger questions - mainly how the rep is going to be notified to call the lead immediately (or soon as possible if leads come in over night), when leads come in via email do I have to manually move the data over (probably using one of the thunderbird modules I read about), and finally, some sort of criteria to send various leads to different sales reps automatically.

Can Sugar do this? I suspect it can, but I'm lost as to where to start.
2) When a lead comes in, is called, and the person is reached, I know we can start making notes in the file and booking further callbacks. However if the lead does not get reached right away, I'd like to automatically rebook it for a specific series of follow up calls by the agent, i.e. call back again this afternoon, tomorrow, in 3 days, after 1 week, then after that perhaps dump them into an email drip campaign. Can this be automated?

If Sugar OS can do this, would someone be kind enough to give me a brief outline of where to start looking? I can read the specific details myself of course. I'm looking at Act and Goldmine that I believe does these functions out of the box but as I noted, I'm getting buried trying to sort through the documentation to even find out 'if' Sugar can do these things (but due to the open code that comes with OS, I much prefer the idea of using sugar).

Also, any other general pointers about following up leads from a website would be appreciated.

[dpatech]

I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed with all the documentation and not knowing all the terms to find what I need. I'm hoping folks will overlook my fairly generic questions and give me a bit of a pointer in the right directions.

We're considering using Sugar OS for a small life insurance agency (myself and one other agent for now). Leads come in from my website in a pretty good volume daily and need to be put into a database, then sent to an agent for an immediate callback, and potentialy a series of regularly scheduled callbacks. I'm wondering if it will handle the following workflow:

1) leads come in from my websites via either email or an http POST; I'd like to have them populate a lead record in Sugar, then immediately end up in front of the sales rep, perhaps on their calendar as someone to be called right away? I think this actually begs a number of larger questions - mainly how the rep is going to be notified to call the lead immediately (or soon as possible if leads come in over night), when leads come in via email do I have to manually move the data over (probably using one of the thunderbird modules I read about), and finally, some sort of criteria to send various leads to different sales reps automatically.
Can Sugar do this? I suspect it can, but I'm lost as to where to start.

Sugar supports web-to-lead Capture capabilities and you can enhance this to assign to the sales rep. If the Sales Reps have their assignment notification turned on they will get an e-mail when the lead gets assigned to them. This will require some custom codes. Unfortunately this does not happen out of the box and requires some minor customizations.

2) When a lead comes in, is called, and the person is reached, I know we can start making notes in the file and booking further callbacks. However if the lead does not get reached right away, I'd like to automatically rebook it for a specific series of follow up calls by the agent, i.e. call back again this afternoon, tomorrow, in 3 days, after 1 week, then after that perhaps dump them into an email drip campaign. Can this be automated?

Sugar Professional contains a workflow component that allows some of this to be automated - Sugar Community does not. However, once again it can be done with some simple customizations.

If Sugar OS can do this, would someone be kind enough to give me a brief outline of where to start looking? I can read the specific details myself of course. I'm looking at Act and Goldmine that I believe does these functions out of the box but as I noted, I'm getting buried trying to sort through the documentation to even find out 'if' Sugar can do these things (but due to the open code that comes with OS, I much prefer the idea of using sugar).

Also, any other general pointers about following up leads from a website would be appreciated.

Not sure if anyone else would agree with this, but in my experience with Sugar Community Edition, many of these business process tasks that you would like automated cannot be done with Sugar CE out of the box. However, most of them can be done with just a few hours of a Sugar developers time.

[lameslove]

I'm in the middle of an insurance underwriter install and spent a few years in insurance, so I have some understanding of what I think you need.

And if I'm right, you might not even need much in the way of programming. We use Pro and workflow to do much of the lead processing and distribution. First of all, there is nothing easier than doing a Sugar web to lead form - it generates itself from the campaign module and all you need to do is "neaten it up" in an HTML page on your site. We've used this pretty extensively.

Second, much of the lead distribution and monitoring can be done with workflow and reporting in Pro. Community has much of what you need, but the reporting is important. There are ways around that in Community edition, but it takes some skill and a pretty good knowledge of SQL and the database.

I'm not sure how much more you need to know - but if you post more questions, I'll try to answer them.

We have some material on leads on my own web site www.performanceadvantage.ca

The white paper "Stop Losing Leads" has some good tips. Incidentally, we did the invitations to that series and all the web to lead capture, follow up and distribution of leads using Sugar Pro out of the box.

Jim Love
Managing Partner
Performance Advantage
jim.love@performanceadvantage.ca
www.performanceadvantage.ca
1-800-741-9375 ext 1000

[freeland]

Hi,

I am looing to implement SugarCRM for Mortgage, Insurance, Commercial Finance and Loan Brokerage in my firm. Can someone make contact with me on winterswinters@gmail.com to talk about this business opportunity.

Thanks

Sugar supports web-to-lead Capture capabilities and you can enhance this to assign to the sales rep. If the Sales Reps have their assignment notification turned on they will get an e-mail when the lead gets assigned to them. This will require some custom codes. Unfortunately this does not happen out of the box and requires some minor customizations.


Sugar Professional contains a workflow component that allows some of this to be automated - Sugar Community does not. However, once again it can be done with some simple customizations.



Not sure if anyone else would agree with this, but in my experience with Sugar Community Edition, many of these business process tasks that you would like automated cannot be done with Sugar CE out of the box. However, most of them can be done with just a few hours of a Sugar developers time.

[businessinline1]

Thank you for sharing your experience.I hope this infomation will be useful to everyone and hope you continue.



SmartEquity - mortgages, realestate, finance, cost, mortgage

[grahamketty]

I'm in the middle of an insurance underwriter install and spent a few years in insurance, so I have some understanding of what I think you need.

And if I'm right, you might not even need much in the way of programming. We use Pro and workflow to do much of the lead processing and distribution. First of all, there is nothing easier than doing a Sugar web to lead form - it generates itself from the campaign module and all you need to do is "neaten it up" in an HTML page on your site. We've used this pretty extensively.

Second, much of the lead distribution and monitoring can be done with workflow and reporting in Pro. Community has much of what you need, but the reporting is important. There are ways around that in Community edition, but it takes some skill and a pretty good knowledge of SQL and the database.

I'm not sure how much more you need to know - but if you post more questions, I'll try to answer them.

We have some material on leads on my own web site www.performanceadvantage.ca

The white paper "Stop Losing Leads" has some good tips. Incidentally, we did the invitations to that series and all the web to lead capture, follow up and distribution of leads using Sugar Pro out of the box.

Jim Love
Managing Partner
Performance Advantage
jim.love@performanceadvantage.ca
www.performanceadvantage.ca
1-800-741-9375 ext 1000

I definitely agree with u love, what you said is absolutely right. Hope u continue doing this...

[bconvis]

Hello,
We are the developers of the Process Manager workflow module for SugarCRM. Three years ago, we took Sugar and completely customized the application for the Mortgage Market. Including in this was a complete redesign of the app for Mortgage Brokers. We hosted this solution for many Mortgage Brokers. The solution is based on SugarCRM 4.5. We have not upgraded to version 5.0.

If you are interested in adding a workflow module to Community Edition - you can download our Process Manager module from the Workflow projects in SugarForge - or you can purchase the Enterprise edition for $99 from www.sierracrm.com. Many demos of our automated workflow module are available at our website.

It you are interested in seeing what we have done, please contact us at the number listed below.

Regards,

Bill Convis
SierraCRM, Inc.
530 272 3064 office

[Jed55]

Thanks for sharing information. Anyways insurance now a days have great demand every product need insurance because we can't guarantee for any product.

[Royce56]

Everyone should try to establish healthy eating habits. If we were lucky, our parents gave us a good head start. If not, we can still learn, although it may mean changing our food preferences.

[echealth]

I too own an insurance company though mine is a health insurance brokerage. I am currently using GBS and the Norvax quoting system.
I don't expect to replace Norvax, but I am looking for lead capture from my site as well, and to replace GBS for my agents. I would like them to retrieve leads from Sugar and be able to update a lead all the way through the end sale. I will probably still use GBS for accounting but I would drop it if the application is strong enough.
Please call me at 888 803 5917 if you can help me and I fully expect to be charged for the application and training.
Thanks
Jeremy