It is that time of the year when we reflect on our previous year’s resolutions and make new resolutions for the coming year. I want to start with a quick review of last year’s resolution first followed by new resolutions for 2014. There are four areas of the industry I focused on in our EZLynx Roadmap for 2013. Below is an end of the year update on each one of the focus areas.
A look back at 2013…
Consumers and Mobile
We made tremendous progress with both of these focus areas in 2013. We started the year with a new version of our consumer facing product EZLynx Client Center. This product allows our EZLynx Management System customers to add a consumer login to their agency website, allowing consumers to print policy related documents like ID card, proof of insurance, etc. and also to request policy changes. We also released our new mobile friendly version of EZLynx Consumer Quoting mid-year. This product enables consumers visiting an agency web site to use their smart phone or tablet to obtain live quotes in a mobile friendly screen. We have two other mobile products scheduled for delivery before end of this year – a mobile version of EZLynx Client Center, and an update to our mobile version of EZLynx.
Agency in a Box
Agency in a Box has been a philosophy of our product design from day one. It is our goal, one day, to offer a solution to our agents that manages the entire agency customer life cycle. We have been focused on agency policy servicing features for the last two years. We made considerable progress with expanding our commercial support in EZLynx Management System in 2013. We delivered two big pieces for commercial agencies this past year – Premium Trust Accounting and Certificate Management. Both of these solutions are feature rich and I really encourage you to visit our website or talk to one of our sales people for more details.
EZLynx Marketplace
We delivered four third-party products in 2013 under the EZLynx Marketplace architecture. We started the year with a fully integrated eSignature app, followed by a Lead Management integration app mid-year, and before the end of this year we will be delivering Bulk Campaigns under the umbrella of our EZLynx Marketing Campaigns product, and finally, EZLynx Accounting will be officially launched in January.
Agency Management for the new digital age
We are confident that we have laid a strong foundation for EZLynx Management System to date. Our product has been fully cloud based from day one so you can work with the management system from any place on any system and any device. One of the best features we implemented in 2013 is our monthly Agency Pulse report. This report summarizes, every month via an email, some of the key metrics about your organization. These metrics include total written premium, personal lines to commercial lines ratio, policies per customer, premium per customer, carrier retention ratio, agency and producer close ratio, and more. You can find more information about Agency Pulse here.
Looking ahead to 2014…
Now it’s time for me to make some resolutions for 2014. I have several wish list items that I personally want to accomplish this coming year. This list is quite exhaustive, so I will try and stick to 3 big items or focus areas that we will be tackling in 2014.
Agency Analytics and Agency Metrics (Agency top line feature)
We believe our industry is experiencing a paradigm shift that requires agents to be opportunistic about how and where they focus their efforts in order to increase their top line revenue. Agency analytics is one of the ways a well thought out management system can guide agents in increasing their top line revenue. Our EZLynx Agency Pulse report, implemented earlier this year in EZLynx, is a simple first step of a much larger analytics implementation that will be rolled out in the first half of next year to improve our EZLynx Management System customers’ top line. Please stay tuned because we have some exciting new products and services announcements to make in the next year regarding agency analytics that should help you dramatically improve your top line numbers.
Agency Process Automation (Agency bottom line feature)
It is no longer enough to improve the top line at an agency without improving the bottom line at the same time. We will be enhancing several existing EZLynx Management System features in 2014 to streamline agency processes and to improve agency profitability. Once again please stay tuned because we have some exciting changes coming in the first half of next year which should help you dramatically improve your bottom line numbers.
Commercial Support
We are very confident with the level of support that we have built into EZLynx Management System for personal lines agencies. We feel it is time for us to focus more on features that a big commercial lines agency would desire. We hope to build several new features in this area for 2014. Due to competitive reasons I would be hesitant to discuss this in detail other than to simply say that much more is coming soon.
Outside of these three major focus areas, we will continue to push forward with more mobile features, more consumer facing features, more marketplace applications, and providing the same level of customer support that we pride ourselves on. As you can see we have a big list of projects and ideas for 2014. I am really excited about the coming year, and I hope you are as excited as I am to be a part of the EZLynx family. I am predicting 2014 to be a break out year for EZLynx Management System.
Thanks for a great year!
Before I sign off, I want to thank all our hard working staff at EZLynx, especially our product support team, for their dedicated effort to serve you every day. I encourage you to send them complimentary emails whenever they provide you with excellent service. I also encourage you to contact me directly if there is something that is bothering you about our company or product. I will be more than glad to reply and have a conversation with you.
Thanks you for being our customer and have a safe and happy holidays and a happy new year!