As competition increases and technology becomes more readily and widely available to the greater population, innovation becomes more and more arduous for the visionaries of the business world. Re-engineering established business practices especially in the enterprise level is a gigantic achievement. Companies with a sharp incisive foresight, ambition, goal and deep desire for innovation are really hard to come by — and in this arena, 21st Century Insurance is definitely ahead of the flock!
Located in Los Angeles, 21st Century Insurance caters and provides insurance to approximately 1.2 million automobiles. It can also boast of the distinction of being among the list of insurance companies with the highest annual renewal rates. This is a clear proof of the company’s dedication to delivering superior and reliable customer service. 21st Century was established by Louis W. Foster in 1958. He led the way of selling and marketing insurance policies directly to its clients. His vision of eliminating the middleman from the picture worked wonders and resulted to what is now known as the world’s seventh largest automobile insurance corporation in California with an astounding assets amounting to more than 1.3 billion US dollars.
With the company’s principal goal of providing its clients with self-service functionality and a better streamlined customer service, it has shifted its ways to utilizing the power of the internet. 21st Century recognizes the facility of the internet to extend to a greater number of audiences acting as an extra wing of the conventional practice of direct-to-customer marketing. In lieu of this, the company has set up an IT strategy to transfer from the traditional platform to the modern web technology.
The task is daunting to perfect. Utilizing the company’s existing resources at the earliest and most crucial time, has given them the leverage and competitive advantages. Their eagerness to take the first steps to an evolution of the insurance world has absolutely put them on the lead.
With 21st Centuries’ desire to nurture fresh sales forum and at the same time getting rid of the use of some call centers, they tied with Jacada. 21st Century and Jacada Consulting forged solutions to meet the ever growing demands of the insurance policyholders. Now, policyholders are able to view their current insurance balance, payment history, and even allow them to pay their outstanding bills online. Later on, the project incorporated the “Change Policy” function, which would permit clients to change facets of their policies or make amends that would cater to their problems.
Although introducing this technology made 21st Century understandably nervous with customers directly interacting with the mainframe, it is overweighed with the aspiration of being able to process massive daily transactions which is previously impossible with just human employees doing the task. This system all made it possible for 21st Century to deliver fast and reliable service. Although hurdles like providing 24 hours customer service has been met due to mainframe batch cycles, 21st Century together with Jacada were able to circumvent the problem with some witty coding and decoding. For 21st, this is just one way of getting way ahead of the regular flock.
