United States
Canada (English)
United Kingdom
Ireland
A shared view of each client
Both teams see every line a client holds, so a producer knows where the other side already has a relationship.
Customer Story
One system. One client view. Way less busywork.
Applied Epic helps Peoples Insurance see the whole client and speed up renewal season.
Challenge
Disconnected systems limited visibility across the whole client relationship
Peoples Insurance, a bank-owned agency that acquires roughly one new agency a year, ran commercial lines and employee benefits on two separate management systems, with accounting maintaining records in both. That split made it hard for the commercial and benefits teams to see each other’s relationship with a shared client. “From a commercial standpoint, we would only see if there was another relationship when cross-marketing, but we didn’t have the detail,” said Sarah Mallett, Operations Manager at Peoples Insurance, who has spent the majority of her 21 years at the agency focused on employee benefits.
Mallett wasn’t eager to change systems again; she’d already built out a benefits workflow she liked. “I had built out our benefits platform in BenefitPoint and I liked it. It worked for my team. When leadership said everybody was moving to Epic, I fought it. Honestly, I was almost kicking and screaming," she said. Agency leadership wanted commercial and benefits on one platform so they could manage the business holistically. Peoples Insurance needed a single system that could run both lines of business and give every team the same view of the client.
Marietta, OH
Headquarters
2 Years
As an Applied Customer
Additional Info
Employees: 102
Solutions
Solution
One management system built to run both benefits and commercial lines
Peoples Insurance consolidated onto Applied Epic, giving commercial and benefits teams one shared client record instead of two. Rather than rebuild its old process from scratch, the agency adopted Applied’s suggested best-practice workflows as a starting point. “We just didn’t have good workflows before… We wanted to see the suggestions or the best practices you guys had given… I just think Applied flows better,” Mallett said.
For the benefits team, Applied Epic removed one of the most time-consuming parts of renewal season: manually keying in Summary of Benefits and Coverage (SBC) data field by field. “We love it because you don’t have to enter hundreds of fields… it’s definitely been wonderful that you don’t have to key that in manually,” Mallett said. The agency is now rolling out benefits quoting in Applied Epic alongside its Employee Navigator integration, aiming for consistent, uniform proposals across every producer.
How Applied Epic helps
Commercial and benefits share one platform, so every team starts from the same client data.
SBC details filled in for you
Plan data from each Summary of Benefits and Coverage lands in the record, and the team checks it instead of typing it.
Best-practice workflows from day one
Suggested workflows give a consolidating agency a tested place to start instead of rebuilding old processes.
Results
Faster renewals and a full view of every client relationship
Applied Epic cuts the time to process each SBC from roughly 15–20 minutes of manual entry to a quick review. This is meaningful savings when the agency is working through hundreds of plans during its fourth-quarter renewal crunch. “It depends on the person, but one SBC would probably take 15 to 20 minutes, just because of all the different things you have to confirm and look at. When you have hundreds of plans and renewals, especially as we go into fourth quarter, it’s definitely a huge savings,” Mallett said. She adds that Applied Epic has been accurate enough that the team rarely needs to correct what it pulls in.
The unified client view has also changed how commercial and benefits teams work together. “Being able to see the relationship lets our commercial team and our benefits team have better conversations with each other. ‘Hey, I have this great relationship with this client,’ and then the other side can see, ‘Oh, I’ve never gone out to them, let’s do a joint call,” Mallett said.
Support has been a turning point too. Peoples Insurance gained a dedicated point of contact who wasn’t tied to a specific product or line of business. “That was the greatest thing ever, and I wish we had had her from the beginning,” Mallett said. “It was phenomenal, because there are just little things and you don’t know what you don’t know at the beginning.”
Two years into running both commercial and benefits on Applied Epic, Peoples Insurance has the unified client view, streamlined workflows, and renewal-season time savings it set out to find. The agency is now working to bring benefits quoting, renewal management, and its Employee Navigator integration fully online ahead of its next renewal season.
Additional resources
-
Benefits
What to Look for in a Benefits-Ready AMS: 5 Capabilities That Eliminate Manual Work
Discover five must-have capabilities that separate a benefits-ready AMS from a system with benefits bolted on, and how AI and connected workflows eliminate manual work.
Read now -
Demo Video
Employee Navigator Integration with Applied Benefits Designer and Applied Epic
Watch this demo to see how client and benefits plan data for medical, vision, life, STD and LTD, will push directly from Applied Epic into Employee Navigator for the enrollment process.
Watch now -
Customer Story
The Accel Group
The Accel Group saves time and standardizes agency branding with Applied Benefits Designer and Employee Navigator integration.
Read the story
See every client in one system
Talk with our team about running commercial and benefits in Applied Epic with one shared client record.