Thursday, January 19, 2012

CRM for Insurance is hot!!

Even though it is wintertime, SAP CRM for Insurance seems to be very hot. Integration between the SAP CRM Interaction Center and the SAP FS-Claims Management and Policy Management systems are requested by our customers to handle claims and sell policies.  In the current market more customers are shifting between Insurance Companies and are demanding more from customer service perspective. These companies are now facing the challenge in keeping customers instead of gaining more new customers.

 SAP offers currently two interesting consulting packages for this kind of integration:
  • Insurance Agent Workplace; this package provides CRM functionality for selling policies and creating a portfolio overview for each customer via the Account Fact Sheet.
  • Customer Service for Insurance; this packages provides integration with Claims Management for handling claims via the Interaction Center.
The CRM for Insurance consulting packages (together with SAP BCM) provide a strong basis to create an integrated Insurance landscape. In the near future these consulting packages are developed into RDS solutions.

Solution landscape overview for Insurance

For this blog I would like to discuss the Consulting package for Customer Service. This package provides the following functionality:
  • State-of-the-art contact center
  • Account, contact- and activity management
  • Streamlined complaint management
  • Supporting the first notice of loss process
  • 360 degree view of a claim
  • Predefined Reports

Reporting a claim process
When you want to report a first notice of loss against your policy you should contact your Insurance Company.  Normally you will reach the Interaction Center of the Insurance Company. The Agent will identify you as a customer and tries to identify your policy. This is the first aspect of the package. Objects are created with the Insurance Package which makes it possible to search for policies in the Policy Management system. The objects and search views are easily to extend with extra search fields.

If you, as a customer, are calling for an existing claim, the agent will try to identify the claim instead of the policy.

Let’s assume that the customer is calling for a First Notice of Loss (creation the first information for a claim), the agent will launch the Claims system within the SAP CRM Interaction Center via Transaction Launcher. Via parameters many information can be send such as the Policy number, the identified BP as Policy Holder or a Claim number.

When launching the claims system the customer has the option to use HTML for SAP GUI screens or to build your own webdynpro layout that looks fancier.

The Agent can register the first notice of loss or handle an existing claim. After the agent exits the Claims Management system, the agent will return into the last visited CRM view and can end the call. While ending the call the Interaction Record is stored. The consulting package provides extra fields for referencing the claim and/or policy that was handled during the call. 


Next to these features, two new assignment blocks are introduced on the Account Fact Sheet which gives the Agent the insight about the policy portfolio and amount of claims each customer has.

Insurance Companies using the consulting packages for CRM for Insurance will achieve a solid and integrated solution and the following goals that are needed in a competitive market: