What You Need To Know About Comparison Charts By Vendors

We’ll Also Cover Our Review Of The Agency Management Systems Comparison Chart

It’s not uncommon for a vendor to put out a comparison chart of their system comparing it to other systems on the market. We’ll discuss comparison charts with an emphasis on an agency management systems comparison chart recently released.

We just reviewed the Comparison Chart of agency management systems found at http://agencymanagementsystemreviews.com/?page_id=42. We found it to be very slanted to one system. I’m sure you can guess which one.

And we have no idea how they established the rating of the systems. We figure the system rating is purely some numbers they put together to support the system they are recommending.

We did not agree with their rating of most of the systems. For example, how could AMS 360 and Applied Epic only have a 3 rating and Hawksoft have a 4?

A “4” for Hawksoft? Seriously?

And how can Aspire have a 5 (top rating, and only vendor with a 5) when it can’t even download with IVANs which is the main player interfacing with over 280 carriers?

Not having downloading with IVANs is system suicide! TeamUp only downloads with a handful of carriers in comparison to IVANs, and TeamUp doesn’t support all of the national companies which are required for most agencies.

We also noticed a lot of incorrect comparisons. For example, under Communication for the topic of Email Messaging of the 12 vendors they did the comparison of they are saying only 6 can send out emails. Of those 6 they say can’t email, we know for a fact 3 of them can send out emails. We don’t know for sure if the other 3 can but would anticipate they can too.

It’s like this throughout the whole comparison.

Personally, I wouldn’t put a lot of weight in this comparison. Instead, you want to talk to each vendor individually to get their feedback of the different topics to see if they agree with what this comparison chart states about their system.

We contacted Mr. Chesnut of Agency AutomationTEAM and asked him to compare his systems with this chart. Where the average number of Yes’s for a vendors was 30 (Aspire had 80), the CP Manager has 59 yes’s with 21 more of those items coming after version 1 is released for a total of 70. The TIME System will have 80 yes’s.

I’m sure if you talk to other vendors you’ll find they have a lot more yes’s than the comparison chart states they have.

Aspire also says they have the most advanced programming environment available. Again, not true. Aspire is on the Net Framework version 3.5 which they claim is the most advanced language available today.

Agency AutomationTEAM’s systems — CP Manager & TIME System — are on the Net Framework version 4.5 which is light years ahead of 3.5. And if we’re correct, AMS 360 and Epic are also on version 3.5 or greater.

If you talk to each vendor we’re also sure you’ll find each vendor offers features other vendors don’t. That’s what makes each vendor unique. Comparison charts generally are slanted toward these unique features to give that vendor more yes’s than other vendors.

As a consumer of an agency management system what you want to do is define exactly what features you need for your agency. The rest don’t matter if the core features you need aren’t there.

When you run across an Agency Management Systems Comparison Chart you want to confirm the Yes’s and No’s with each vendor and not rely on the comparison chart solely.

Instead, simply use the comparison chart as a guideline and feel free to add additional items to the list which are specific to your agency and are features your agency needs. Then contact each vendor individually to find out if they provide the features you need.

One more very important thing. On the really important features you need, don’t take the vendor sales rep’s word for it. Have them show you that feature in their system. That’s because they may offer the feature, but the steps and process to use that feature may be way too complex or may not work like you want it to.

For example, one vendor out there can say they have downloading, but the download does NOT update the policy. What’s the point of downloading if it doesn’t update the policy data in the system?

But that vendor can say they offer downloading. See my point here?

This is just one of many examples where a sales rep can mislead the agency on the features of their system.

For more information on how to review an agency management system go to, “Tips To Reviewing And Choosing A System“