One Resource Group
The Need for a Commission Solution
When One Resource Group opened its doors in 2002, the company had aggressive growth projections and a solid business plan in place to meet their goals. One of ORG’s first items in their business plan was to implement a commission and incentive compensation system (also known as an EIM application). This decision was seen as essential to ORG because experience in past ventures had proven that efficiently paying commissions to agents was a stumbling block for many MGA’s. The overall goal with an EIM application was to reduce excess operations and administrative costs that were incurred from the manual processing of commissions, as well as to reduce overpayment expenses.
With the projections, business plan and goals defined, ORG began their search for a solution that would have the flexibility to handle their present commission plan complexities using ORG-defined business rules. The solution would also need to: deliver very high levels of automation, including automated processing of inbound commission files; simplify setup and maintenance of commission plans; and automate production and electronic distribution of commission statements. All of these functions also needed to be managed by non-technical staff. ORG was searching for more than a software solution; they needed to partner with an organization that could implement a system tailored to their business model and could function as a long term business partner.
Implementation of ACom3
One Resource Group chose the ACom3 product over rival companies due to the product’s flexibility and user-friendly approach to commission processing. With the use of ACom3, non-technical staff has the ability to quickly and easily design and or alter compensation plans for ORG’s 6,000 active agents. ORG was also pleased with ACTEK’s professional fixed priced approach and their ability to handle unique compensation structures and client-defined business rules. ORG no longer needs to manually set up multiple commission plans in an Access database, which has saved 25 to 30 hours per week. In regards to ACom3’s range of options, Andrea Baumer, CFO/Principal of ORG says, "We can change pay structures based on the volume production we get from an agent or agency," she says. "The system is so flexible; I can pay agents at a different compensation level down to the product, whereas before, I had to use one compensation level across the board.".
Results and Benefits
The implementation of ACom3 has resulted in a commission-processing environment that is fully automated. This automation begins with the initial integration of transaction data, through commission computation down to automated AP processing. ACom3 has eliminated overpayment errors, dramatically lowered administrative and operations expense and also offers features to deliver commission statements and reports via the web. Simply put, ACom3 delivered on the critical areas of return on investment that were used to justify the purchase and implementation of the product.
ORG has achieved their projection goals and ACom3 has assisted in the achievement of that goal. Mrs. Baumer adds, "ACom3 has afforded our organization to be flexible with our agents' and agencies' compensation requests and has automated a rather manual process. The staff at ACTEK has been very responsive to our needs. We highly recommend this product to others within the insurance marketplace.”