Insurance: Flexible Benefit Service Corporation

Flexible Benefit Service Corporation

Venali Internet Fax Shortens Sales Cycles and Increases Customer Response Levels for Flexible Benefits Services Corporation

The Company

Flexible Benefit Service Corporation provides Insurance Brokers and company H.R. Departments with a single convenient source for a wide assortment of insurance carriers and plans. Their web site, www.flexiblebenefit.com is an all-inclusive source for benefit solutions with access to on-line quotes, insurance provider carriers, carrier plan descriptions and marketing material samples that can be requested to promote the offers to end-user customers.

The Challenge

Without the ability to provide Insurance Brokers and H.R. Departments with a rapid turnaround time for requested marketing materials, Flexible Benefit Services was losing valuable opportunities to connect with end user customers. In addition, the current processes were imminently becoming too costly and time consuming. Daily, each employee typically spent a minimum of three hours faxing requested materials to Insurance Brokers & HR departments; these materials contained time-sensitive insurance carrier promotions and pricing information. This lengthy process was directly attributed to employees having to stand at the fax machine, while waiting for the faxes to send. The second method utilized to send the marketing materials was not only time consuming, the company was incurring excessive costs as well.

This process was accomplished by mailing packages overnight, costing the company hundreds of dollars weekly and delaying delivery by days. The company was becoming increasingly aware that using an outdated fax server, fax machines, and the costly mailing methods that were being practiced were clearly inefficient.

Flexible Benefit Services wanted to find a method which enabled immediate delivery of the marketing materials when a request was made from an Insurance Broker or HR department. They were also seeking improvements in employee productivity and a reduction of mailing costs.

The Strategy

The IT department at Flexible Benefit Services established a strategy that would fulfill all of the business objectives the company had stated. The method deemed to be most effective was utilizing an Internet Fax Service. After a brief unsatisfying experience with one fax service provider, Flexible benefits tested and selected Venali’s Desktop Internet Fax Services. After Venali was implemented using Flexible Benefit’s existing e-mail infrastructure, employees were introduced to a new streamlined approach for sending the requested marketing materials. As the staff received material requests, they were able to select the appropriate artwork file from their computer, attach the file to an e-mail and then send the file as a fax through the use of Venali Internet Fax. The new and improved process of sending materials to Insurance Brokers & HR Departments could now efficiently be completed directly from the employee’s workstations.

Benefits

Venali Internet Fax Services enabled Flexible Benefit Services employees to fax all documents electronically from their desktop workstation. Significant benefits of the Venali Internet Fax Solution for Flexible Benefit Services include the following:

Increased Productivity

• Employees are able to fulfill marketing material requests in 60% less time
• Time reduction of tasks allows employees to reach 30% more clients daily
• Error codes provided by Venali enable the IT Department to resolve issues with incorrect fax numbers in 75% less time
• IT Department productivity is optimized by eliminating the need to maintain fax server

Reduced Costs

• Elimination of overnight mailing costs
• Elimination of long-distance phone charges associated with their existing [traditional] fax methods

Application and Document Profile

Email: Microsoft® Office 2000, 2002, 2003
Chosen Fax Document Format: PDF

Outbound Document Profile

• Promotional collateral
• QuarkXpress ™ files converted to PDF before faxing to clients

Company URL: www.flexiblebenefit.com