Technology-minded companies first to adopt new business tracking standard
Origo, the UK's financial services industry standards body,has announced that Friends Provident and Positive Solutions are the first product provider and adviser firm to launch a pipeline tracking service underpinned by Origo's newly released New Business XML Tracking Standard.
The automated service will streamline business processes and cut costs by enabling Positive Solutions' 1,300 adviser partners to keep track of their pipeline business electronically, rather than verbally or on paper.
Key benefits of the service for the adviser include:
-The provision of accurate information on the progress of an application direct from the provider to the adviser's back office system, without the need for trawling the internet, contacting call centres or re-keying.
- The provision of accurate commission information in an electronic form, which will improve commission reconciliation.
-Improved process automation through automatic matching of adviser case reference numbers with provider policy.
- Automatic updates of policy/commission details when there is a change to any information post-application.
The New Business Tracking Standard consists of four components, including identification, application status, commission and new business data.
Friends Provident and Positive Solutions have gone live with a service that includes the first two components, and aim to implement the second two early in 2006.
David Harrison, chief executive of Positive Solutions, commented: "We are big believers in using technology to improve business processes and aim to communicate electronically with providers whenever possible. This new
service further reduces the need for unnecessary paperwork and phone calls when tracking the status of contracts, enabling us to provide a more efficient service to the customer, which is our main concern."
Friends Provident and Positive Solutions have been supporters of Origo Standards for a number of years, enabling them to communicate automatically and directly with each other's back office system. A new business tracking service based on Origo's Tracking Standard is the latest edition to their e-business portfolio, allowing them to work together to reduce the time a
policy takes to go live.
Dave Mace, head of e-business for Friends Provident, commented: "The key to a successful e-commerce proposition is ensuring that the appropriate data is in the right place at the right time. Having standards in place helps facilitate this and makes everyone's life easier. I believe the potential
for the new business tracking service is huge and given time, we hope to roll it out to a number of other technology-minded business partners."
Over 350 companies across the industry are now registered to use Origo Standards, which underpin all of the life, pension and investment industry's key on-line processes. This includes quotations, new business, commission, contract enquiries, tracking and money laundering. These standards are the
'rules' by which organisations agree to link their systems, so that they can pass information to each other more efficiently and save much needed time and money.
