Applied Epic

One of the best in the industry

Vorteile:

The program is very robust and a great CRM

Nachteile:

Some of the initial set up and running of reports

Epic will transform the way your agency operates.

Kommentare: Overall Epic is what I would consider the best in the industry. They continue to reinvest in the platform and build or acquire companies that will complement the platform. They have purchased IVANS to help with download which works well with Epic. Indio was recently purchased to help with application completion and eSignatures as well as vehicle, drivers, and equipment schedule reviews. Epic is fast and lightweight to install and use on Windows computers. We have had a really great experience using this software and we have no plans of switching from Applied Systems Epic anytime soon or probably ever.

Vorteile:

We used Applied Systems TAM for many years and Epic was such a needed upgrade. With Epic all of the limitation and hurdles you had in TAM were gone and a ton of new features were instantly available. The product keeps getting better year after year. The 2019 release brought in lot of new tools one of which was being able to change producer commission with a reassign utility. Doing something like this in the past was days worth of work and payroll to get it done. Now it is done in moment. There is also lots of cloud features available in Epic with sales automation dashboard, Indio sync, CSR24 integration. Epic also works great over the internet. We recently had to send all of our employees home to work and Epic is working just as good as it did in the office. I can’t say enough good things about Applied Systems Epic. It is a great platform for your agency to use and grow with.

Nachteile:

The biggest down side to Epic is the amount of time and money it takes to migrate from your old management system to Epic. Even if you were starting out brand new there is a lot of initial software configuration required to get the system up and running. Things like when these system events happen what else should happen, and activity defaults need to be configured, the list goes on and on. However, Applied System will assist with this initial setup for a fee. I do recommend you use them for setup or find an expect that has worked with Epic before. Getting Epic setup properly in the beginning will keep you from having a lot of other problems and save time in the future. Employee training is also a big hurdle to over come when switching or going live on Epic. Make sure your employees take the time to do all of the training ahead of time it will help a lot. It took us about a year to have all of the staff comfortable using Epic. With all of this being said changing management systems is always going to have similar issues.

EPIC- Convoluted Workflow- Dressed Up Old Engine Developed before the Internet

Kommentare: Poorly instructed migration requiring tiered demographics, poor training and user manual requiring numerous updates and rewrites, limited application integration for modern lines, poor download capture with limited data. Cost- quality poor.

Vorteile:

Nested Folder display easily customized. Easy correction of wrongly attached attachments.

Nachteile:

Marketing module is absurdly combersome. Mapping of data fields to proposal is absurdly constructed. Antiquated database developed in 1989-1992 originally designed for back-end insurance company use, repackaged for agencies is an exorbetently priced, heavily indexed, string written shell and a space intensive dinosaur that server farms have to double mirror to handle and local servers just croak. Downloads invariable set to append wind up overwriting critical data. The accounting function is old dual entry so that report filters have to be carefully selected or used from canned reports then exported to Excel in pieces, then combined for real capture of receivables/ commission data. Horrific learning curve for new users. Investors owning Applied also own chunks of large insurance brokerages have made it appear as the top product. However, savy users will not drink the cool-aid or say the emperor has on new clothes.

Applied EPIC 2018

Kommentare: I've used Applied products before, and EPIC with a prior agency. When we moved to EPIC with my current agency, we were coming from an antiquated system, that was very cumbersome and not at all user friendly. We also had to have separate rating system, separate document management system, and were unable to download with most carriers. Now with EPIC, we download with most of our carriers, documents and rating are all handled within EPIC. It has really made servicing our clients much more efficient. Finding information is also greatly improved. Everyone is very happy we made the switch. I do recommend Applied EPIC to everyone!

Vorteile:

It's user friendly. New staff can get up and running within a short time. They have great on-boarding training on-line. The product can be set up the way the agency wants to use it. After the online training is completed, we just need to fill in the agency specifics for our agency. Everything is contained in the one product. Client and Policy details, document management, rating for PL, follow up system, etc. We don't need several different systems and try to get them to work with each other, it's all in one. No system is perfect. But EPIC met all of our needs, and handles our needs the best out of all the ones we looked into. The User Group is great! Very helpful when questions come up and you need help from other agents on how to handle problems/issues. A great resource. They are also responsive when there are problems or issues, they get fixes done pretty quickly.

Nachteile:

No system is perfect. There are some documents that we would like to use in EPIC that have check boxes, but when we put them in EPIC, the check box functionality is disabled. The reporting can be a bit overwhelming as a new user. It takes time and working with it to get comfortable. There are other hiccups as well, but overall, we're still very happy with our decision.

Worth the switch from TAM

Kommentare: We are nearing 8 months post activation and finally starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel and overall benefits. Lots of customization appeal that we hadn’t had before, and the system allows ease of attachments and data sharing that we didn’t have before. Customer support and on boarding/pre configuration could used some improvement.

Vorteile:

Epic is much more comprehensive than its predecessor TAM, and a much more interactive user experience. I am able to customize the system much more than before, both on an individual and administrative level. On the admin side, we were able to set various security groups, and select user/department access as visibility which had previously been more difficult in TAM

Nachteile:

Customer support is tough, and getting the right answer depends on who answers the call. There was also a large learning curve in the beginning, and the on boarding provided by Applied was not as comprehensive as I believe was necessary. Also, it was sold to us with capabilities for a Benefits system, which is not quite the case and had to be built out on our own. The biggest complaints from our account managers were the number of generated activities and tasks, in addition to system locks.