Success Driven by Technology

At Moody Insurance Agency, Inc., Patty McQuade speaks proudly of a project that her team completed this spring.  "We automated our benefits department," she says.  Over the past dozen years, the department grew from one person to eight.  As often happens in such situations, technology didn't keep pace with the growth.

"Benefits has always operated kind of as its own agency," says McQuade, vice president and chief information officer for the agency, which has locations in Denver and Grand Junction, Colorado.  IT staff helped the operation transition from an older, less robust technology to BenefitPoint, a comprehensive management system designed for benefits.

Automating benefits is challenging, in part because of the notion many have that its processes can't be automated.  "When you get down to the nuts and bolts, though, a lot of workflows are similar to ones used in P&C," McQuade says.  "For us, a big part of it was learning some new terminology."  Through the process, IT staff helped the benefits staff get rid of their paper files and automate more of their processes.

A particular benefits-related challenge involves carriers.  "There's no consistency among benefits carriers," McQuade says.  "On the P&C side we have ACORD," which drives standards.  "In the benefits world, there doesn't seem to be any such thing."
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