What’s New: In Brief (December 01, 2006)

Kingsway Financial Services has selected the Progress EasyAsk natural language query and reporting technology for use within its portal application.
Using a customizable “dashboard interface populated with embedded queries, business users at Kingsway can instantly access up-to-date information and answers to a number of key business questions,” says a Progress Software release.
Kingsway chief information officer Claude Smith says that with the introduction of the new system, “intelligent search and reporting capabilities now enable our business to gain immediate insights into volume, workflow and ongoing interactions with brokers.”
Brokers can now see, for example, how many new business quotes exist, which brokers are bringing in the most business, and what areas of business are the most profitable.
Prior to the new system, he continues, staff would create reports and extract operational performance data manually from a variety of spreadsheets that were shared across each of the different business groups within the company.

Royal & SunAlliance has launched an automatic data mapping system intended to reduce the amount of time brokers spend processing policies.
Using the Keal sigXP system, “automatic data mapping automates much of the keying required to issue auto and property policies using Royal & SunAlliance’s online policy transactional tool,” says a company release.
Brovada Technologies Inc. developed the system.