Between scheduling client meetings and conducting policy reviews, insurance agents and brokers have a lot on their plates, which begs the question: When do they find time to focus on digital marketing?
Applied Systems’ new integrative, generative AI tool, Content Assist, is designed to confront this challenge. According to Chief Information Security Officer Tanner Randolph, the solution — which is especially helpful for smaller independent agents and brokers — assists with streamlining the outreach process via email by creating clear, concise and engaging content on demand.
“This can save them many hours daily, freeing them to focus on serving their customers more effectively,” he said.
Throughout the development of Content Assist, Randolph’s team was critical to ensuring that the product would be both secure and scalable. But in his mind, it was the product development and engineering teams that “truly brought the vision to life,” relying heavily on a customer-first mindset to create a solution that would deliver optimal value.
While the launch of Content Assist is a milestone for the company, it isn’t the only way in which the company is strengthening its ability to help customers grow through intelligence and automation. According to Randolph, the solution foreshadows even greater innovation to come.
“This tool is one of many that Applied Systems has in the works,” he said. “We’re excited to not only help drive AI adoption for our customers, but also give our team the opportunity to do interesting work with a big impact.”
Below, Randolph shares more about the development and impact of Content Assist and how this product fits into a wider focus on driving progress.
CONNECTING THE INSURANCE ECOSYSTEM
Applied Systems’ mission is to “power the global business of insurance.” In an effort to connect the digital ecosystem of insurance, the company offers products for agents and brokers that perform various functions, such as customer self-service, business intelligence and analytics and application management.
What role did your team play in developing and launching Content Assist?
Any time a product has an AI component, our information security team oversees the implementation process to ensure that we’re developing a product that will not only be secure but also scalable for our customers, whatever the size of their agency. By centralizing our implementation methodology across all products, we’re able to implement our responsible AI framework — which accounts for ethical, transparent and accountable implementations of AI.
At the end of the day, my team has to ensure that what we’re delivering will be a secure and trusted tool. We’ve spent the better part of this year designing APIs for our AI platform that account for privacy, data loss prevention and modern implementations of authorization and authentication. We’ve also built out an internal governance framework based on the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s AI risk management framework to ensure that we can scale our AI platform in a secure manner.
“At the end of the day, my team has to ensure that what we’re delivering will be a secure and trusted tool.”
How did the product management and engineering teams leverage customer insights to get Content Assist across the finish line?
Internally, our product management and engineering teams brought the vision to life with extensive feedback from our customer experience team, ensuring cohesion between our vision and what would bring the most value to customers. Our customers are our thought partners, and we value their input within our design and development processes, because they’ll let us know right away if we aren’t heading in the direction that we need to. Though these customers don’t have an Applied Systems email address, we view them as part of our collaborative team.
What are some other exciting developments that reflect Applied Systems’ ongoing focus on innovation?
It’s exciting to see how the addition of Anupam Gupta as our chief product officer last year has energized our team. His willingness to disrupt the way things are done underlines our dedication to innovation and delivering engaging products for our customers. This ethos carries into our daily operations as our teams strive to find fresh, improved ways of creating critical products.
A TRUE TEAM EFFORT
While many people played a critical role in developing Content Assist, Randolph shared, there are several key individuals who deserve ample recognition: Director of Product Management JF LeBlanc, Product Manager Gabriel Tremblay, Product Owner Raquel Velez, Software Development Manager Rajesh Chittiappa and UX Lead Designer Charles Frumerie. “We would not be able to deliver this exciting product to our customers without their collaborative efforts,” Randolph said.
When you think of other companies in your industry, how does Applied Systems compare when it comes to building and launching new products?
We want to win the right way, and that sets us apart. We aren’t developing products for our bottom line; we’re developing tools that will improve the industry and deliver results for our customers. We think that makes Applied Systems a really special place.
