We have been using FormFire for just over a year now and I cannot lie we have encountered and continue to deal with a number of challenges. Our agency primarily works in the small group market 2-50 employees with a handfull between 51 and 300. We went to FormFire to address the following objectives: 1. prescreening RFP's on carrier apps, so information was more accurate than using our company prescreen form 2. elimination of completing paper apps once decisions are made 3. efficiency in shopping renewals so we wouldnt have to complete "new" paper questionnaires, employees could just update FormFire. In the end our expectation was to create more efficiency in our office, eliminate the need of chasing missing information on paper apps, and create a system that was easier on employers. Our challenges are as follows: 1. Like the other agent post we have difficulty getting most groups to complete it in a timely manner....especially blue collar 2. Many of the carriers forms we sell are not loaded in the FormFire software and despite efforts working with FormFire to get them loaded....we still a year later are not able to sell a group and have FormFire populate all the carrier apps we need. (It does complete the medical carriers we use....ancillary plans are where the problems lie). 3. We shop groups 3 months in advance of renewal as a rule. As a result, when we sell the case, carriers keep requiring us to get employees to redate their FormFire applications so we either have to print them and have them signed, or begin chasing them again to go back into FormFire. 4. Employees complete FormFire when we shop the group but then at enrollment of the group they may change their election (usually done with a spreadsheet from employer or through our Zywave election tool) which then conflicts with the FormFire app. (This is not a MAJOR problem, just an added step) 5. Finally, when employees complete FormFire and it populates an application (lets say Blue Cross for example) and they elect medical, dental and vision, FormFire automatically populates those 3 products on the app. This is fine except when you place the dental or vision with a different carrier. In this situation the Medical carrier is confused that it has apps with dental and vision elected, so apparently the software cant allow you to stipulate the right coverage to the right carrier when the case is sold.
Look, we really like FormFire and plan to continue using it, but it has not been the pancea that I had hoped for. It traded several inefficiencies for a new set of inefficiencies so it is our hope to speak with other agents using it to see what they are doing to overcome these challenges. I am open to FormFire to respond, but I dont need "feel good" canned answers....I need practical, tested and proven systems processes used by agents to overcome our issues. SORRY for the long post.
Originally Posted by ABC
I have been using this software application.
I tell ya what getting groups to complete the online application takes longer than paper.
Anyone have suggestion on how to speed up employees to complete these?
FormFire Application
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