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e-Spirit: BGV wins award for best brokerage portal
Added: (Thu Jul 02 2009)
The Eisenhut Marketing Software Award goes to FirstSpirit-based Extranet
London, July 2, 2009 – The Extranet developed by insurers BGV (Badische Versicherungen) based on the high-end content management system FirstSpirit has been honoured with the Eisenhut Marketing Software Award as the best brokerage portal. The coveted award is presented annually by two insurance publications ("Versicherungsmagazin" and "BANKMAGAZIN") and two industry confederations, the German Association of Insurance Agents and Brokers (BVK), and KuBi association.
The BGV's portal, which was launched just a year ago, cut a convincing figure in the five-phase testing and subsequent presentation to the prize jury, proving how easy its streamlined processes are to use across an exceptionally broad range of services. Based on the FirstSpirit content management system, a personalized system was developed that lets brokers call up their client base to show full contract information and history. It can also quickly and easily draw up comparison or anonymized offers. And it takes just a few clicks to view processing statuses of claims or payments. It also does away with the never-ending battle against paper as new and replacement business can be processed online and policies created automatically. A large download centre meanwhile stores all important documents in PDF. The web portal does not require the usual long hours of installation work, allowing sales partners to easily access the information they need wherever they happen to be.
Its not only brokers and agents that benefit from the portal's ease of use and range of services; FirstSpirit has also made the system very easy to maintain. Now editors can generate and manage content in a matter of moments using the intuitive WebClient - and need no specialist CMS knowledge to do it. The complex JavaClient, on the other hand, is geared to the requirements of more demanding users, giving editors, administrators and template developers a complete toolbox packed with functions for working online.
"FirstSpirit was able to meet our high demands for flexible content management in absolutely every respect. Besides the various work environments tailored to editors' various needs, many processes can be automated through the solution. In this way, we were able to reduce the time and cost spent in maintaining the portal by a wide margin," says Carsten Gauch, IT specialist at BGV and the brokerage portal project manager. "By rigidly separating structure and content, all content can be managed centrally in FirstSpirit and published in all output channels as required - and because everything is automatic, editors do not need to worry about details such as corporate design compliance."
Maximizing usability was one of the main reasons for switching to the e-Spirit solution. "All our efforts were geared to providing our sales partners with maximum support in their routines," recalls Hans-Gerd Coenen, marketing director of BGV. "Our goal is to process all workflows quickly and efficiently, and offer a high degree of user-friendliness. After all, our sales partners want to sell not manage."
The initiators of the Eisenhut Award stick to the basics when presenting the accolade. The BGV portal received the award in Bronze as best solution, Gold and Silver were not awarded. Heinz Ohnmacht, Chief Executive of the BGV, is pleased at the resounding success achieved by the new brokerage portal: "Considering the tough competitive factors and such high quality standards, we are of course very proud to have won the award."
More Information about the BGV brokerage portal can be found at http://makler.bgv.de. For details about high-end content management system FirstSpirit please visit e-spirit.com.
Badische Gemeinde-Versicherungs-Verband in profile:
Badische Gemeinde-Versicherungs-Verband (BGV) was set up in 1923 to serve communities in Baden, Southwest Germany. Alongside its subsidiaries Badische Allgemeine Versicherung AG and Badische Rechtsschutzversicherung AG, it forms the BGV insurance group to offer protection nationally for individuals and businesses. The company has more than 700 employees and 25 trainees. With premium volume of around EUR 230 million and almost 1.4 million policies, the insurer is dedicated to a course of growth. Its customer satisfaction rate is far above the industry average. According to financial markets watchdog BaFin, the insurance group has the lowest rate of complaints in car insurance and general liability insurance in the country.
About e-Spirit
e-Spirit is the manufacturer of FirstSpirit, a content management system (CMS) for companies with high expectations of their solutions. e-Spirit is a reputable, internationally-oriented product supplier with global brands in all sectors.
International clients such as Pentland, Airbus, Trelleborg Sealing Solutions, Commerzbank, OTTO and the Schaeffler Group are all using FirstSpirit as a CMS platform within their IT infrastructure.
FirstSpirit is increasingly becoming the integration platform of choice, replacing existing content management technologies in large businesses.
e-Spirit was founded by former members of the Fraunhofer Institute for Software and System Technology (FhG ISST) in 1999. e-Spirit is headquartered in Dortmund with branch offices in Europe located in London, Zurich, Vienna, Berlin, Cologne, Hamburg, Munich and Frankfurt.