No matter what measure is used, it is clear that tablets are capturing the imagination of business professionals, including insurance professionals, in ways previously unthinkable.
Although tablets are best known as consumer devices, most analysts concur that tablets are moving rapidly into business, especially for mobile professionals. InfoTech Research, in a recent blog post, says: “While most tablets will still target the consumer, there will be some business-targeted devices. More importantly, the increasing adoption of consumer technology in the enterprise will lead to widespread tablet adoption for business use.” (We commented on this latter trend from and insurance perspective in a post on December 5, 2010.)
There are lots of reasons why tablets are so compelling to business professionals. Most are well documented: They are small and light-weight, but have sufficient applications to do a high percentage of business functions (email, document/spreadsheet processing, web-work, etc.). They also come with intuitive interfaces and add-ons (cameras, speakers) and there are thousands of new applications being introduced daily at low- or no-cost.
Tablets also promote personal one-to-one collaboration. As Chris Murphy, editor of Information Week writes in this week’s on-line edition: “Think of a patient and a doctor, with the doctor jotting notes and occasionally sharing something on a tablet with a patient. Think of a salesperson talking one-on-one and showing various products across a desk. Think of meeting a colleague on a trade show floor and wanting to quickly pop open a file to show a message from a would-be customer.” These scenarios just wouldn’t happen with laptops.
Commercial insurance producers now have access to this technology for personal collaboration with their clients. This past week, Keal Technologies, a supplier of broker management software and Lombard Canada announced a partnership that allows Keal comXP users to download renewal policy information, including a PDF copy of the DEC page, and access the information on an iPad.
In a release Peter Silk, Senior Vice President, Business Processes, Lombard Canada said that the ability to have full access to client data and policy declaration pages is enhanced by the availability of the information on a tablet. According to Silk, “This is a huge step forward in customer service with brokers accessing real time policy information wherever and whenever they want.”