Ventiv Technology

VENTIV TECHNOLOGY ////////////////////////////////// 3SIXTY º | 19 WHAT KINDS OF RESULTS SHOULD AN INTAKE TOOL DELIVER? A well-designed intake tool will deliver a vast improvement in the quality of data that's captured and recorded. A phone-based, call-in reporting system relies on a person or system receiving spoken, verbal information that's then transcribed and entered into a data repository. The opportunities for errors are obvious. With a good online intake tool, you can gently, almost invisibly "drive" the end user down certain paths determined by the logic built into the tool. The end users are compelled to answer all relevant questions and provide all the necessary information. A good intake tool will also improve the timeliness of the end users' responses, because field users are more likely to respond to a well-designed form that presents all the necessary instructions up front. We're incorporating third-party form-building software into our RiskConsole application. It will be seamless and invisible to users, and we've made sure it's a secure interaction that requires robust user authentication into RiskConsole. When we first began to look into rebuilding our intake tool, we researched extensively the third-party tools out there. We found a very strong tool that provided all the capabilities we needed. In recent years, we've incorporated third-party software to meet user needs that are important but outside our core competency of risk, claims and safety. Some examples are business intelligence with IBM's Cognos, the risk mapping tool with Esri geographical information systems, and now with the new form-building tool. When we first launched RiskConsole, we built a lot of our tools in house. The problem with that is that it's difficult to maintain all of those capabilities; even more challenging is keeping up to date with the market. We found that we could do a good job initially of building non- core tools, but it's almost impossible to keep up with specialized providers who are constantly changing and improving their offerings. DID YOUR TEAM BUILD THE UNIVERSAL INTAKE TOOL FROM SCRATCH, OR IS IT BASED ON A THIRD-PARTY TOOL? Our value lies in taking a robust, flexible tool like the third-party intake tool and adapting it for the needs of risk, claims and safety professionals. We have the intellectual property and experience to know not only how to securely and seamlessly integrate the intake tool with our RMIS, but also to adapt that intake tool and apply it to situations that our customers actually face. So I think there's definitely more going on than simply bolting on the tool or plugging and playing. IF VENTIV AND OTHER PROVIDERS OF SPECIALIZED APPLICATIONS ARE UTILIZING THIRD-PARTY SOFTWARE, WHAT'S TO KEEP USERS FROM SIMPLY ACQUIRING INTAKE, BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE AND MAPPING TOOLS THEMSELVES AND "BOLTING THEM ON" TO THEIR RISK MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEMS?

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