With consumers increasingly expecting faster and more personalized services, companies across industries are turning to software solutions to help them meet this demand.
Once such a solution is a sales portal — a software platform that offers companies a centralized and efficient way to manage their sales activities. A robust sales portal often has an intuitive interface, customizable configuration options, and intuitive one-click navigation.
What is a Sales Portal?
A sales portal is any software platform or system that allows sales representatives to access sales and marketing materials, marketing collateral, and other resources. It is a central place where a sales team can find all the tools and information they need to sell products and services to customers.
This can involve things such as managing customer relationships, tracking leads, managing accounts, creating quotes and invoices, and processing orders.
A sales portal is typically designed to be easily searchable, with features such as version control and collaborative product configuration.
Benefits of Using a Sales Portal
Sales portals help sales and marketing departments to store and manage marketing content, which means that all sales reps have access to the latest materials such as white papers and videos.
This ensures that all sales reps are working from the same information and that there is consistency across the sales process.
Sales portals can also provide visibility into the sales process, enabling sales reps to track their progress and identify areas where they need to improve.
Building a Sales Portal with a Rules Engine for Insurance
Today, insurance products come with a wide range of creative features such as simplified underwriting and personalized incentives for policy discounts.
Business rules engines are software tools that allow insurance companies to build and optimize a sales portal with countless customization capabilities that meet specific needs of customers.
A business rules engine is a pluggable piece of software that runs business rules to incoming data in order to automate decision-making processes. A rules engine runs powerful "if-then" conditional statements that give instructions to business software systems.
Automate Sales Processes
Major insurance carriers create a series of business rules that govern the creation and approval of sales materials. Sales reps then use these materials to sell insurance products to customers, knowing that they have been approved by the marketing team. This entire process can be further streamlined by automation, which business rules provide.
Centralized Location
A business rules engine allows insurance companies to improve their sales portals by providing a centralized location for all of the business logic and decision-making rules that are required to operate the portal.
By using a business rules engine, insurance companies can create a set of predefined business rules that can be easily modified in response to changes in the market or customer needs. This enables insurers to respond more quickly and gain a competitive edge.
Segmenting Customers with Rules
One key area where a business rules engine can help insurers optimize their sales portals is in the area of customer segmentation and personalization.
By using customer data, business rules engines enable insurance providers to offer more targeted and personalized recommendations and policy options to customers, based on their individual preferences and requirements.
For example, a rules-based sales portal can manage a widget which enables prospects to customize their policies tailored to their needs. Once the potential customer has configured their insurance policy, the rules engine calculates the cost of the coverage on the spot.
As a result, insurers build stronger relationships with potential policyholders and generate more sales.
Risk Assessment with Rules Engines
Business rules engines can provide new risk assessment functionality to sales portals. By using sophisticated pre-defined rules, business rules engines can accurately assess the risk associated with a potential policyholder, enabling insurers to tailor coverage and pricing to the customer's specific requirements.
Wrapping Up
Building a sales portal with business rules engines is an effective solution for insurance companies looking to optimize their sales processes. By deploying a business rules engine, organizations can streamline their sales portals and automate sales processes, thereby ensuring that the right products are offered to the right customers at the right time.
Ultimately, the success of a sales portal relies on its ability to provide employees and customers with access to the information they need. A business rules engine makes it easier for sales teams to sell products, while at the same time allowing customers to search and find the information they need to make informed decisions.
As the insurance industry continues to evolve, companies that are ahead of the curve in terms of sales portal creation and optimization will have a competitive advantage over their competitors.
Contact one of our Higson experts to learn how our business rules engine can help your organization meet the ever-changing needs and preferences of your customers.
