Primerica recently debuted some new video/Web new technology to help its representatives to interact with teammates, clients and prospects in a brand new way.
Similar to SkypeTM, Primerica Ring is great because leaders can conduct meetings, training and follow-ups remotely. Have a client who is pressed for time? Give them a “Ring”! Can’t make that meeting across town because of a traffic jam? Find a Wi-Fi source and dial in!
Another great thing about Primerica Ring is that you can conference in multiple people at once. All you need is a using a high-speed Internet connection and Web cams. You can chat “face-to-face,” share documents securely, make interactive transactions for products and more!
Letting Freedom “Ring”
Senior Vice President David Lipsit of San Antonio, TX, says that Primerica Ring has had a huge impact on his business.
“My family calls Primerica Ring the ‘Freedom Ring’ because of the amazing impact it’s had on our family and for me personally,” he says.
Lipsit suffered a catastrophic injury while playing college football at the University of Nevada Las Vegas about 20 years ago before he became a Primerica representative.
“One of my biggest struggles was getting to the kitchen table,” he relates, “but now that I use Primerica Ring I’m just a mouse-click away from the kitchen table and it’s had a huge impact on my business.
“With Primerica, the more people you see, the more people you can help,” Lipsit says. “Primerica Ring has been great for me because I can train representatives via video conferencing. I can also have top leaders in the company dial in to give motivational presentations to my team without that leader ever leaving their home or office!”
The new technology has also created a huge buzz among his clients. “I can send a link out to my clients and we can have a face-to-face meeting online,” he says. “No other technology has had the impact of my business, my clients or my family life as much as Primerica Ring has,” he smiles.
Primerica is a dynamic business with an ever-growing field force of representatives. It’s a fast-paced business and Primerica’s technology department has been busy creating new software and systems to support both Primerica’s representatives and its clients. By taking full advantage of the ease and access of the Internet, Primerica has developed new technology:
Client Portal
Clients will be able to access most of their Primerica products, accounts and contact information for their Primerica representative through a single sign-on Web portal. The client portal is free to clients. It’s secure, user-friendly and clients are able to manage their accounts at their convenience.
Primerica Ring
Similar to Skype™, Primerica has partnered with a third-party vendor to provide a new video and Web collaboration system. Representatives will be able to interact with other representatives as well as clients no matter where they are. The system can connect multiple participants using a high speed Internet connection and Web cams. Sessions are secured and encrypted so that participants can share documents and applications with one another.
TurboApps
Client applications can be taken wirelessly with a smartphone and uploaded securely “over-the-air” to the Primerica Home Office instantly. This allows representatives to do business any- and everywhere, and allows them to work even more productively as all of their applications can be uploaded instantaneously.
The Best Is Yet to Come
Primerica is still beta testing other software and systems and is constantly looking to improve its processes to make the business easier and more convenient for both clients and representatives.
Primerica is always looking for ways to make their representatives’ business lives easier, and that kind of innovative thinking usually leads to better technology. Since creating the award-winning TurboApps technology for representatives to send client apps into the Home Office for processing, Primerica’s IT team has continued to look for ways to make it easier and faster for representatives to grow their businesses.
Since the summer of 2009, Primerica representatives have been making the switch from their old platform in favor of the new Windows Mobile platform. With this new platform, representatives will be able to:
• Adapt quickly to Microsoft Windows and learn how to use it faster since it’s similar to what they’ve been using already.
• Process larger, more complex TurboApps applications.
• Call, email or text a client with a tap of the screen.*
• Run multiple software applications simultaneously.
• Use Office Mobile, a suite of mobile versions of Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint Mobile, all of which are compatible with desktop versions of the Office Suite.
• Truly be mobile, because future wireless enhancements will include “over-the-air” upload of product applications, software updates and Primerica WebMail.
“This new technology is really going to enable our representatives to take their business to the next level,” says EVP of Technology, Tom Swift. “This new platform will help them help clients more quickly and efficiently, which will in turn help representatives grow their businesses even faster.”
*No emails or texts regarding securities transactions are permitted.
In 2005, Primerica teamed up with Palm Inc. to develop software that would allow the company’s licensed representatives to take life insurance applications on a handheld device. They aptly named it: TurboApps.
TurboApps was an immediate success for our company. Instead of being buried in paperwork, representatives and Home Office application processors could process applications electronically and instantly.
Before TurboApps, representatives mailed in:
More than 30,000 life insurance applications per month
More than 18,000 loan applications
Over 20,000 new representative applications … and more!
The new TurboApps technology saved time, money … and thousands of trees! Plus, the software made taking applications virtually error-free and helped the representatives receive their commissions sooner. This new, secure way of taking applications also helped qualified clients get insured faster. It was a win-win.
Since its release:
More than 695,000 applications have been sent via TurboApps.
TurboApps was honored with Computerworld’s Best Practices in Mobile & Wireless Award for “Business Evolution through Mobilizing Field Workers” and was also a 2007 Computerworld Honors Finalist.
Clients can be sure their information is password protected and encrypted, plus their business is issued faster.
Primerica has further enhanced TurboApps’ capabilities by adopting the new Windows Mobile 6.1 platform. When this platform rolls out this year, it will allow representatives to:
Adapt more easily to familiar “Windows” interface
Call, email or text a client within the TurboApps software
Run multiple software applications at once
Use Office Mobile
Primerica prides itself on using technology to help our representatives succeed in their businesses. TurboApps has changed the way we do business and has allowed us to keep pace in this fast-track business world.
Primerica reps sprint to the stage, claiming their awards and basking in their winning moments, and there, at the foot of the stage or standing in the wings is Tom Hamilton. His camera is snapping away at top speed, and he’s amped up on the energy in the room. But the camera man who quietly slips in and out of events, digitally banking those times for posterity, has an eventful story of his own – one that many of his subjects never learn.
“It’s never boring.” That’s how Tom Hamilton sums up the adventures of his company Spitfire Studios. And that is a gross understatement. From speeding through Atlanta traffic on a mint green Vespa, to staying up until 5 a.m. editing thousands of images to deliver that same morning, Spitfire does what seems impossible – and what is unconventional – to create digital images that are more like frozen minutes … and they are SO not boring.
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Before digital photography was “cool,” Hamilton was doing it. He was perfecting it. He was investing in it. He says, “Digital photography enables you – using sophisticated, quality cameras – to increase your frame rate so that you don’t miss that moment.” Before people began using digital photography, though, Hamilton felt like he was “yelling in the woods.” He adds, “We were driving ourselves almost out of business with our digital photography equipment. Then, almost overnight, clients started calling for it.”
One of his biggest gigs is as the photographer for Primerica’s largest events. Since 1987, he has traveled back and forth across the country to capture the moments that bring the thousands of representatives of this sprawling financial services company together. He’s photographed camera shy new guys as they morphed into million-dollar earners. With his help, the Primerica publications department has amassed a photography database of more than 200,000 images. In fact, at the company’s last convention, he and his team took more than 15,000 images over three days!
Rumor has it that Hamilton could be seen between events speeding from the Georgia Dome to his studio on his Vespa. He says he was inspired to purchase the scooter when he saw people dashing through the streets on Florence, Italy on theirs. Others say he got it because it’s the only thing that could keep up with him.
Westside Collective
To become a leader in his field, Hamilton had to always look for new and inventive ways to do his job. In that search, he discovered an industry need for a full-service imaging studio. This need led him to form a collaboration with two other digital imaging gurus to create the Westside Collective. Live action production, still photography, and editorial is handled by Spitfire. The other two companies, Trick 3D and 2 To Design, handle photo real architectural visualizations, 3D animation, camera tracking and effects compositing for commercials and feature films and innovative branding and motion graphic design for broadcast, print and Web respectively. With the Westside Collective, however, clients don’t have to farm out portions of their projects to different firms. As Hamilton says, “We’re a single source that works like a symphony to get a project done on time and on budget.”
According to Hamilton, the Westside Collective just finished a well-received intro package for the DIY Network’s show “Rock Solid.” They also did the openings for CNN’s “Black in America” series, commercials for Royal Caribbean cruise line and a slew of projects for the Cartoon Network.
Ahead of the Curve
When your work life is digital, it often spills over into your personal life. That’s the case for Hamilton. He practically speaks in bits and bytes, blaming it all on what he calls his “toy problem.” If there’s a new gadget, he feels compelled to own it … and he usually does.
For Spitfire, he’s invested in the biggest, baddest “toy” of all. The RED ONE. This expensive piece of equipment is so advanced that Hamilton had to put a deposit on it sight unseen (unless you count a balsa wood model).Why spend thousands and thousands (and thousands) of dollars on a camera you’ve never even touched? Hamilton answers, “The RED ONE does what a digital still camera does but it takes 120 frames per second in continuous bursts. Each frame is 33.5MB. This allows you to play those frames back to look like a movie.” Because of his foresight, Spitfire Studios is, according to Hamilton, the go-to expert in this technology for the Southeast.
Being this sought after keeps you on the go. When Spitfire got tired of renting motor coaches that smelled like they’d just been the site of an out-of-control party, they invested in their own. Now, they own a mobile photo and video-editing studio that enables them to house “talent” and manipulate images from the road. Between the Winnebago and their mini photo lab (It’s the size of a dishwasher!) they can do their job from anywhere they need to be.
The Idea Guy
Hamilton says he’s full of ideas. It’s because he says he wants to leave the earth “a better place” than he found it. For him, that includes transforming reality television into an art form more focused on educating and celebrating people. “People have never needed to lean on each other more than now. I think ‘do-good’ programming is far more interesting than deception and belittling,” he says.
As part of his legacy, Hamilton also wants to share new technologies throughout the world. He’s well on his way, as he and his director of photography, Tripp Rhame, were instrumental in the production of the #1 music video in the country for Nigerian artist elDee. Hamilton says that he and Spitfire were instrumental in bringing the technology to that emerging global market.
Tom Hamilton, his team and the many endeavors they so expertly juggle are a testament to tenacity. They prove that, in whatever you do, you can change the world – and making a difference in people’s lives is never, ever boring.
At Primerica, we pride ourselves on finding better, faster ways to do things. Home Office employees have a “make it happen” mindset, but sometimes we’d get bogged down in “procedure” and that meant that some projects moved at a snail’s pace.
Thanks to a new method called Agile, Primerica can now run the play the right way. Agile is a method that allows project managers to work more quickly – become more agile if you will — on projects that require a series of steps.
Projects that used to take months (if not years) to complete can now be completed in a fraction of that time! How? Small “scrum” teams “huddle-up” to get the job done through consistent collaboration and modification.
Much like the sport rugby, Agile scrum teams try to go the distance as a team, passing the ball back and forth. This allows them to run the play toward their goal and ultimately score.
In rugby, “scrum” refers to the action of eight forwards from each team binding together and pushing against each other in a circle. With the Agile method, Primerica’s IT scrum team huddles up each morning for 15 minutes to discuss their roles, progress and any impediments in their current project. Each reports on:
• What he or she has accomplished since the last Scrum huddle
• What he or she will do before the next Scrum session and
• What (if anything) is impeding his or her progress on their part of the project
These meetings are held daily and usually at the same time during the project’s “Sprint” cycle. Sprints are usually held for 30 days. At the end of that time, the team evaluates how far down the field they’ve been able to run the ball. The team reviews their progress, determines whether or not the Sprint Goal was achieved and then moves on to the next 30-day Sprint.
By working as a team and sprinting in super-charged cycles, the team is able to work quickly and efficiently toward the goal, make changes as needed and deliver the end product on — or ahead of — schedule. By using the Agile method, Primerica has been able to keep a consistent pace and create incredible technology for its representatives.
Have you implemented Agile or a similar methodology? Leave a comment to share your insights and how it has benefited your company.
