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Laura Whaley

How to Streamline Your New Employee Onboarding with Applied Epic

Hiring a new employee is a significant undertaking, but the work doesn’t end once they join. Effective employee onboarding includes both the process of familiarizing your employees with your organization as well as managing the necessary administrative tasks. Did you know that Applied Epic can help you with that? In this blog post, we share how you can use Epic to better manage your new employee onboarding process.

Applied Client Network Resources for New Employee Onboarding

You can find several resources on the Applied Client Network for New Hire Onboarding. They offer a:

  • New Hire Checklist for Agency Hiring Managers
  • Customizable Onboarding Education Tracker for New Employees
  • Industry and Company Terminology Resources for New Employees template

In addition to these documents there is an entire Communications Template Package with various email and word templates that can be used in communication with your new hire. These documents can be found at  https://www.appliedclientnetwork.org/education/new-hire-onboardingN (appliedclientnetwork.org)

Managing New Employee Onboarding Tasks with Applied Epic

The Agency Consulting Team here at Kite Technology Group also recommends using Applied Epic to help manage some of the additional tasks that you need to complete for your new employee.

We recommend adding an activity when adding a new employee. This activity may be tied to the event of adding a new account or a manual activity. Once the activity is decided upon, tasks can be added and/or assigned for all the items that need to be done for that new employee. These could include:

  • Adding User Login
  • Adding User to the Security Group
  • Assign the employee’s lookup code to the User
  • Assign/Schedule Reports
  • Process Workload Reassignments
  • Assign access to Carrier Websites
  • Documenting User Access at hire
  • Assigning rights to access other employees’ signatures, activities, tasks or renewals.
  • Assign Applied University Courses or other Training Modules

With a good onboarding process, you can tailor the new hire experience, keep new employees engaged and improve your time to productivity.  A good onboarding program will help to improve your employee retention and retention means less time and money on rehiring and retraining. 

Managing Employee Offboardings

We also recommend creating a manual activity for employee exits. Like employee onboarding, the activity and tasks will be started as soon as HR notifies the employee will be exiting. These tasks will create a checklist that can be shared across a team to ensure that your system access is terminated, and all of the proper procedures are followed upon the employee’s departure.  

Training for Applied Epic Users

Ensuring that your new employees are proficient in Applied Epic is vital for both their success and that of your agency. Applied Epic training that focuses on your agency’s workflows boosts operational efficiency and guarantees consistent, high-quality service. If you don’t have the internal resources to provide training, KiteTech can help. Check out our Applied Epic Resources Page for our collection of on-demand webinars, blog posts, and training videos. 

Our suite of Applied Epic Consulting Services includes customized training solutions for your new employees or those transitioning to a different role. With our expertise, your team will be equipped to harness the full potential of Applied Epic, driving productivity and fostering a culture of excellence. Contact us today to learn more!

Laura Whaley

Laura Whaley

Agency Consultant
Kite Technology Group

Driving Your Agency’s Success with Performance Auditing

The term “audit” has long been associated with skepticism and apprehension, and performance audits in insurance agencies are no exception. However, despite the initial unease they may provoke, performance audits can be invaluable for your agency’s growth and success. The key lies in understanding why these audits are necessary and how to effectively carry out this seemingly daunting task. In this article, we aim to shed light on the benefits and provide you with some strategies on conducting performance audits that yield meaningful insights. 

Benefits of Performance Audits

Avoid Errors & Omissions

When your agency migrated to your agency management system, whether it was Applied Epic, AMS360, or another, you likely implemented workflows and established expectations that were use in training your staff. These workflows and expectations have not only served as a foundation for your existing team but also continue to be utilized during the onboarding process for new employees. However, It’s human nature to start finding shortcuts and workarounds for tasks that we perform daily. Sometimes, these lead to bad habits and consequently an opportunity for an error & omission. A critical mistake agencies often make is solely relying on training without actively verifying if staff members are adhering to established workflows. The best way to determine if your team is following those established workflows is to audit files.  

Evaluate Effectiveness of Workflows & Identify Necessary Changes

Audits are also a great way to evaluate if your Applied Epic or AMS360 workflows are working for your agency or if they need to be amended. If you audit files and find that certain portions of workflows aren’t being followed, it raises the question of whether the issue lies in the clarity of the workflows themselves or their effectiveness. Is it possible that the workflows have become unclear over time, or that they no longer align with the agency’s operational needs due to the adoption of new technologies or integrations? While we don’t recommend frequent changes, we do encourage that agencies review questions and concerns with workflows and update them when necessary.  

Identify Departments that Need Additional Resources

Auditing can also identify areas of the agency that may need additional resources.  For example, if you review workloads and find that one department has written a substantial amount of new business in the past 12 months, you may also find it necessary to hire an additional resource to help support those accounts or shift a portion of your book to a carrier service center.  

Best Practices for Conducting Audits in Your Agency

Now that we’ve discussed some of the more important reasons that your agency should conduct performance auditing, let’s delve into some best practices that can ensure the effectiveness of these audits.

Be Transparent with Your Staff

So how do you implement audits without creating that environment of fear and hostility toward the process? We encourage the process to be implemented with transparency. Clearly identify what is being audited and the scale on which they will be evaluated. Explain to your staff that the process isn’t just to find out what someone is doing wrong but to also find what is being done right. What can the agency do better for them? The results will foster an environment where staff wants to do well and more importantly give them an opportunity invest in their own development.  

Provide Additional Resources and Training 

Did you know that based on a recent survey 86% of millennials shared that they could be prevented from leaving their current position if training and development were offered by their employer? That’s right, your staff wants to feel like you invest in them and encourage them to be better versions of themselves. Make the audit process one that is positive and that also gives back. When you find that someone has underperformed give them the resources to fix the problem. This can be done through written documentation, recorded documentation, or even live support and training.  

Outsource your Performance Audits

While agencies can perform their own performance audits, it’s often challenging to allocate the resources and time for this task – that’s where outsourcing comes in. By outsourcing your performance audits, you can tap into the expertise and specialized knowledge of industry professionals who have in-depth experience with insurance and the agency management system you are using. They bring the necessary skills, tools, and processes to conduct comprehensive audits, ensuring accuracy and thoroughness.

Another benefit of outsourcing your performance audits is the objectivity that it brings to the process. External auditors bring an objective perspective to the process, as they are not directly involved in day-to-day operations. That objectivity enables them to assess workflows and performance without bias, identifying potential gaps or areas for improvement that may have been overlooked internally.

How Kite Technology Can Help

KiteTech has helped countless agencies over the years implement auditing programs, resulting in significant improvements in data reporting, errors and omissions claims, and employee morale.

To learn more about our auditing services, Applied Epic agencies, click here and AMS360 agencies, click here. If your agency would like assistance in developing an auditing program or configuring reports to support your processes, contact us today to schedule a conversation. We are here to help!

Laura Whaley

Laura Whaley

Agency Consultant
Kite Technology Group

Maximizing Security in Applied Epic: Best Practices for Effectively Managing Security Groups

Effective management of security groups is a critical aspect of ensuring the security and integrity of your data in Applied Epic. Security groups are a way of controlling access to different parts of the system, and as you get started in Epic, security groups are typically very basic and include a group for Servicing, Producers, HR, Accounting and Download. Have you taken the time to review your security groups to ensure that the rights delegated are appropriate? Do you have adequate groups set up based on responsibilities of your staff?

If you are feeling intimidated like most agencies do, we are here to help. In this article, we will discuss some of the best practices for managing security groups in Applied Epic to help you better protect your organization’s data.

Best practices for managing security groups in Applied Epic

1. Review existing group rights to ensure they meet job duties

Review the existing groups and the rights granted in each. Determine if the rights granted allow the staff to process work as needed. If you are reviewing rights and unsure what it might do, the Epic help file has become tremendously better at providing guidance to specifics of each right in the various areas. You can click into each area and the Permission is shown with what it enables, the implications for each and if there are related items, those are also provided.

2. Never add rights to an individual user

It is important to remember that you should never individually add rights for a user. If you add rights for one person on a user level, that configuration isn’t visible with a bird’s eye view of who has what. Create additional groups if rights are requested outside of a user’s basic group.

3. Add new users with groups identified rather than “..same rights as..” method

It is common when a new user starts for HR or an operations leader to say, “this person needs the same rights as..”. The problem here is that if an individual has rights that they may not be aware of, you are going to grant those same rights inherently and erroneously for the new employee. However, granting rights based on security groups guarantees rights based on their work duties.

4. Audit groups and users at least annually

How many employees do you hire and either promote or move within your organization to another role? It happens all the time. With these changes their responsibilities might change. Run management reports to audit who has what groups and if those groups are still appropriate or if changes need to be made.

5. Create subgroups to help with separation of duties

Does your agency have the ability to create a separation of duties in accounting? This separation of rights can help protect your agency from fraud and theft where you may otherwise be exposed. For example, create separate groups for those in your payables department from those in your receivables department and from those who get access to financials or vendor payables.

6. Consider a dual approval for security changes

Depending on the size and complexity of an agency it may be advantageous to have an approval system in place. Consider having a system admin approve and send to an operations manager for final approval before implementing any change.

7. Document, Document, Document

Add backup documentation to each change made and who requested/approved the change on the employee account. This way, there is never a question of who, when what or why.

Conclusion

Applied Epic is a powerful agency management system that serves as a centralized repository for critical information, including client data, policies, financials, and bank accounts. However, without establishing robust security protocols and best practices for managing security groups, you risk exposing this sensitive information to malicious actors. The importance of implementing and adhering to security guidelines cannot be overstated. By leveraging best practices like those outlined above, you can help safeguard your agency’s data and protect against potential security breaches.

If you find that you need assistance with establishing security groups or auditing existing ones, the KiteTech Agency Consulting team is here to help. Our team of Applied Epic experts can guide you through the process of setting up security groups and ensuring that they align with your agency’s needs. With our guidance, you can rest assured that your agency’s data is secure and protected against unauthorized access. Contact us today to learn more!

Laura Whaley

Laura Whaley

Agency Consultant
Kite Technology Group

adam atwell

Adam Atwell

Cloud solutions architect

Adam is passionate about consulting with organizations across the country to help them develop and execute a cloud adoption strategy that meets their business needs and future objectives. Adam oversees and manages our company strategy for Microsoft 365 adoption and is responsible for future growth and development inside Microsoft 365 and other cloud technologies.