Crop Insurance Services Association (CropServ) is an association of insurers that provides assessments of damage to crops across the country. Jobs are issued by the members to the association which is then responsible for organising an assessor to go out on site, make an assessment and report this figure back to the insurer.

Existing system overhaul demands better technology

CropServ was using a legacy system that did not achieve their business objectives of enabling the assessor out in the field to capture assessments whilst:

• Having no internet
• Taking Photos
• Capturing GPS co-ordinates
• Tackling harsh weather conditions

Additionally, the original process required that the assessors manually filled out paper-forms and faxed it to the HQ for data entry. To accommodate their growing needs and have paperless assessment records; the company was pushed to seek a better technology / solution.

A central source of information

With more assessors out in the field to capture and record the damage and work out the financial calculations; CropServ wanted to provide the assessors with a mobile assessment tracking tool to record their findings.

Empower IT Solutions developed a solution for a ruggedised tablet device that covers the field assessor’s need for collecting the required information and offered an enterprise approach to device management and security. The distinguishing feature of this solution is that it is capable of supporting assessors in harsh weather conditions.

The tablet solution automatically syncs with the server to send the records across as soon as the device is connected to the Internet.

As the manager in the back office wanted to overlay the assessment over a map; Empower IT developed the tablet solution with mapping integration.

Mobile device solution

The assessors were mostly former farmers with limited computer knowledge, who usually used paper-based forms to record their findings. Empower IT provided the non-technical assessors with a tablet-based solution, and to make life easier we customised Microsoft Dynamics 365 system to replicate the paper forms the assessors were used to dealing with.

A custom interface was designed using Microsoft technologies to allow assessors to easily input field data. As soon as an internet connection was established, the information would be updated to the server without an intervention from the user.

Security a high priority

As CropServ operates as an association organisation in the insurance industry, security is the highest priority and any solution to be used had to meet all their security standards.
With this in mind; Empower IT integrated Microsoft Dynamics 365  with a third party tool called Resco that offered the highest level of data protection on an application level.

Furthermore, as there is no middleware server or component used, no data is stored or cached anywhere except the client’s local storage. Plus all the data stored locally is encrypted by default. Password protection is also provided.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 in action

The insurance claims management solution allows assessments to be easily performed in the field whilst quickly producing detailed calculations for the back-end administrative staff. Searching for assessment records has now become very easy. CropServ was able to save on their inventory overhead incurred for the creating and storing the paper based records.

With Microsoft Dynamics 365 working seamlessly in the field and in the back office, the average time for processing insurance claims were significantly reduced.

To know more about Microsoft Dynamics 365 Field Service solutions, call the Empower IT Solutions team today on 1300 797 888.