Abstract:
When statutory reporting teams change from legacy Annual Statement software to Gain Compliance, they are often surprised by how fast and hands-off the process is to get up and going for their first filing.
In this Customer Story Anthology, you will hear from a variety of Gain customers about their experience making the change and how they were supported along the way.
Key Quote:
“[Switching to Gain Compliance] turned out to be more seamless than I could have hoped for.”
Jeff Siefker, Controller, Grange Insurance
Context – Battle Scars from Other IT Projects:
Many customers are initially fearful of the prospect of switching from their legacy vendor. Often, the root cause of their concern is a prior experience with an implementation gone awry in a different area such as investment management, general ledger, or policy admin systems.
Gain’s CEO, Burch LaPrade, provided background on this phenomenon, “People frequently evaluate the migration to Gain through the lens of other IT projects. Those types of projects are often long, complicated, expensive, and over-budget or delayed.”
Moving to Gain, however, could not be more different. As Burch further explained, “All NAIC-licensed software vendors utilize the same data framework, so it’s just a matter of importing data from a customer’s prior filings, and we take care of the rest. As IT projects go, this is a very quick win.”
Gain has built a reputation for a deep commitment to customer outcomes, including during the transition process. Dave Vande Zandschulp, Director of Customer Success, noted: “Over one thousand entities have come onto our platform in the past few years – Gain is deeply experienced in all aspects of support, including onboarding. Our customer team excels at providing a first class customer experience which is highly personalized and efficient. We handle all document setup, and the process is measured in days, not weeks.”
Getting Started – the Onboarding Process:
Once the work order has been executed, the Gain customer team reaches out to coordinate a kick-off meeting. On that call, plans, including explicit deadlines and delivery commitments on Gain’s end, are made for document setup and initial training. At the end of that call, new customers are asked to provide historical filing information.
All document setup is completed by Gain, and this is followed by formalized onboarding and training using the customer’s actual filings. Universally, customers feel confident, comfortable, and supported throughout.
Jeff Siefker, Controller at Grange Insurance, summarized how that process worked for his team. “It turned out to be more seamless than I could have hoped for. If there were questions or if there were things we needed to get up to speed outside of the abundance of training that Gain provided up front, there was always a quick response that kept us moving forward.”
Leigh Busby, Vice President of Accounting at Service Lloyds, noted that both she and her team got off to a good start with Gain Customer Success Manager, Tony Arrowood. “Tony did the training in the beginning and as we got into it, I know several people from the team reached out to him individually and they all say he’s very responsive and helpful and just provides great customer service.”
Megan Holmes, Financial Reporting Supervisor at Canal Insurance, echoed that Tony got them off to a great start as well. “Tony got us started on the right foot with the training session we did with him, everyone was in the room for that and everyone felt prepared at the end of the call.
Dave Skup, the Controller at SUNZ Insurance, said that Kelsey Gerhold got the team at SUNZ started in the software. “Kelsey guided us through the initial training and she did a very good job.”
Support:
Many customers, once they have gotten up to speed in Gain’s software, say the software is so intuitive and easy to use, they don’t have much need to call on support. But when they do need some assistance, the Gain support team is responsive and knowledgeable on both the software and statutory accounting.
Carol Alexander, Senior Accountant at Service Lloyd’s, said that she hadn’t needed to call support while using Gain. “We had the initial training and other people on the team have sent over questions, but everything is so straightforward in Gain.”
Andrew Stock, Accounting Manager at Grange, stressed how timely responses are: “I forget what I specifically asked, but at one point I asked Kim a question during filing season and the response was so quick. That is so helpful.”
Tom Myers, Financial Reporting Manager at SUNZ, noted how Kelsey Gerhold’s support went beyond Gain’s software. “I reached out to Kelsey about uploading the JURAT page. That wasn’t a Gain problem, I had an old version of Adobe, so she walked me through how to print and upload that page to Gain successfully and she was very helpful even though it wasn’t Gain’s issue, it was my issue with Adobe and she helped me through that.”
Jeff Siefker at Grange put it this way. “Gain seemed more like an extension of the team, as if they were a direct systems support for our team, except we didn’t have to jump through hoops like we sometimes need to do with internal systems support!”
Conclusion:
By focusing on the customer experience, from the initial engagement through ongoing support, Gain has established relationships with customers that become collaborative. In these relationships, the company is seen as both a vendor as well as a trusted partner in these filings.
Quick resolution of any day to day issues is basic table stakes in these relationships. With the filing deadlines, it is imperative that software support keeps these teams moving forward.
Furthermore, these teams are excited by a company actively seeking their feedback.That excitement grows as they see their feedback come to life in the software.
Learn more about how Gain has improved outcomes for financial reporting teams for other carriers.