Abstract
In 2020, Medical Mutual Liability Society of Maryland (MMLSM) transitioned from its legacy software vendor to Gain Compliance for its two entities and its Combined filing. In this Customer Story, you will learn how Gain’s native cloud software delivered modern and intuitive functionality which provided real-time visibility into their statements, without the quirks, required software update uploads, or data continuity issues that had previously slowed them down with their legacy vendor.
Key Quote:
“Gain has built a better mousetrap for statutory reporting.”
Matt Miller, Accounting Manager, Medical Mutual Liability Society of Maryland
Background
Matt Miller joined MMLSM in 2020 from a career in public accounting.
In his new role as Accounting Manager, one of his first challenges was to get up to speed on the company’s statutory financial reporting requirements and processes. Miller found the legacy software MMLSM employed for these filings to be dated, clunky, and unintuitive.
“The biggest thing for me was its limitations,” Miller explained. “It was a desktop app. Although it was on a shared server, it wasn’t truly cloud-based, so it was pretty slow. There were also a lot of uploads of updates and a lot of quirks to deal with.”
Aside from the performance issues and overhead of maintaining installed software, the antiquated design also made it more difficult to learn and contribute to MMSLM’s process. As Miller explained, “And when it came to me reviewing the statement, I had to be coached by others on what to look for in the software, ‘Oh yes, you have to look for this instead of that,’ they would say, or ‘you have to go here and do this when that happens.’”
And, as if all of these issues weren’t enough, “we were also having problems with data continuity,” he continued. “The team would enter data and it would change when I went to review it. The fixes were never straightforward, we would have to change different data points to fix it, or we’d be re-entering data. So it was complicated.”
A Change for the Better
The process became much less complicated when the company transitioned to Gain Compliance. “Gain is the Web 2.0 version of this software,” Matt said, ‘so it was a completely different experience.”
Gain’s confidence in the software was contagious. “With Gain, I could tell the company was hungry for business based on how the company followed up with us,” Matt recalled. “[Gain} was pushing its product because it was good, and we were receptive to that.”
“We already had the Notes, so we were familiar with the company,” he continued. “That process of starting with Notes while still using that older software product for the rest made it really easy for us to consider a change to Gain’s Full Statement software.”
When they did expand to Full Statement, he explained that the main benefit to his role in reviewing the statements was the visibility the software provides. ‘‘My favorite thing about Gain is that you pull up a web browser, log in to Gain to pull everything up and it’s all there in one place. It’s live, so when people make updates you see them right away.”
He reported that they were no longer dealing with data continuity issues. “When we enter a number, it doesn’t change unless we change it,” he said. “Basically, Gain works as it should, so we aren’t spending any time trying to figure out what is going on with the software, and we can focus on our statements.”
He noted that the software’s performance was also a change for the better. “We haven’t experienced any issues around downtime, which is nice. Being able to access it during that one critical week after quarter close – two critical weeks during the annual cycle – we need that software to be up and running during those times around the clock, even during the evenings, and we’ve never had an issue with Gain in that regard.”
“Gain has built a better mousetrap for filing Statutory reporting. It’s intuitive, so it’s very much what we’re used to with other cloud software we use.”
Gain has differentiated itself from other cloud software companies by being very knowledgeable about both software and statutory accounting. “With other software companies, it seems like they are engineers first – so they build the product, but the people on the customer-facing side don’t understand it as much,” Miller observed. Gain, however, takes a different approach. “The support side of Gain really knows this product and this subject well, and it works so well it’s clear to me the company has a good team of engineers building it as well.”
Conclusion
Financial reporting teams often find themselves in a routine of managing software while also managing their statements. Legacy software slow teams down; this lost time is a real, but often overlooked, cost. Gain allows teams to focus on their statements while giving them a feeling of confidence in their work that they didn’t have with their prior vendor.
Learn more about how Gain has improved outcomes for financial reporting teams for other carriers.