This November's AUGIE Meeting focused on the continuing War on Keystrokes and the use of technology to streamline workflows and improving ease of doing business. The message remained clear: the more companies utilize technologies and ACORD Standards to do business, the more they can focus on their key business of selling insurance rather than on processing data.

ACORD's Board Chair John Leonard, President & CEO of MEMIC, opened the meeting. He stressed the importance of ACORD XML for doing business today stating directly to the AUGIE audience: "you have to use ACORD XML." He gave examples of how standards implementations benefited MEMIC. This is why, according to Leonard, that they are requiring their partners to use ACORD XML for data communications.

Leonard also encouraged more people to get involved and volunteer. "ACORD's success is through volunteers like you," he stated.

AUGIE Rotational Chair Mike Worthington, President of Worthington Insurance & Real Estate and President of the National Users Development Group Inc. for MI (NUDGMI) then welcomed the various groups in the audience including agents, carriers, solution providers, other AUGIE Leaders and the ACORD Young Agent Scholarship winners in attendance.

Implementations and demonstrations were a major focus for the morning. Live demonstrations from ACORD-based systems highlighted the capabilities available today as well as the value of sharing data using the Standards. These included Applied using ACORD messages and web services, Vertafore's Pipeline, and Choices' eForms implementation.

A highlight of the demonstrations was Doug Johnston of Applied Systems and Peter Zale of Vertafore showing Epic and PL Rating running and talking together. As some in the audience said, it was a "historic" demonstration seeing competitors working together.

Updates on the Real Time campaign were provided by Peter van Aartrijk of Aartrijk. He reviewed the current "Eddie" campaigns as well as the new Eddie cartoon series that is beginning to appear. A review of the latest Real Time survey showed increases in both personal and commercial lines download. However, while increasing, more work needs to be done to continue this rise in efficiency.

Jim Rogers of The Hartford provided insights into Trust Framework, an organization whose mission is to provide common legal and technical standards that will remove the need for IDs and passwords while increasing security and the ease of doing business with one another.

Two of the hottest issues in the industry today – eSign and mobile technology – were next on the agenda. ACORD's Lloyd Chumbley discussed the use of apps and Standards. Then, a video from the Kansas Independent Agents showed how apps on a tablet can improve efficiency and make working with clients easier and faster. Brad DuPont of eSignSystems provided a demonstration of how eSignatures are being implemented using their system.

ACORD Membership Director Cal Durland, CPCU, then provided updates on several other AUGIE initiatives.

• The Real Time Makes $$$$ is being updated. The objective is to provide an updated document that encourages agencies to use Real Time in ways that will improve their bottom line and change their corporate culture from processing data to sales. As an example, she cited Stu Durland of Seely & Durland and her husband. She showed the copy of Rough Notes from September 2011 that highlighted their agency.
• The Updated Productive Agency Visits document is also being updated to provide new and additional information on how to make the most out of visits with field representative.
• Ron Binning provided updates on the ongoing efforts to engage carriers. The focus will be on getting more companies involved with Real Time and increasing industry understanding of the benefits.

The next AUGIE face-to-face meeting will be February 15-17, 2012 in Tampa, FL in association with ACT and the AIMS Society.