Broker+
Broker+ is a medium-complexity FileMaker solution aimed at managing insurance estimates, designed to be used by a broker or a small company. Each estimate can hold all the necessary data for the different insurance fields, and contains one or more negotiations with different companies.
The solution is aimed at producing pre-compiled forms easily, which can then be sent to the client (as a proposal) or the insurance company (as a request for a quote).
Why
This started as a custom job for a client, and as we continued meeting, it grew up. A lot more than I expected actually, it became a pretty complete management solution, and it’s being used for years.
As of the end of 2018, we are rebuilding a similar software with a more robust model for a similar purpose.
Difficulties
Making an universal model to contain all the fields and insurance-specific data for almost every company, proved to be very challenging. It’s still a problem for the newest version, and one I’ve been determined to tackle in the best way possible. The solution I found is pretty satisfying, and it can easily model the contents of almost every offer from civil liability insurance, to health. Every insurance field is tailored to italian specifications and namings, and it’s easily editable by the client.
One particular hard point was the communication and management of the client, which often makes confusion, loses focus and overloads with requirements. Every time I went to his office I had something to learn about managing such problems.
The complexity is more than half LabManager’s, this solution is far more focused on database modeling and form printing than the actual procedures.
Final thoughts
It required a lot of work. Probably it’s hard to sell, as it’s custom-made, but at least I made some good experience, which is the consolation prize of this useless project.