Location: N17W24222 Riverwood Drive, Suite 330, Waukesha, WI 53188
Web site: www.connecture.com
Year founded: 1999
Product or service offered: The InsureConnect suite of solutions.
Projected 2007 revenue: $28 million
Leadership team: Dan Maynard, president and chief executive officer; Bob Barry, senior vice president of product and market strategy; Mary Franz, chief operating officer; Curt Schumacher, senior vice president of product management; Lorrie Imes, vice president of business development; Mike Schenk, vice president and chief technology officer; Jerry Furness, vice president of implementation services; Kevin McClain, vice president of customer services; Jim Kelly, vice president of sales; David Sockel, vice president of business operations; and Marc Colley, controller.
Target clientele: Health and benefits insurers of any size. InsureConnect is a Web-based sales, service, and process automation software for health and benefits insurance plans including large group, small group, and individual and family plans, and ancillary products such as dental, group life, vision, prescription drug, accidental death and dismemberment, short-term disability, and long-term disability plans. The InsureConnect suite can be easily configured for all market segments and can also be tailored to target consumer markets to extend the reach of a health plan’s products and brand. The InsureConnect suite is Web-based, secure, highly configurable, and scalable, growing as a company’s needs change or markets expand. Connecture’s solutions have proven to deliver increased sales, enhanced broker loyalty, improved back-office efficiencies, lower customer acquisition costs, and lower overall operating expenses.
Business organization memberships: Blue Cross Blue Shield Association and America’s Health Insurance Plans Solutions Partner.
What has fueled your company’s growth? Our company has been able to grow because we have a talented, dedicated staff and an innovative, scalable product suite. Our product suite has evolved as we anticipate and accommodate changing needs of the marketplace and now Connecture alone offers the most comprehensive solution available. In 2007 we introduced a new solution package to meet the needs of smaller health plans so they too could automate, and more effectively compete with, larger health plans at an affordable total cost of ownership. We also partnered with two other leaders in the software industry by incorporating their products into the InsureConnect suite to broaden the functionality we can offer.
Our employees are the other half of the equation. They develop and maintain quality products and provide service that has helped us retain clients. Connecture’s average client tenure is four years – while earning a solid reputation for excellent customer service.
What is the biggest obstacle to your company’s growth? Connecture has few major obstacles to future growth. We have a product team that is in a constant state of research and development and we keep a close eye on industry and legislative changes, such as the recent move toward consumer-driven health plans, so that we may adapt our products and anticipate future needs of our clients and prospects. We also have several ongoing initiatives to ensure that we attract and retain highly competent and service-oriented employees so that we may continue to offer a superior quality product. The biggest obstacle to Connecture’s growth may be the economy. With major swings in the U.S. economy, health insurers may choose to build software such as ours in house. In fact, from a sales standpoint it is the internal IT staff of an insurer that is our biggest competition, not another software company.
Do you plan any changes in your company in the upcoming months? We have added five new clients just this year, including one of the largest health plans in the country; bringing our total large health plan clients to 11 of the top 20 in the country, so we will be hiring staff to meet the needs of these new clients. In the coming months we will be working on implementations for these new clients as well as new product implementations for current clients. We will also be adding a CFO to our staff to help us in strategic financial planning and preparing for future growth.
What is the outlook for the business conditions of your industry over the next several months? The insurance industry is stable as a whole but laws and regulations are changing within states all the time which creates needs for changing business rules and product offerings to remain compliant. For Connecture this means having to be able to react with our clients if their products or workflows need to change and their InsureConnect solution has to be altered to accommodate those changes. The health insurance industry is constantly morphing. From the increasing popularity of consumers searching for and purchasing health insurance individually, online, to the transformation of health insurance products themselves; new market segments are drawing more attention and products and decisioning are becoming more sophisticated to minimize risk. For Connecture’s part, our solutions are already able to meet these trends and satisfy these needs. InsureConnect can be easily configured to reach consumers directly and can be tailored for specific segments so carriers can more effectively target certain groups, even the increasingly popular trend of consumer-driven health plans. Health insurers are new to communicating directly with and marketing to consumers online, and our software helps them reach consumers easily. Additionally, our solutions can help carriers make better risk decisions for a more profitable book of business with our automated underwriting solutions that include medical history data to ensure a more accurate risk assessment.
