Gen4 Agency Management

Benefits:

Agency managment, ben admin and HRIS all in one integrated system instead of having to use several seperate systems. We have used it for 9 years and it gets better every year.

Drawbacks:

No phone number for support, but they do respond within a few minutes. Was initially old looking but some updates have made it a little better.

Benefits:

The promises to be efficient and maintain the accounting of the client billing. The system is cumbersome, not easy to download the agency billing Gen 4 is extremely unaccommodating WASTE of funds over a long period of non utilization

Drawbacks:

My staff found it cumbersome to enter the data- Time consuming for a small shop that uses Email to maintains client files The contract renews annually and is all in favor of the vendor -IF you are not getting value for your investment get out at renewal or you pay the entire year to their profit and your waste.

In sum:

Wanted to track client revenues -Carrier commissions- implement CRM Staff push back due to user clunkiness

Benefits:

The customer service team is very quick to respond (???). Fast? Yes. Helpful? Nope. They always assume the issue is closed after one response, but you have to respond and tell them it is not closed.

Drawbacks:

I didn't hear their sales pitch, but whatever ease-of-use and reporting capability they talk about cannot be true. I would highly recommend that you give exact examples of the reports you need, and make them do a demo of how you would pull that report. Not only are the capabilities extremely limited (even compared to the outdated system we were using before), but their support team is condescending and usually end up saying, "Sorry, that's just how it is." Cool, guys. Thanks...

Benefits:

Not much good to say compared to the marketplace.

Drawbacks:

They don't provide you with a phone number to call. Everything is via "tickets". For the cost, there is not a lot of value

In sum:

Keep looking. I have given them a lot of chances, yet they are still fairly non-responsive on our needs.

Benefits:

Gen4 is very user friendly. It gives us a one stop point for group policy information. The pre-built reports work well and encompass most of our reporting needs. The Outlook integration works great and is an awesome way to track histories.

Drawbacks:

The overall implementation went well when transitioning data from our old CRM. There is still a lot of heavy lifting when it comes to building the policies under each group. There is limited flexibility when it comes to adding customized functions.

In sum:

Gen4 has been a great tool for us. It has allowed us to tie up loose ends and things more efficient.

Drawbacks:

I am the owner of a brokerage and, like many brokers, have tried many employee benefits products over the years. Act, Goldmine, Microsoft Dynamics, Salesforce and Gen4. Don't be fooled by a product that is supposedly created for the employee benefit agency. Gen4 is old looking, very inflexible, and requires one employee to become a power user in order to fully utilize features. Like other small, industry focused software, Gen4 does not have many pre-built integrations with other modern apps (unlike Salesforce or Sugar CRM). Gen4 is specifically poor at communication tools. It requires multiple steps to prepare a list for a mail merge or email campaign. It is very poor with any type of customization. All in all, if you are an owner thinking about this product, save yourself some time and look elsewhere.

In sum:

I wouldn't buy it again.

Benefits:

I thought that it had a lot of capabilities.

Drawbacks:

Way too convoluted. The learning curve is too great. We switched to another system and found it extremely easy to set up and use.

In sum:

We never ended up using it and then after years of paying and not using it they required us to finish paying out the year. They never followed up to see if we were happy with their system. Their answer for customer support is "Watch a video" or look in the library.