Providing risk management consulting to large commercial clients with Fulcrum

The Problem

Before she found Fulcrum, Carrington Risk CEO Kristin Carrington was ready to quit working in the field. “I dreaded the report writing,” she said.

“Each time she surveyed a client’s property for potential risks, she would have to take the paper report from the previous year with her and mark changes on it with a pen. Then she would go back to her office and create a new report of her findings — making changes to the Word document, entering recommendations, and matching up photos.

These reports are often up to 50 pages long. “But out of 50 pages,” she said, “probably three contain important information.”

Kristin knew there had to be an electronic solution to her report-writing problem, so she took to the the Internet to find it.

Searching for a solution

Kristin looked at mobile data collection platforms online, and explored several before deciding on Fulcrum.

“I looked at most of them,” she said. “I chose Fulcrum because it’s an overall solution for what I need.”

At the outset, Kristin was just looking for a mobile app that would let her design a form and add pictures to it. She didn’t even realize what she needed until she started working with Fulcrum and saw the benefits of adding location data to her records.

“Many of our clients don’t even know where their buildings are located when we first meet them,” she said, “so it’s great to be able to start with that.”

She shared a story about a client that was modeling about 20 locations for windstorm — incorrectly located in the Atlantic Ocean because of incorrect data in an Excel spreadsheet. “So it’s simple things like that that we’re able to solve for clients now, immediately,” she said.

Kristin has worked closely with our Professional Services team to streamline her workflows and create custom reports, and has even made several trips to visit Fulcrum headquarters in St. Petersburg, FL.

“I think the very first time I met you, I came in with an online risk management tool and said, ‘Can you guys just do this? Can we make this?’” she said. “Fulcrum can do everything that platform did, plus much more.”

Results and benefits

With Fulcrum, “the data-gathering process is faster and more accurate,” Kristin said. “No more not knowing where a building is located, or transposing latitude and longitude. In the export, you know it’s right.”

But the biggest benefit is how much time she saves.

“Traditionally in the property risk control industry, if a field engineer is allotted 8 hours to do a survey, they get 16 hours to write the report. Now report writing is almost taken from two-thirds to zero. It’s actually a 66% time savings.”

Today, when Kristin surveys a property, she simply takes her mobile device, which is preloaded with the data from the previous year’s inspection, and makes changes to the report on the spot.

What’s more, it used to take 30 to 60 days for reports to get to the client. “By then they’ve forgotten about it,” Kristin said. “Now we can send them a report immediately and they’re getting recommendations completed that haven’t been done for years.”

Kristin told us a story about about one of her largest clients. She recently surveyed one of their properties in San Antonio, TX, and their computer room was full of cardboard boxes. “There should be nothing in there but equipment,” she said. “So I took a picture of it, and by the time we had walked to the next stockroom, they had cleaned it out and sent me a picture to drop right into the app, and therefore, the report.”

The bottom line?

Fulcrum is helping Kristin help her clients protect their buildings and contents and secure the lowest insurance premiums possible. “They improve the protection of their occupancies, which lowers their risk, and then ultimately when we show it to the insurance markets and say ‘look, they fixed this right away,’ — I don’t know if you can put a dollar value on that, but if there are any negotiations to be made on their premium, it definitely helps.”

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