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October 20, 2002 at 08:00 PM
New Tech Products Make Doing Business Online Easier For Agents
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As technology advances, financial services agents have more and more products to choose from in order to perform transactions online.
The following is a sampling of some of the newer products available to help agents do business on the World Wide Web.
AI Roboform is free software that “walks behind you on the Internet, and anywhere theres a form that needs to be filled in it will fill it in,” says Andrew Finkle, vice president, business development, Siber Systems, Herndon, Va.
The product was created to save users time when having to fill out forms to register on a new Web page.
A user fills in information on AI Roboform, including name, address, social security number, credit card numbers and so on. AI Roboform then pops up whenever the user encounters a form that needs to be filled in, Finkle says.
The user is asked via a prompt whether he or she wants the form filled in by AI Roboform, and indicates a choice by clicking the appropriate icon.
“It recognizes a new username and password and remembers it, so every time you go onto a site youve registered on, Roboform asks if you want it to sign on for you,” Finkle says.
AI Roboform can be used in insurance company call centers, he adds.
When a customer service representative takes a call and enters a callers information, AI Roboform “can remember every field, so every time that person calls, you put in his name or social security number, one piece of information, and automatically the Roboform can fill in every other bit of information on the page, like phone numbers, addresses, type of insurance policies they have, cars they drive, as long as its a form and on the Internet,” Finkle says.
All the personal data entered into the Roboform profile stays in an encrypted file, he says. “The only time it goes anywhere else is when you tell it where to go.”
AI Roboform works with any Windows operating system, and it will fill in any HTML-based form, Finkle says.
The company also offers an enterprise version of the product that can be customized to work with a companys particular applications, he notes.
For instance, if a company uses time card software, AI Roboform can be configured in a way that keeps employees from having to fill in redundant information every time they punch in or out.
“Its not just what time are you going to your department, they want to know your name, managers name, [and] department. These people have to fill this out three times a day,” Finkle says. “With Roboform, they only have to do one step.”
Finkle declined to name a price for the enterprise version, but said that a version for personal use is free.
Theres a link on Roboform.com through which the latest version can be downloaded. Once downloaded, the software installs itself, Finkle says.
“It asks you for information like name, address, credit card numbers, and thats it,” he says. “Then it operates non-invasively in the background and any time you go to a Web site with a form, Roboform will pop up and ask if you want it to fill it out.”
For business use, the product costs $29.99, the company says. The price decreases depending on the number of licenses the company wants to buy.
