Surrounded by paper in an archaic workplace! No Automation. Learn to Code…now.
Hey there! Welcome to my blog where I post about my journey as a self-taught developer. You can find my GitHub by clicking HERE.
Have you ever worked in a paper based office? I’m talking no automation, post-it notes, printing every single document and placing them into Manila Folders, no sense of electronic order. This is a place where there is no Dropbox, there is no CRM and even the payment gateway (Stripe, Authorize.net, Braintree) was non-existent until 2015.
I had trouble finding a relevant photo on pexels.com, ha! So I took a picture of the file cabinet room at my current job. This friends is 1970’s still cranking in 2021. I’m not saying that this a good thing, on the contrary. It is incredibly time consuming and difficult to maintain good reviews and satisfy clients without a lot of extra effort and monthly burn out.
You may be thinking, “why the post James?”
On November 15, 2015 I received a book in the mail I ordered on Amazon. It was John Duckett’s HTML & CSS. I did not know at the time, but this book was the key to me becoming completely immersed in Web Development, and it was the way out of a paper mess for myself, my co-workers and my employer.
Without going into detail of our old and current workflow, I will explain some of the key benefits I’ve experienced hands-on, as a developer in the insurance industry and how I have automated some of the office daily tasks with two specific applications
Insurance Premium Quoting Tool:
You can view the code for the quoting tool on GitHub here.
What was the problem?
Our web application at the time, had no option for clients to get a customized quotation for their insurance policy! Generic quotations without the option to add any additional coverage, or increase limits were the only thing available.
Our clients would need to call or email us, in order to get a custom quote. Although the app could not fix the issue of clients calling in bulk, it definitely allowed us to speed up our quoting process saving about 30 minutes — 1 hour a day per agent.
When we serve 15,000–20,000 active clients a year with only 3 agents on the phone, you can imagine things got a little busy.
How did I address the issue?
I decided to look at our current codebase, so I contacted our lead developer at the time and was able to get a zip file of our codebase less the database. From there I could get an idea as how he had programmed the insurance rates, how he used certain equations and calculated multipliers, compared different territories which dictated rates, so on and so forth.
I added my touch to the browser app I had created, adjusted a few outdated packages and used newer syntax in JS which I had grown accustom to.
Was it worth my time?
Absolutely! I spent several weeks building the browser quoting tool, and my co-workers and I use it every day and have for the last several years.
The outcome!
Saving hours a week per agent, this saves my employer hours a week, and our clients have more professional, accurate, efficient and expedited quotations!
Screen shots below.
Alright, so above we entered the following fields. And below, you will see the quotation as a normal active client would.
- Coverage (Full Coverage or Liability Only)
- Territory (Baja & Sonora Only, Plan A or Plan B)
- Vehicle Value (USD)
- Any options you may want to include for the client. (Additional Coverage)
Click “Calculate Premium”, and then we get the following!
This was something I could screenshot and send via email as a PDF. I did not yet know a server side language or ways to implement PDF generation.
Web Scraper / Form Bot:
What was the problem?
When we receive a homeowners quotation request, the process is incredibly time consuming.
The quote request is received on our web application, we then need to print it out, type in each field in the company site to generate a premium and we then type in each coverage with its respective cost of insurance.
Basically, it gets very confusing and it takes a lot of time.
How did I address the issue?
I decided to make a web scraper which would replace printing out the quotation. This web scraper would load the scraped data into a pre-built html form.
Form that form, I could manually edit certain fields that I could not programmatically validate. Such as a valid zip code.
I then, created a form bot. The bot would take all of the fields in the form, and upload them into the company’s form on their website. So I was dealing with certain tools in python that would allow me to authenticate my work login, the company login and upload all the info I needed to generate an accurate premium for the client!
Was it worth my time?
Easily worth my time. 100% worth my time. The homeowners line is something my employer handled. We received about 3 home quote requests a day. Each quote would take 25 minutes.
The outcome!
This tool, brought that number down to 2–3 minutes per quote. He was thrilled. I was too.
Video of the scrape / form bot process below. (I did not upload the scrape video, too many client specific details involved. But the bot is below. Enjoy.
Although I am not yet finished with the complete web app revamp for my employer, this will be deployed in the next several months. In the meantime, small tools such as the quoting tool, and web scraper / form bot definitely save time!
We can focus more on selling, and less on prepping!
I hope this motivated someone! Never stop learning, and coding is a very powerful tool. I have enjoyed it, and 5 years ago, never in my life did I think I would be able to build the things I’ve put up on GitHub.
Happy Coding!
