The Client: EZ CERT
EZ CERT is a certificate of insurance management company based in Georgetown, Texas. EZ CERT’s team has a combined 50+ years of insurance experience, which they utilize to efficiently track insurance compliance for their franchise clients. Their main goal in working with franchises is to maintain the insurance coverage mandated in a brand’s FDD for every location through diligent compliance tracking. EZ CERT’s clients include Sport Clips, ALS, Nekter Juice, US Lawns, Tropical Smoothie, and other established franchise brands.
“EZ CERT provides a turn-key system to track and manage insurance compliance to fully protect the franchisor and franchisee. We save them a lot of time and a lot of expense so they can maintain a profitable brand.” – Melonie Barker, Compliance Manager at EZ CERT
Doug Groves, President of EZ CERT, is the force behind the company’s certificate tracking system. Groves has a multifaceted background as an Area Developer and continues to work in franchise development, bringing the first hand franchise expertise to EZ CERT.
“Franchises have a brand to worry about, run & grow. Why not use an insurance professional to track certificates instead of your staff. Save the time & energy for growing the brand.” – Doug Groves
While EZ CERT is an expert and efficient at managing franchise insurance certificates, the same couldn’t be said about their in-house tracking solution–before SmartCompliance. After handling multiple calls from franchise clients looking for up-to-date insight into their insurance compliance data, EZ CERT knew it needed a different way to provide information than a standard monthly report.
The Challenge: In Need of a Top COI Tracking Software Partner
EZ CERT wanted to continue to exist as the top insurance compliance tracking service for franchises, so they went out into the market to reinvest in their technology platform. They searched for a technology partner capable of providing what they needed to deliver their franchise clients better access to their data in real-time via a user-friendly platform. Enter: SmartCompliance, the #1 COI collection and tracking software.
“We had a system in place, but it wasn’t user-friendly. It only existed on our back end, which left our clients in the dark until we generated a monthly report. The clear-cut answer was SmartCompliance.” – Doug Groves
One thing that stood out for EZ CERT was SmartCompliance’s 24/7 view of franchisee compliance, which allowed them to deliver the clients a better analysis of their data and ensure every franchisee is fully compliant.
“Our new partnership with SmartCompliance brings the franchisor their compliance data in real-time,” Groves said. “Instead of waiting for a monthly report, they are now able to look at a daily report and see what the EZ CERT staff is working on. Where our prior computer program had no customer interface, SmartCompliance has helped us bring our customers round-the-clock access to the insurance status of each of their franchisees through a dashboard that also displays their overall compliance percentage.”
The New Method: A Streamlined, User-Friendly Solution
With a user-friendly, customizable and efficient COI tracking software in place, EZ CERT is finally confident that their client’s certificates are being managed properly. SmartCompliance’s capabilities have solved many pain points for the EZ CERT team and allowed them to increase compliance for all their franchise clients.
They selected SmartCompliance based on several reasons:
- Centralized Data & Accessibility – SmartCompliance accurately stores and provides compliance data on one centralized program. Franchise clients can log on to the software anytime to view franchisee’s insurance coverage and verify the coverage based on the submitted certificate to EZ CERT.
- Customization – EZ CERT can easily create and send franchisees more professional-looking emails that incorporate direct links to upload their certificates online. These improved auto-notifications have led to an increase in certificate response and uploads by franchisees, as well as an increase in compliance.
- Interpretation – Overall reduction in time spent analyzing compliance documents with the OCR (technology, which automatically scans, transcribes, and compares the certificates to the risk templates.
“Since the partnership with SmartCompliance we have seen an increase in brand compliance. The professional looking, automated notifications and the efficiency of the platform has helped us streamline the COI collection process.” – Melonie Barker
The Results: A 65% Increase in Compliance for Franchise Client
Achieving full compliance is a tedious, layered process, and establishing this new tracking system with SmartCompliance has allowed EZ CERT to work more efficiently to make sure every franchisee in any given system is entirely compliant.
EZ CERT’s client Sport Clips, for example, originally was not tracking their franchisees certificates of insurance, leaving them vulnerable to potential litigation if an accident were to occur. With the help of SmartCompliance’s tracking software and EZ CERT’s franchise insurance expertise, Sport Clips has been able to increase their compliance percentage from 30% to 95%.
Investing in the SmartCompliance innovation has delivered increased accessibility and efficiency to EZ CERT’s services, helping them become an even more valuable certificate tracking solution for their franchise clients.
“Where our prior COI tracking program had no customer interface, SmartCompliance has helped us bring our customers 24/7 access to the insurance status of each of their franchisees.”
