Sure, spreadsheets can be painful and time-consuming to use for values collection, but they’ve worked fine so far, right?

Well, have they?

If you’re using spreadsheets, it might take two to three months to collect values, convert currencies, and aggregate and reformat data before you can finally corral it all into a meaningful format. Just drafting and emailing spreadsheets to individual collectors can take days – and that’s assuming the email address list is unchanged from the last campaign.

And then there’s the question of accuracy. Spreadsheets are a notorious breeding ground for error. Think about the ripple effect of a typo that values a property at $10 million instead of $1 million. An undetected mistake like this would most certainly lead to improper coverage and significantly higher premiums. It could even impact strategic decisions about adding new properties or allocating inventory. And good luck noticing one extra zero buried among hundreds of numbers on a spreadsheet.

Exposure management software takes the time and the pain out of the values collection process with:

  • Customizable questionnaires that make values entry easy
  • Automatic validation that ensures the data is accurate
  • Dashboards that show the real-time status of each campaign
  • Visually impactful reports that can be created with just a few clicks using any part of the data

Updating your exposure management process is a sure way to get the proper coverage, the best premiums – and so much more. With values in one, centralized source, you’ll be able to understand your exposures in greater detail and apply stronger analytics that deliver more timely and reliable insights.

You’ll have a clear picture of where your risks are so you can make smart decisions about adding locations, for instance, or moving inventory. Exposure data also can be leveraged to run allocations, map property values against catastrophic events, produce loss-ratio reports, and identify possible new areas for loss prevention.

If you still aren’t convinced that exposure management software is worth the time and trouble, do the math. Simply add up the number of:

  1. People who need to submit values
  2. Countries where you have assets
  3. Locations within each country
  4. Currencies that need to be converted

The higher the numbers, the more value you’ll get from software.
Spreadsheets may be the comfortable choice for collecting values. But entrenched habits can hold you back. Time spent collecting, validating, reformatting, and consolidating data is time NOT spent on things that really count – turning that data into actionable intelligence.

Automating and streamlining the values collection process allows you to focus your resources where they can deliver the most value. Isn’t that a more productive way to spend your time?