How Johnson Kendall Johnson Uses Outmarket to Elevate Client Service and Grow the Next Generation of Insurance Leaders

Stats at a Glance:

• Days to Hours: The time spent putting together a client proposal dropped from a couple of days to a matter of hours.

• Platform Consolidation: JKJ was able to consolidate AI workflows, data structuring, and data visualization under one roof instead of purchasing multiple products.

• 6-Month Pilot: An initial pilot program with just 10 employees proved the software's rapid impact and paved the way for a full-team rollout.

Company Overview:

• Company: Johnson Kendall Johnson (JKJ)

• Key Stakeholders: Patrick Mullen, President of Commercial Insurance; Chad Czapor, Vice President; Kristi Cauvin, Senior Business Systems Analyst; Ivette Jimenez, Data Project Manager

• Specialization: Commercial insurance, personal lines, employee benefits, financial and retirement services

About

Johnson Kendall Johnson (JKJ) is an independent, employee-owned insurance and risk management brokerage firm based in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. For 70 years, the firm has provided comprehensive commercial lines, personal lines, benefits, and financial services to clients in all 50 states. They are deeply focused on safety, claims, and risk management to improve client outcomes. 

Committed to remaining independent in an era of rapid industry consolidation, JKJ prioritizes leveraging cutting-edge technology and operating as a highly data-driven organization. Their deep entrepreneurial spirit empowers employees to pave their own paths and positions JKJ as a trailblazer in adopting innovative technologies like AI.

Challenge

Before Outmarket, JKJ faced the common insurance industry challenges of tedious manual tasks, data silos, and legacy systems. Putting together a client proposal could take an account manager two full days, and tasks like reviewing years of loss data to manually draft summaries were highly time-consuming. On the data side, the firm relied heavily on Excel and manual reporting for claims analytics, making it difficult to scale these valuable services to a large number of clients.

Furthermore, the agency actively recruits top talent out of college through a robust internship and development program. However, entry-level roles often consisted of menial, tedious data-entry tasks that frustrated ambitious new hires eager for more strategic, client-facing responsibilities.

To address these challenges, JKJ needed to find a technology partner that wasn't just a specialized "point solution." They evaluated multiple Insurtech vendors but found most only handled individual pieces of the puzzle. JKJ sought a comprehensive AI solution that could grow with them, streamline their workflows, and handle complex data structuring entirely under one roof.

The Solution

JKJ initiated a six-month pilot of Outmarket with a focused group of 10 employees of varying technical and insurance experience levels to rigorously test the platform. Outmarket quickly demonstrated its immediate value and ability to consolidate disparate solutions. Impressed by the platform’s adaptability and the Outmarket team's responsiveness, JKJ rolled the software out to the entire commercial lines team, followed eventually by the personal lines and benefits teams.

Top-utilized Outmarket workflows include:

• Proposal Builder: Outmarket generates proposals in a few minutes, turning a multi-day process into a matter of hours. Outmarket’s Proposal Builder is adaptable, allowing JKJ to maintain their specific aesthetic and branding.

• Claims Analytics and Dashboards: JKJ transitioned its data-driven claims analysis into Outmarket to standardize reporting, update dashboards automatically, and deliver scalable insights to clients.

• Document Chat & Policy Comparison: Staff use these workflows to rapidly compare policies and identify coverage gaps in both commercial and personal lines, drastically reducing document review time.

• Data Structuring & Clean-up: Outmarket's AI assistant is used to instantly identify SIC codes and accurately segment client data based on the insured's name and location. This allows JKJ to bypass manual web searches and efficiently keep their agency management systems clean.

The Process

The implementation of Outmarket was a highly collaborative process. As a true partner, Outmarket's engineering team worked hands-on with JKJ to meet the agency's strict security needs, rapidly building custom MFA (Multi-Factor Authentication) and SSO (Single Sign-On) capabilities before the full company rollout. During the launch, Outmarket team members even spent a couple of days on-site at JKJ's office to ensure everyone was properly trained and comfortable using the software.

The partnership actively extends into tailored product development. Outmarket’s leadership met directly with JKJ's department heads to build specialized, tailored workflows for the personal lines and benefits teams. Because Outmarket actively listens and adapts to client feedback, JKJ feels confident they have secured a long-term technology partner capable of keeping them ahead of the innovation curve.

The Outcomes

The adoption of Outmarket has profoundly transformed JKJ’s operations, workplace culture, and client service capabilities:

• Massive Time Savings: Proposal creation plummeted from a couple of days to a matter of hours. Workflows that previously took hours, such as manually cross-referencing complex Excel spreadsheets and coverage documents, now take only minutes.

• Accelerated Employee Development: By eliminating menial data entry, entry-level hires are tackling strategic, day-to-day operations and client-facing work much faster. The training time required to become a fully-trained employee is projected to drop from a year down to just six months.

• Enhanced Client Relationships: The time saved on manual keystrokes is being actively reinvested into consultative client interactions. JKJ can now effortlessly scale its highly valuable claims analytics reports to a broader range of clients, providing clear data baselines that help businesses track progress and reduce losses.

• Catching Errors and Minimizing Risk: Even seasoned veterans with decades of industry experience are using Outmarket to double-check their work. The AI successfully catches missed forms or policy gaps that human review occasionally overlooks.

• Software Consolidation: By successfully housing AI workflows, data structuring, and visualization under one roof, JKJ avoids the high cost and training headache of stitching together multiple disjointed point solutions.

In Their Own Words

"AI is not here to replace people. AI is here to make everyone better and to allow us to service our clients better."

— Patrick Mullen | President of Commercial Insurance, Johnson Kendall Johnson

1. On Software Consolidation

"We did see a couple different products that all did the individual pieces really well. But then when we came across Outmarket, they were doing all of it under one roof. Obviously that saves on cost, that saves on training. It became a no-brainer."

— Ivette Jimenez | Data Project Manager, Johnson Kendall Johnson

2. On Elevating Entry-Level Roles

"Outmarket has taken the entry level job and increased the roles and responsibilities for the people we're hiring, which has been a huge help for us as we continue to attract and retain great talent coming out of colleges and universities."

— Patrick Mullen | President of Commercial Insurance, Johnson Kendall Johnson

3. On Shifting to Strategic Work

"...it is freeing them up to do things like analyze the data, really look into what we are presenting to a client, really look into what coverages they are, you know, lacking or they need to improve."

— Kristi Cauvin | Senior Business Systems Analyst, Johnson Kendall Johnson

4. On Increasing Account Manager Capacity

"...the expectation is that the capacity will almost double for our account managers. So our hiring practices will actually slow down, and will allow us to look at our team and hyper focus on the training..."

— Chad Czapor | Vice President, Johnson Kendall Johnson

5. On Delivering Client Value at Scale

"...we can expand and scale on the amount of clients that are receiving this report type... it helps us with our data, but it helps us help our clients with their data as well."

— Ivette Jimenez | Data Project Manager, Johnson Kendall Johnson