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Strengthening Agency Relationships Through a Modern, Unified CRM Platform
How a property and casualty insurer modernized agency management, sales planning, marketing, and regional collaboration with Dynamics 365—creating a scalable foundation for better visibility, stronger relationships, and future AI capabilities.
The Challenge
A property and casualty company was undertaking a major organizational transformation, consolidating multiple branch offices into a smaller regional structure while continuing to support thousands of independent agency relationships.
Its existing CRM environment was no longer equipped to support that model. Agency, contact, policy, and production data was fragmented across systems, leaving sales, underwriting, and leadership without a consistent view of agency relationships or activity. Sales planning and opportunity management varied across branches, marketing capabilities were limited, and lead routing and handoffs relied heavily on manual processes.
The company also lacked the dashboards and KPIs needed to manage performance across its newly aligned regions. Communication across sales, marketing, and underwriting was fragmented, making it difficult for teams to work from a shared view of agency interactions and opportunities.
At the same time, the company was modernizing its broader technology environment. Its new CRM needed to support stronger security and scalability, integrate cleanly with its evolving AWS/.NET architecture, and align with investments already underway across Microsoft 365, Copilot, Power BI, and other Microsoft technologies.
Underlying the initiative was a simple business goal: use technology to make it easier for producers, underwriters, and agency partners to focus on relationships rather than systems.
The Solution
HSO is implementing a modern CRM platform centered on an Agency 360 view that brings together agencies, agents, opportunities, activities, and production data in one connected environment.
Built on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales, Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, Power Platform, reporting, and integration services, the solution gives sales, marketing, underwriting, and regional leadership a more consistent way to manage agency relationships and collaborate across the organization.
The new platform introduces structured account and agency planning, opportunity and pipeline management, centralized activity tracking, automated lead handling, and modern marketing capabilities. Customer Insights supports journeys, segmentation, forms, lead scoring, and improved marketing-to-sales handoffs, while reporting and Power BI capabilities provide the dashboards and regional KPIs needed to support the company’s new operating model.
HSO’s fsi360 Insurance accelerator provides insurance-specific capabilities for agency management, agency planning, policy visibility, account planning, reporting, and workflows. By starting with a prebuilt insurance framework rather than a generic CRM model, the company can standardize more quickly while reducing the amount of custom development required.
The CRM is also being integrated with policy and claims information through the company’s target AWS/.NET integration architecture, allowing Dynamics 365 to fit into the company’s broader modernization strategy rather than operate as an isolated application. Power Platform provides additional low-code extensibility for insurance-specific workflows and business processes.
Because the initiative spans regional teams and multiple user groups, HSO is also providing organizational change management to support adoption and help establish consistent processes across the newly aligned operating structure.
The platform is also designed with future AI capabilities in mind. Dynamics 365, Microsoft 365 Copilot, and the broader Microsoft data and security ecosystem create a foundation for future use cases such as account summaries, sales assistance, agency insights, and other AI-enabled experiences.
The Results
A centralized CRM foundation for agency relationships, sales activity, opportunities, communications, and production information across the organization
A more consistent operating model for sales, marketing, underwriting, and regional leadership, with structured agency planning, improved pipeline visibility, automated lead management, shared activity history, and stronger reporting
The ability to support regional collaboration and growth with a scalable platform aligned to the insurer’s agency-distribution model
A more unified Microsoft foundation across CRM, marketing, analytics, low-code development, security, and future AI capabilities
Looking ahead
With the CRM foundation in place, the company can continue expanding Dynamics 365 across additional underwriting and business teams while introducing new AI-enabled capabilities as adoption matures.
The unified Microsoft platform also provides a foundation for continued optimization across agency engagement, analytics, automation, and customer experience.
How can HSO help your company grow?
Contact us to talk to an HSO insurance industry expert today.