In the insurance industry, the success of a company is directly proportional to the performance of its sales force. Only a strong sales force can help a company stay ahead in such a highly competitive market. With this in mind, the management board at WWK Lebensversicherung decided in spring 2000 to equip both its internal sales force and external sales partners with the latest in portable PC technology. The move was part of the company's "Point of Sale" programme aimed at promoting more effective customer acquisition as well as improving support for existing policyholders. As the project progressed from concept to implementation, the company's sales, IT and marketing divisions worked closely to ensure its success. Throughout that process, one of the key considerations for all those involved was that the considerable investment required could only be justified if the sales staff felt completely comfortable using the new machines.

In order to iron out any potential problems ahead of the actual roll-out, one of the company's 45 regional offices was chosen as a pilot site. Between July and December 1999, a total of 30 different notebooks were tested by WWK's sales staff. At the end of the trial, both Stefan Kronthaler, IT resource manager at WWK, and Dirk Giebenhain, responsible for liaising with senior sales staff and representatives of WWK's external sales partners, had come to the same conclusion: the Toshiba notebooks had come out top. In addition to the exceptional build quality of the Toshiba systems, the two were impressed by Toshiba's widely acknowledged support for enterprise customers.

After comparing a number of models from Toshiba's Tecra, Satellite and Portégé notebook ranges, WWK finally opted for the Satellite Pro 4200 series. This time, the decisive factors were the comprehensive specification (comprising hard disk, CD-ROM and diskette drive) and attractive price.

To make the most of the Satellite's 500 MHz Celeron processor, each notebook was fitted with 128 MB of RAM. In addition, the more than 650 notebooks delivered so far all feature an AVM Fritz PC Card for fast ISDN communications. This feature gives sales staff the ability to download a daily update of customer and policy data and allows them to access the company's central database to view statistics and archive data or obtain information on a claim. ISDN can also be used to perform small-scale software updates. Larger updates are distributed on CD to save time and minimise costs.

In addition to the new notebooks, sales personnel can choose from a range of peripherals including a Zip drive for backing up data, a Hewlett-Packard mobile printer with infrared port, as well as carry cases and other accessories.

The notebooks were supplied by Munich-based Toshiba reseller Brünings & Sander, who also arranged an extended three-year warranty on all machines. Given the quality of Toshiba's customer service, WWK can thus look forward to a full complement of 100% operational notebooks throughout the entire 36 month leasing period.

Each notebook is loaded with Windows 98, Outlook 98 and Office 97, as well as WWK's own proprietary software. All applications were installed by Brünings & Sander as a single software image before the notebooks were delivered to the various regional offices. Here, the machines were distributed by one of WWK's 15 mobile IT specialists as part of a one or two-day introduction to the new hardware and software. Ongoing product and sales training is provided in the form of multimedia CDs, which are updated twice a year.

In addition to the CDs, each regional office holds a monthly support meeting for users where hardware and software problems can be discussed and resolved. "Now that the notebooks have been rolled out, our support costs are actually much lower than we had anticipated," says Stefan Achhammer of WWK's marketing division. For Achhammer, who liaised between the sales and IT departments, the success of the project is a resounding justification of the rigorous testing and selection process, and one more reason to choose Toshiba again in future.