From Outdated to Efficient.
It just seemed like an easier system to use — honestly, it was a no-brainer.
BACKGROUND
For more than a century, Gerhart, Hartman & Ritner, Ltd Insurance has been a fixture in southeastern Pennsylvania — family-owned, community-rooted, and built on relationships that span generations. From their main office in Boyertown to locations in Red Hill, Emmaus, and Harleysville, they serve clients across personal and commercial P&C, life and health, group benefits, annuities, and even title and tag services.
Rachel Fisher, the agency’s Accounting & Marketing Manager, is the kind of person who keeps an agency running. Four years in, she owns accounting, marketing, and HR — and when it came time to find a better agency management system, she was right in the middle of it.
- Saves producers' time
- Automates cold outreach
- Strong customer support
- Hands-on, responsive Zywave support throughout the pilot
- Collaborative implementation process with active iteration and improvement
- Strong long-term potential with a clear roadmap for continued growth
- Saves producers 10+ hours per week
- Reduces manual prospecting effort
- Potential to generate new business with minimal producer time investment
OPPORTUNITY
Gerhart, Hartman & Ritner had used a Zywave AMS competitor for years, but the relationship had grown strained. Costs kept climbing on a bundle the agency was not fully using, and everyday tasks were more complicated than they needed to be. Rachel was direct about it: “They kept jacking up their prices. A large portion of why we switched was the price difference.”
Reporting was its own headache. “You could spend 20 minutes trying to pull a report and you’re like, what is happening? What am I missing?” The data wasn’t always reliable either, leaving Rachel with more questions than answers after every pull.
Change is never easy, especially at an agency where some team members have been around for 20, 30, even 40 years. The owners had real concerns: would the data move over cleanly, and would a long-tenured team actually embrace something new?
The agency’s must-have list was short and practical. They needed:
- Pricing that matched what the agency actually used
- Reporting that returned reliable numbers in seconds, not 20-plus minutes
- Accounting with fewer clicks and cleaner logic
- A clean data migration, and a system a long-tenured team would adopt
SOLUTION
When Gerhart, Hartman & Ritner sat down for a Partner Platform demo, something clicked. The accounting module was the moment that sold it for Rachel. Fewer clicks, cleaner logic, a dashboard that finally made sense.
For an agency not getting full value from its previous provider’s pricing, it was, as Rachel put it, “just kind of a no-brainer to switch over.”
IMPLEMENTATION
Her advice to others weighing the switch: “Ask every question, even the obvious ones. The worst thing is moving over and discovering something critical isn’t there.”
RESULTS
Gerhart, Hartman & Ritner went live in April 2025 and the relief was immediate.
Roughly 30% cost savings compared to their previous system. The financial payoff has been real, on a system the agency actually uses in full.
Reports pull in seconds. Reports that once took 20-plus minutes now return in seconds — with numbers Rachel can trust.
The migration held, and so did the team. Data migrated cleanly. And the team? “Nobody quit,” Rachel said with a laugh — no small thing at an agency with 20-, 30-, and 40-year tenures.
Client communication moved onto the platform. Two agents text clients from Partner Platform every single day, each with their own dedicated line, and notes, activities, and the dashboard have become the backbone of how the team manages relationships.
With the agency now exploring Zywave Sales Cloud for email campaigns and eyeing more tools across the Zywave portfolio, Gerhart, Hartman & Ritner isn’t just modernized, it’s positioned to keep growing.