Allstate Protection Plans launches Allstate Protection Plans Express, which will allow smaller companies to integrate its products at point of sale.
Existing clients for the company (formerly SquareTrade, before being acquired by Allstate in 2016) included Walmart, Target and Amazon. It decided to work with Falcon API to develop a more easy-to-integrate API for smaller businesses. Falcon API will allow Allstate to connect the disparate technologies between the retail space and the protection plan space. The protection plan will map onto the retail items so that when a customer buys an item, Falcon API will keep a record of the customer to endorse the protection plan promise, according to Kyle.
“Our traction in the industry has largely been working for large retailers,” says Jonathan Kyle, SVP, growth and protection strategy, at Allstate Protection Plans. “A lot of these guys are on legacy systems they have to support in store, retail, online retail, different sales channels. So there's multiple points of integration involved.”
But smaller companies have less complicated technology environments that require less high-touch integration, Kyle continues. Allstate has received requests for this kind of service from retailers for a while now, but was challenged to perform that many custom builds and needed a different delivery system for its product.
“I think of a good analogy is restaurants -- they didn't build their own online reservation systems, because they didn't have the development resources,” he explains. “Things like Open Table and Rezi and Yelp came along that allowed them to plug right into an interface. We want to make it really easy for these [smaller businesses] to work with us.”
The protection plan will cover 24 categories including consumer electronics, home appliances and furniture, according to background information provided by Allstate.
