Online Document Management Can Help BoostProductivity The dot-com hype may be gone forever, butthe benefits of the Internet revolution are here to stay. And forcompanies in the insurance industry, that can mean faster issuanceprocesses, elimination of redundant inputting of data and paperfiles, and the ability of field agents to deliver accurate quotesor proposals right on the spot.

Here are a few of the latest online software and servicescurrently being offered in the market.

Docucorp International Inc. in Dallas offersThe Form Spot, a Web site hosted by the company. It provides freeaccess to more than 400 ACORD insurance forms and optionalfee-based services to automate forms processing and reduce commonpaperwork, said Randy Skinner, senior vice president ofprofessional services at Docucorp.

The company said it also offers outsourced application serviceprovider (ASP) services that create personalized documents forcustomers and deliver them every day via the Web. There are two ASPhosting facilities, in Atlanta and Dallas, that process raw dataand create individualized documents for clients who don't havein-house infrastructures or specialized staff to run them.

There is also an ASP policy production option, allowing clientsto access Docucorp policy production software, production equipmentand technical expertise, the company noted.

“[Carrier]customers would send us data, and we would do thepolicy productionwe would do the folding, stuffing and mailing. Weactually run the publishing software. We have an integration methodwhere clients send us XML transactions,” Mr. Skinner said.

“They have their own underwriting and policy administrationsystems,” he continued. “They would produce a feed, and we wouldtake that feed, produce an output and we would create an archivefor them.”

Docucorp products can help eliminate the need to stockelectronic forms and the redundant keying of information acrossmultiple systems and applications, said Mr. Skinner. Withelectronic archives, clients can also eliminate the need for paperfiles and speed the process of issuance, he added.

Xerox Corporation also offers Web-based formsmanagement solutions through its global services unit.

“We are primarily a service provider. We help carriers andagencies design a system or help get a better utilization out of asystem from investments they already made,” said Julie Dorey, vicepresident and general manager of insurance and financial servicesat Xerox Global Services in Rochester, N.Y.

“The approach we take is to come in and understand the businessprocess, and we start with due diligence,” said Ms. Dorey. “Thesecond step is to recommend vendor-neutral technologies based onwhat is found in assessment.”

Ms. Dorey said the companys initial consulting service couldrange anywhere from $5,000 to $50,000, with higher price tags forcomprehensive implementation services.

“For a lot of document content managementespecially around sucha forms-intensive industry, with so much documentation and filecabinets and paper warehousesthere is no magic tool. The approachwe take is to look at the business process of our clientsindividually,” Ms. Dorey explained.

The online components include Xerox's imaging service, whichtakes documents in paper form, then scans and indexes them for anonline repository in Hot Springs, Ark., the company said.

One of the tools Xerox uses for its online forms managementsolutions is ReqDirect by Bradley Company, a Xerox subsidiary. Itis a Web appliance that automates the order-to-fulfillment processfor forms and documents. ReqDirect allows forms to be orderedonline via a hosted service, printed on demand and delivereddirectly to customers, reducing cycle time and warehousing costs.ACORD is also using ReqDirect as a template to streamline forms anddocument management processes, Xerox said.

Basic prices for ReqDirect include Internet access and supportfor $680 per month and licenses for two-to-three people for around$8,000 per month. There is also a one-time fee for data collectionand setup of $30,000, and a $25,000 fee for implementation,training and data loading, said Xerox.

Another Web-based application Xerox often recommends isDocuShare, a document management application developed by Xeroxthat gives companies a secure online environment for capturing,managing and sharing information.

The entry-level price for a complete DocuShare 3.0 system with10 seats is $4,145, and a 100-seat system is $9,995, with pricingat higher levels following a server and seat model at $65 per user,the company said.

Document Sciences Corporation, based inCarlsbad, Calif., offers xPression, a universal content processingservices architecture.

Melissa Sterrett-Baron, senior product manager at DocumentSciences, said xPression can integrate into clients' existingbusiness workflow to create and deliver business communicationssuchas policies, contracts, proposals, quotes and correspondencein realtime and in an interactive format. xPression runs on all leadingapplication servers, and is easy to integrate into clients'existing IT environment, says DSC.

“What's different about our solution is that we can take datafrom any source–such as administrative systems or CRM systems–andwe can incorporate those into dynamic documents output in a varietyof formats, anything from e-mail to .PDF to HTML,” Ms.Sterrett-Baron said. One of the newest Web-based features is called“Document Requestor Web Service.” It allows external systems, suchas a CRM system or a Web portal, to request a composed document byspecifying the name of the document, the customer record key, orall of a customers data in XML format.

“Take a situation where an insurance agency has a lot of agentsout in the field,” Ms. Sterrett-Baron noted. The agency wants toensure that it can deliver a quote or proposal quickly and still beaccurate. “And with xPression, you can do this in real time, usingcustomer data in the existing infrastructure.”

And back at headquarters, she added, staff can use xPression toupdate the language in documents to be compliant with the latestregulations or to introduce new products to market. xPression canbe implemented in a matter of weeks, with training andimplementation services provided by DSC.

Ms. Sterrett-Baron said enterprise xPression licenses are in the$100,000-to-$200,000 range. A lower-cost version called xPressionSelect is priced at a more affordable level for mid-marketinsurance companies, she noted.

Exstream Software Inc., based in Lexington,Ky., has recently added a Web application development suite to itsDialogue software. This suite, called Dialogue WebVerse, allowscustomers to develop Web applications that create onlinecomponentsfrom letters, proposals and statements, to policies,enrollment kits and other types of fulfillmentthat can be generatedinteractively in real time, the company said.

“WebVerse is part of the complete software solution that we callDialogue, which is made up of about 40 integrated modules.Customers buy modules, or suites of them, according to what theirapplications are and what they need to do,” said Kelley Sloane,vice president of marketing at Exstream.

“Dialogue allows companies to create all types of fullypersonalized communications for printed and electronic delivery,”she noted.

“WebVerse allows insurance companies to have their businessusers create Web applications that allow CSRs or sales agents tointeractively collect information from customers or prospects. Theend-result is a personalized document that is created in real timeand presented to the customer online or in print,” said Ms.Sloane.

She added that agents can pull up and key in information in theWebVerse application that someone, probably from headquarters, hascreated. Because no Java programming is needed to do this, businesspeople can rapidly build and deploy Web applications using anintuitive graphical user interface.

The initial license fee could cost more than $100,000. “We havemany different ways companies can purchase Dialogue, from asubscription license to a perpetual license to per-click pricing. Atypical Dialogue configuration starts at about $100,000 and goes upfrom there,” Ms. Sloane said.

Anacomp Inc. in San Diego offers another optionfor companies looking to outsource their online documentmanagement. Anacomp's Web Presentment service offers Web-basedarchives, with a unified view of all documents.

“We provide an online service that performs essentially the samefunction that companies might have by constructing systems of theirown,” said Richard Keele, Anacomps executive vice president ofglobal marketing.

“But we give the opportunity for clients to create systemswithout their own capital equipment or devoting their own IT staffresource,” he explained. “We operate the service as a hostedsolution from our own data center and run the software on ourclients' behalf.”

Anacomp said it helps integrate document management acrossclients' entire Web sites, including access to all appropriatedocuments by agents, customers and claim representatives. With thisservice, insurance documents can be presented, retrieved andarchived using the Internet or private networks via standard Webbrowsers.

The insurance industry, Mr. Keele noted, is a verypaper-intensive industry and, many times, policies are printedmultiple times. “There are multiple pieces of an insurance company,from the legal department, the audit department and agents in thefield, that need access to the policy. So typically, seven, eightcopies of the policy might be printed for those who need access todocuments,” he said.

Additionally, in a typical property-casualty environment, when apolicy is issued, actions are later taken against that policy, suchas renewal notices, cancellation notices and revisions of coverage.One of the challenges in that environment is to view the entirestream of documents to see the policy as a whole, Mr. Keelesaid.

“One of the advantages of our service is that such changes aresent to our system right away,” he noted. “So whatever is printedis sent to our system and stored. Users can log on and, just with aWeb browser with no software on their desktops, do an inquiry onthat entire policy as it stands at that instant.”

Anacomp can offer training, along with online help, headded.

Pricing depends on the number of pages produced each month. If acompany produces a million pages a month, for example, the costwould be a fractional cent for each page, said Mr. Keele.

Reproduced from National Underwriter Edition, April 28, 2003.Copyright 2003 by The National Underwriter Company in the serialpublication. All rights reserved. Copyright in this article as anindependent work may be held by the author.