Insurers find one way to stop budgetary bleeding is to assert greater control over their documentsand virtually all the content they produce. Document management not only improves a carrier's workflow, it also makes regulatory compliance and other functions easier to handle.

By Robert Regis Hyle

Time is money and for businesses operating in the service industry, an employees time is the most expensive component in the enterprise. Bob Baxter, CEO of Dryden Mutual Insurance, calls staff time an extraordinarily expensive resource. Therefore, insurers that find ways to better manage their document-rich business can achieve immediate and impressive results. Ridding the enterprise of expensive paper shuffling is just one aspect of a document management program. The real gains come from workflow improvements as electronic files pass through the organization. And as document management becomes more pervasive, functions such as regulatory compliance also are benefiting from a document management scheme. When you can save five or 10 minutes on a transaction, it can add up to significant savings, notes Baxter. We didnt understand that at first.