It hasn't been that long ago since people carried aroundcameras to record special moments in their lives, has it? And bycameras I mean a 35 mm SLR that used something strange andmysterious called film to capture images.

Even with the advent of digital cameras, we still used separatepieces of equipment—not our telephones—because it was difficult toget a high resolution image from that generation of cellphones. Butphones aren't just for talking anymore, are they? Look at thecapabilities of your smartphone and think of the many and variedtasks you can complete that were unimaginable a short five yearsago.

Last summer, while putting together the show daily at the IASAconference inNashville, I snapped a picture on my phone forsomething we needed. The professional photographer on hand seemedamused that I thought my Samsung Galaxy S smartphone could possiblytake a picture that would be good enough for publication. And thenhe looked at the image and changed his mind immediately.

I was fascinated by the story of the new mobile imaging solution from Mitek that Progressive has adoptedto allow potential customers to submit an application for a newautomobile policy by using the camera function on theirsmartphone.

By taking a picture of your driver's license and the VIN of thecar you want to insure and adding in your ZIP code, you can submitthe photos to Progressive and eliminate that pesky problem of dataentry that comes from small keypads on your smartphone

Mitek's mobile-imaging technology extracts relevant informationfrom the documents and auto-populates the fields in Progressive'smobile-quoting app. The user then confirms the information andhits submit. Moments later, they receive an auto insurance quotewith the option to buy.

It shouldn't surprise us that Progressive was first to employthe Mitek solution. As the carrier's mobile business leader, MattLehman says, “We are constantly looking for new ways to saveconsumers time and money. With image capture, Progressivesimplifies the process of getting an auto insurance quote anywhere,anytime.”

Mobile apps attached to your smartphone have becomegame-changers in so many industries. Shoppers can research theproducts they want to buy—and the companies they wish to dobusiness with—by scanning QR codes or barcodes. Now they can even close the deal with a photo image.

Is all this necessary? Certainly most of us are going to conductbusiness in a traditional manner (and when I say traditional I meanthe ways we'vedone business this millennium), but it won't be longbefore even modern technology will be considered quaint by thosecoming along behind us.

Innovation, as Deb Smallwood wrote in her blog, has to be a focus for every insurer. We'renot all going to be first out of the box with a tools such asProgressive is, but carriers that fail to take advantage ofopportunities in a speedy manner are always looking up to othersand that's never a healthy position to be in.