Enterprise Content Management (ECM) has made life easier forinsurance carriers for most of the 21st century, but as content haschanged—and the way insurers do business has changed—it seems fairto wonder what lies next for an industry where content remainsking, even if that content doesn't resemble what ECM solutions wereinitially designed to manage.

"I heard someone say that carriers are building digitallandfills—that paints a pretty good picture—literally a dumpingground for all this information," says Petersmark. "Most of it—90percent—is unstructured. Early ECM platforms didn't haveunstructured data in mind, which is why vendors are trying toscramble right now."

Insurers need a place to aggregate all their content and giveusers a front end to create their repots.

"I'm oversimplifying, but that was the core design principle forECM platforms," he says. "In my view they got that wrong becausethe user interfaces were too complicated for business people. Theydidn't architect their solutions to handle the amount ofunstructured data that is flowing in."

One of the consequences of that situation is that many insurershave more than one ECM platforms, explains Petersmark, with somecarriers using them as point solutions.

"The main issue is people still don't get what they want," hesays. "Information is so ubiquitous because of the Internet. Peoplego outside the bounds of the company to get the information theyneed. ECM platforms aren't quite filling the role they need to fillfor insurance companies."

Multiple Systems

Petersmark doesn't believe having more than one ECM systems is amajor issue in insurance, but he does see situations where manyinsurers have not leveraged their ECM platform strategically.

"It is either driven by one business position or by IT andbecomes not much more than a point solution rather than being partof a strategic plan," says Petersmark. "There are businessdivisions that say ECM won't work for them and it is bettersolution for claims but not underwriting. A lot of that goes on.Some believe ECM takes too long to implement. It's not quite ERP,but that's not the worst analogy in the world either."

Grange Insurance considered a second ECM solution to service theneeds of their customers for items such as dec pages and ID cards.The carrier's independent agents have a document server, but thosedocuments are filed and indexed by Grange, with a copy going intothe ECM system, according to Andrew Eastwood, assistant vicepresident of computer services, Grange Insurance.

"We thought about using one place for those documents, but ithasn't been a priority for us and it is working well the way itis," says Eastwood. "We have different requirements for agents andcustomers. Potentially we could merge the two, but the maintenanceof the claims file base is not a whole lot of work, so we don'thave to worry about it."

There may come a time where Grange puts everything throughContent Manager, its ECM system from IBM, but Eastwood explains theproblem is the system has different proprietary interfaces andGrange would have to build an interface to expose documents thecustomers want because they couldn't use a fat client tool tosearch for documents.

"We wouldn't want to expose that to customers or agents; wewould want to build a simpler interface that would allow them toaccess their documents," he says.

ECM platforms were designed for structures where people wouldend up using the print mode, points out Petersmark. He believesthat is another area of transition where ECM vendors are playingcatch-up.

"A lot of people jumped on the ECM bandwagon as part of agovernance effort," he says. "Companies looked at ECM as a way toget a handle on all the information they had. For governance andcommon sense reasons, if they need to produce something forinsurance commissioners, insurers sometimes have trouble findingall their content."

Petersmark also believes there is a different mindset whenaggregating information that becomes actionable for people andallows them to make the kinds of operational decisions they need tomake.

"It's all part of the transition," he says. "Just from talkingto a few ECM vendors over the past year, it started as governanceand controlling a repository, but the trend has been to make ECMplatforms more collaborative. Think along the lines of SharePointand Google Docs. It's a way for people to interact with theinformation and with each other using the information. The firstECM platforms didn't have that built into them."

Even a decade after the implementation of the ImageRight ECMsystem for claims (now owned by Vertafore) for the Western WorldInsurance Group "it's the center of our universe," says ThadDeBerry, senior vice president of Western World.

Over the years, the system has been highly customized, accordingto DeBerry, and more changes are coming. As the result ofimplementing a new claims system, Western World is in the processof pulling out a lot of the workflow capabilities that went intothe solution.

"As our legacy systems are being replaced, the newer systemshave much stronger workflow control, we are using the ECMenvironment more for true document management," he says.

Claims Handling

Claims departments have been one of the traditionalbeneficiaries of ECM and DeBerry reports that is where WesternWorld started.

"To effectively manage our claims files 10 plus years ago,having it done in paper was a nightmare," he says. "Being able tostructure content in a meaningful way—to find and react tothings—was huge for us.

Western World is in the middle of implementing a new claimssystem and DeBerry learned some newer systems have their owncontent management systems.

"Where we draw the line is workflow vs. document management," hesays. "We are going to leave the document management in ImageRightbecause there is so much integration built with the policy side.However, we are pulling just about all of the workflow out of thatenvironment and utilizing the new claims system."

Western World already does this with data warehousing and thepolicy system, where they have hooks back into the doc managementfiles for both policy and claims.

"For example, there is a coverage change process within the newclaims process, so the diary goes to an examiner who says thispolicy changed and here is the change that occurred and here is alink that will bring up that policy file for you in ImageRight," hesays. 

Unstructured Data

The volume and diversity of content are creating differentchallenges for insurers, but DeBerry believes it has been somethingWestern World has been able to meet head-on.

"Just starting with the most basic—volume—when we have to puttogether plans for backup and storage—blocking and tackling typethings—the volume has grown so much that we've had to re-think andre-engineer the way we do things to protect everything that comesin," he says. "As it has grown, we've had to implement archiving sowe have a set of images based on various parameters that are activeand those that are archived."

One problem Western World deals with is retrieving archivedcontent.

"It is less efficient than when [the content] is active," saysDeBerry. "It has an impact on the ability we have to servicecustomers. If [customer service representatives] are on the phonewith someone and try to bring up a document that is archived, itcan be a challenge."

On the claims side, when an adjuster or others associated withthe claim enter a recorded statement or something associated withthe claim, Grange has a call reporting system on its telephones andwithin the claims system,. So CSRs can tag the recording for theclaims.

"We tell the customer that we are recording it and it will beautomatically placed into the claims file," says Eastwood. "Ourimaging department takes any document coming into the building andcategorizes and indexes those documents."

Grange also uses a product from Captiva called InputAccel, soany fax or email can be indexed and associated with a claim.Anything outside of that can also be manually indexed.

"We are now looking at advanced capture where we can look at adocument and pull out various fields or forms and any metadataassociated with a claim or business area and send those docs to theright place," says Eastwood.

The great thing about the IBM system, in Eastwood's eyes, is ithas been widely adopted and needs just one administrator to runit.

"It has really freed us from a lot of paper and other ways ofstoring documents and data," he says. "It is widely used throughoutthe company; even to the extent the business side uses it forinvoices and payments. A lot of companies end up with a hodgepodgesolution and we are lucky here at Grange that we selected one andstuck with it. IBM has been supportive and it has become a realenterprise solution for us."

Western World is spending more time of late integratingunstructured data and DeBerry points out there are issues withincompatibility—particularly tools that are available to some ofthe claims and underwriting staff.

"They may not be able to handle some of the formats for thingslike an audio file," he says. "We have a room we've tried to equipwith just about any piece of software or equipment we think mightbe needed to handle the various formats. It has hurt our efficiencybecause we can't equip every desktop with every tool for thedifferent formats. The key is we are able to effectively managemaking people know what is available. If there is a certain formatof an audio that comes in, they can at least go somewhere andlisten to it."

Customer Service

Western World has an agent portal for claims so customers cancome in and see certain documents.

"We call them case analysis stories—a nice, concise look atwhere a claim stands at a given time," says DeBerry. "It givesfinancials and updates on how things are progressing. Just aboutall of that information is sitting in our document managementsystem, however the content is not easily accessible in a securefashion to present to our customers through the portal."

There is a stage of compiling information that is alreadysitting in the system and the carrier reformats it to make sure itis presentable to the outside world.

"When we started using ECM a little over 10 years ago, we didnot envision having an agent portal or some of that informationaccessible," he says. "There are limitations to the tool that don'teasily allow us to segregate publicly-accessible information andpresent it in a way that is acceptable for us to hand over throughthe portal. "

Customer service has improved significantly for GrangeInsurance, according to Eastwood. In claims, which remainspaper-intensive, Grange receives documents and letters that callfor correspondence with claimants and attorneys.

"It's document intensive," says Eastwood. "We fully integratedour ECM solution with our claims solution so when a claimant oranyone associated with a claim contacts us we can bring out anydocument associated with the claim instantly, including recordedstatements. As the claim goes through its lifecycle, includinglitigation, the documents are available for attorneys."

There are index classes that include metadata within the ECMsolution that are associated with each document, points outEastwood, so representatives can access the data from outside theapplication or within the application.

Purging Documents

Grange has only one ECM solution, IBM Content Manager, andEastwood reports performance has never been an issue for thecarrier.

"We haven't seen much degradation of performance on any frontand we are nearing 100 million documents in our repository andadding nearly 15 million documents a year," he says.

Grange actively purges documents, using a set of documentretention regulations and policies that follow the industryregulations and legal needs.

"For a lot of companies, purging documents is an afterthought,but we have been doing it for some time," says Eastwood. "Wemonitor regulations to make sure we are in compliance. We don't endup with a lot of orphan documents."

The purge function is fed by multiple external systems. With thepolicy management system, when policies are retired, a file iscreated and that file is processed throughout the ECM. It's nottied to the data warehouse, which is more for reporting and formore unstructured data.

If there is a long-tail claim like workers' compensation, itwill remain in the claims system for as long as it needs to be,explains Eastwood. The claims system creates a purge file when theclaim needs to be purged and it goes into the purge process withinthe ECM.

Purging of old content is not on Western World's radar,according to DeBerry. Through archiving and more sophisticatedtools for backup or storage replication, the carrier startedreal-time replication of our images from the database earlier thisyear. That's been significant improvement for Western World as ithas enhanced the way the carrier does things, according toDeBerry.

Needs Are Changing

Today, the needs are different for insurers and the content isdifferent as well. Initially, ECM platforms were marketed toinsurance carriers and the insurance customers were internalinsurance people. There wasn't as much thought about the contentneeds for their agents, explains Petersmark.

"Most companies bought an ECM platform and started to aggregatecontent and now for their agents they are creating a portal outsidethe ECM platform," he says. "The ECM platform would become part ofthat portal, but it wouldn't be a core entity. Frankly, that justadded another layer. [Insurers] would be smart if they started tothink about something that works for the triangle—from insurancecarrier to agency to probably some regulatory entity so that allthree parties can work with it. There are different needs, which iswhy companies had to build something for the agents."

Petersmark wonders if the love affair between carriers and theirportals might begin to wane as social media takes a more mainstreamposition in the industry.

"I am amazed at how much gets done these days by textmessaging," he says. One way to look at it is if ECM vendors haddone a better job conceiving what they wanted to do up front, theycould have been many things to carriers. They didn't though, whichis why you saw over the past several years componenttechnologies—things that could have been in ECM packages—likeworkflow, imaging, and records management. Not that some of thosethings weren't available in an ECM platform, but the platformsdidn't do a good job of utilizing them so new vendors came in themarket and specialized in those things. A lot of companies stilluse portals, but I think there is going to become something evensimpler for carriers and agents—not quite Facebook, which is alittle too familiar—but something in between that someone will comeup with."