YOU'VE just finished reading 10 articles about insurance agencies going paperless, and you don't want to be left behind. You're ready to rush out, get some scanners, and hop on the paperless train. A more efficient office is your destination, but watch out for pitfalls that lie along the way. Checking your itinerary before you leave the station can prevent your journey to greater efficiency from being delayed or derailed.

Before you can implement an effective paperless system, everyone in the agency must already be consistently accessing all client and policy information from a single source that is periodically audited for accuracy. If that single source is a conventional paper filing system, and you're planning to simply scan all paper documents into a single workstation, you're really just moving an inefficient system from one place to another-you may even see a loss of efficiency because of the costs of the scanning effort. You're more likely to succeed if the agency is already using the agency management system as the single source of client information.

You must also ensure your agency management system contains complete detail for each of your clients. For example, if your electronic files for personal-auto clients don't have complete driver information, you will not be able to automatically merge the client file with an ACORD automobile loss notice. If your client files are incomplete, you lose efficiency every time you have to find information and fill in the gaps on the form. Depending on how your agency management system is configured, you may have to print out such forms, fill in the gaps manually, and scan the form to create a complete electronic document.