This article was adapted from Ms. Nettles' presentation at the AMS Users Group meeting, which was held in March in Grapevine, Texas.)

Increasingly, agents are using laptop computers as their portable offices. If you've ever checked your e-mail while attending a conference, plugged in from your hotel room or tried to access company or client information while making a sales call, then you know you need an Internet connection to do so, but don't forget that you also need a document management system. If mail is piling up in your office, rather than being scanned into your system, and your policies are not available to you online, then you can't do much to serve your customers, even with a laptop.

As a consultant, I help independent insurance agencies nationwide establish effective workflow and document management practices. In this article, I will focus on four key document-management elements: processing carrier documents, using e-mail and attachments efficiently, documenting electronic files and scanning.

Carrier documents
You might be shocked to learn how your staff handles carrier documents, because the process is almost certainly not consistent within your agency, and perhaps not even desk-to-desk. When I meet with account managers, CSRs and processors, they tell me they access policies and store documents differently for every carrier, and sometimes for every line of business. If you have more than one CSR or processor, ask them how, exactly, they process a file. If they all do it the same way every time, following established agency procedures, they are exceptions to the rule.

Besides making sure your procedures are clear and consistently followed, you might also be able to stem the flow of paper from your carriers. If your agency is owned by a bank that requires you to maintain local copies of your polices, or if you have some other compelling reason to print and t-file them, that's fine. However, an alternative is to simply convert the policies to PDF files (which is cheaper than printing paper copies) and attach them to your agency management system's client files. If your carriers both deliver paper policies and provide access to electronic versions of the same information, then you might as well tell them to stop sending the paper documents.

Clients often tell me they have a different workflow procedure for every carrier, which isn't really true. They actually have only two: one for carriers that offer download and another for those that don't–or perhaps three, if they work with nonstandard markets and therefore have additional E&O controls for those transactions. When consulting with a client, I create a chart listing all the agency's carriers. For each one, we indicate whether download is available and whether the agency has online input for new business, renewals and endorsements. Such information is important because it affects the agency's workflow and document management decisions. I write only two workflows: one for insurance companies with paper, and one for carriers without it. I recommend creating your own chart for your account managers, CSRs and processors, indicating the established workflow–including what to store locally versus what to store on the carrier's system–and requiring everyone to adhere to it.

Before moving on, I must tell you that my new mantra is “install dual monitors.” They're not a large investment; depending on the features you choose and the desktop space available, you may spend only a couple hundred dollars per workstation. With dual monitors, a CSR can call up and view a policy or other document on one monitor while using the other monitor to process a related transaction. There's no need to print the document to view it while processing the transaction, as many CSRs do when working with only one monitor. One CSR told me that dual monitors saved her 20 minutes per new-business quote and paid for themselves within a week.

E-mails and attachments
Incoming e-mail messages often are the front end of transactions, much as incoming paper mail once was. One of the most troubling things I see in agencies today is a backlog of e-mail messages waiting to be processed and perhaps labeled “to be filed.” Someone may have done whatever an e-mail requested or required, but that employee has not yet attached the message to the appropriate file and completed the transaction. Agencies need to require the staff to record their e-mails and related transactions as they go.

I use the phrase “remember the envelope” when distinguishing between e-mailed documents and the messages–or “routing documents”–to which they are attached. Remember when you used to print an endorsement request on a three-part form, put one copy in a window envelope and mail it to the company? Did you make a copy of that envelope? Probably not. And yet today many people do essentially the same things with e-mail. They will send a carrier a change request, for example, attached to a note that says, “Attached is the change request.” Then they will go back and attach the e-mail and the change request–even though it's already there!

We have somehow moved documentation from the inside of our envelopes to the outside. You may have seen an envelope with “Attention: Ms. So-and-So” as part of the address. Now imagine writing on the outside of an envelope “Attention Ms. So-and-So, en- closed is a change request. Please let me know if you have any questions or comments.” Seems silly, but we do essentially the same thing when we send a request and summarize the requested action on an e-mail, fax cover sheet or other cover document.

Sometimes CSRs skip attaching forms altogether and simply send an e-mail requesting action. In that case, our routing documents become our documentation, and CSRs must remember to save them in the system. You need to be careful about that. Above all, make sure you have standardized procedures for documenting transactions and that everyone is following them.

Electronic file documentation
A primary source of confusion regarding electronic file documentation is where best to document transactions. Some agency management systems, because of the way they evolved, may offer more than one option. As a result, some CSRs wind up documenting transactions twice–in two different parts of the system. They should use just one, typically called “activities” in newer systems.

You also have to standardize your coding. Activity codes and descriptions, also known as action codes and document types, are key to information retrieval, and the fewer of them you use, the better. They allow account managers to organize transactions logically and give casual users a fighting chance of finding what they seek. Every endorsement and cancellation transaction needs to be labeled with an effective date so it can be located later. Every renewal needs an indication of which policy is being renewed. One of the best pieces of advice I can give you is this: If your document management system has a coding system, match it to your activity codes, so you're only using one set.

Scanning v. document management
Electronic file documentation requires good scanning procedures. The term “scanning,” however, means different things to different people. Sometimes agency personnel tell me that they're scanning, but really they're simply using a scanner to create an attachment that they can forward to a company via e-mail. True document management allows users to organize e-mail messages, attachments, spreadsheets, presentations and the like. It produces electronic files similar to the paper files you once had, but now everything you need is stored together.

An agency can scan using one of two methods–early capture or late scanning–that work equally well. If you scan documents in the mailroom and use e-mail to route them to the staff, then you're early scanning. With late scan, on the other hand, the CSR receives a piece of paper, processes it, indexes it, attaches a number or barcode, then sends it to a scanning station and, eventually, to storage.

Indexing is simply the process of linking a document to a transaction on an agency management system. All documents, whether they're e-mails or spreadsheets, are treated the same way: indexed and attached to an electronic file, available for retrieval several different ways, and not limited to an action code. (Don't confuse indexing with true transactional filing, in which all documents with the same date are scanned together but not actually linked.)

To successfully implement document management, begin by creating a flowchart and a reference guide for each of your agency's departments. The Big “I” Web site (www.iiaba.org) offers some tools to help you do so. On the left side of the home page is a link to “Agents Council for Technology.” Click on it, then scroll down and choose “Agency Improvement Tools.” The first two items under “Agency Improvement Guides” are a guide to agency electronic information management and a guide to business processes and workflow. Both are available as Word documents, and I recommend saving them electronically and referring to them when planning your new document management system or assessing your existing one.

Define guidelines for storing policies by carrier, and standardize the codes and folders everyone will use. Chaos would ensue if your agency used a paper folder system with haphazard labeling and filing practices. The same thing will happen if electronic files are poorly managed. Instead, insist on consistent descriptions so that, for instance, if someone processes a cancellation, the record is clearly labeled with the effective date and method (phone call or letter).

You understand that technology is essential to efficient and profitable agency operations, and you've invested in an agency management system and the personnel who use it. To get the optimum benefit from your investment, however, you also need to address the four key elements I've discussed, create and implement an effective document management system, establish procedures for using it, and ensure that everyone follows those procedures.

Laura Nettles is founder and owner of Nettles Consulting Network Inc., a custom workflow consulting firm for independent insurance agencies. Ms. Nettles is a licensed consultant, a member of the International Guild of Professional Consultants, and a regular contributor to such publications as TAAR Report and Assurex's PAR Excellence. She can be reached at lnettles@nettlesconsulting.com.

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