P&C insurance companies today are in a highly competitive situation as customers have more options and purchasing power than ever.

Consumers have access to an enormous amount of information through online research and social media recommendations, and can obtain quotes and buy policies without ever talking to an agent. In fact, Deloitte surveyed small-business consumers and found that one in five would be very likely to buy insurance direct from carriers over the Web if given that opportunity.

Increased competition and policy shopping online have decreased customer loyalty, making customer communications and engagement more important than ever. Also, consumers now demand real-time, personalized customer service and support. To embrace this evolution, P&C insurers are increasing efforts to digitize and automate customer-related business processes.

When agents have access to the latest customer data at their fingertips, they can guide a more informed conversation with a client about recent claims and account status, and offer appropriate proactive services. By improving access to customer data for agents, P&C insurers are finding that they can not only improve customer satisfaction but also underwriting profitability.

Cyber and data security

As insurers digitize customer information, cyber and data security concerns come into question. Safeguarding data is becoming more and more essential to operations since insurers collect, store and transmit personal information. Concern over data breaches could lead to loss of trust by consumers, partners and other stakeholders, as well as considerable legal and financial liabilities.

Overall, there are a number of trends and challenges insurance companies are facing. According to a 2014 PricewaterhouseCooper survey, 86% of insurance CEOs believe technology will transform business in the next five years; therefore embracing and utilizing technology is a necessity to not only survive, but thrive.

green key labeled insurance on a computer keyboard

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Enterprise content management

Enterprise content management (ECM) platforms help organizations solve these types of business problems by digitizing, processing and enabling sharing of content in a secure system. Benefits of content management and workflow technology includes:

Customer knowledge: Document technology not only helps organizations digitize and optimize their procedures, it allows them to sort, mine and manage data for valuable insights and patterns to solve customer issues and predict future behaviors.
Digitization: ECM platforms give insurance companies the ability to streamline manual, paper-intensive claims management activities. Digitizing documents will let agents access information at any time to optimize everyday procedures for better customer service. In fact, Harvard Business Review found that with a well-designed digitization program insurers can reduce turnaround times by 90% on key insurance processes.
Cost savings: Along with automation and digitization comes a significant cost savings. In the same study, Harvard Business Review discovered that digitization can reduce operational costs by 65%, a very important aspect for insurance companies who are continually looking for ways to drive costs down.
Automation: According to Cognizant, underwriters spend at least 15% of their time simply validating and preparing data to be submitted. By streamlining manual, paper-based processes and finding ways to automatically route customer requests and transactions to the correct departments, insurers can increase the efficiency and accuracy of every transaction. This gives agents a chance to focus on what matters most — the customer.
Security: According to an Accenture report that surveyed more than 450 senior risk-management executives in the banking, capital markets and insurance industries, roughly two-thirds (65%) said that cyber and IT-related risks would have an increased impact on their business through 2015, with 25% calling that increase "significant." ECM technology can increase document, device and network security to protect customers' vital personal information. With security breaches in the headlines every day, it's important for companies to develop a plan, and communicate their protection activities to ease concerns.
Compliance: Monitoring agent activities to ensure activity is compliant to industry regulations is a time consuming process. Increasingly, regulations require a higher degree of automation and scalability, and investments in ECM technology can help insurers develop content management rules based on governance policies for improved lifecycle management, and audit trail reporting to successfully meet today's growing regulations.

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Deploying innovative technology

Understanding the benefits of technology is a crucial starting point, but success relies on proper implementation. Workplace changes can cause anxiety for agents, therefore it's important to develop an execution and change management plan to ensure agents understand the importance of the technology and can use the features correctly so it is beneficial to everyone.

Here are few important steps to keep in mind when using new technology in the P&C industry:

Step 1: Analyze internal processes to see what can be optimized.
Step 2: Include agents in the change management process from start to finish. They are the ones using the technology and their insight is invaluable. Including them throughout the process — from research to implementation — will make them invested in the solution and they will be determined to make it work.
Step 3: Find software that is agile and flexible. Every company's workflow is different, therefore customization is important. Investing in a content management platform that can be easily configured and personalized to meet agents' needs will help departments realize benefits immediately. The user interface should also be adapted based on daily processes and easy to manage to ensure agents are able to make changes without the support of IT.
Step 4: Don't bite off more than you can chew. It's important to take a phased approach when deploying new technology so the transformation is more attainable and employees don't get overwhelmed and give up. Once you successfully automate a certain process, it's easy to use the lessons learned to develop a plan for other procedures or departments.

It's an exciting time for P&C insurers, thanks to technology advancements, and now is the time to identify how agents can benefit from content management solutions that streamline processes, increase security and improve customer satisfaction. Forgoing innovation and staying stagnant will impact agents, customers and ultimately profitability.

Andy Jones is part of the Large Enterprise Operations Global Senior Leadership Team for Norwalk, Conn.-based business services and document managment company Xerox.

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New technology can help P&C insurance businesses stay competitive

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