Insurers find one way to stop budgetary bleeding is to assert greater control over their documentsand virtually all the content they produce. Document management not only improves a carrier's workflow, it also makes regulatory compliance and other functions easier to handle.
By Robert Regis Hyle
Time is money and for businesses operating in the service industry, an employees time is the most expensive component in the enterprise. Bob Baxter, CEO of Dryden Mutual Insurance, calls staff time an extraordinarily expensive resource. Therefore, insurers that find ways to better manage their document-rich business can achieve immediate and impressive results. Ridding the enterprise of expensive paper shuffling is just one aspect of a document management program. The real gains come from workflow improvements as electronic files pass through the organization. And as document management becomes more pervasive, functions such as regulatory compliance also are benefiting from a document management scheme. When you can save five or 10 minutes on a transaction, it can add up to significant savings, notes Baxter. We didnt understand that at first.
In his recent study of insurance software deals, Craig Weber, senior analyst at Celent Communications, discovered document management and content management ranked near the top in terms of quantity of software implementations within the insurance industry over the last two years. Weber believes one reason for this is the number of deals being made by smaller carriers as the technology has spread throughout the industry among insurers of all sizes. Anybody who has to produce policies and correspondence is a potential target for one of those vendors in the content or document space, he says.
The state of documents at AmCOMP, a Florida workers comp carrier, was a travesty, according to John Krone, director of IT infrastructure management. We had files piling up all over the place, work space dedicated to holding those files, and staff dedicated to filing and retrieving reports, policies, and historical data, he says. After the introduction of our document management system, we began cutting things down into workable situations and rescheming our workflows to work with a document management system instead of having people work with paper all day.
Let the Work Flow
The old excuse among insurers was, Ill get back to you when I can find the file, says Baxter. Files are no longer lost among an avalanche of papers on an underwriters desk. All of a sudden you could call the file right up, he adds. It accomplished a transaction in a much shorter time frame than normally was possible. When you begin to multiply that over the course of a year, it has thrown our staffing projections right out of kilter.
Dryden now handles significantly more business per employee than it did five years ago, a statistic the carrier uses to examine productivity. Five years ago, Dryden was handling $450,000 per employee. Today, the carrier is pushing $800,000 per employee, states Baxter. And still people have extra time, he says.
Workflow also has been a huge benefit to Beneficial Life Insurance, reports Evamarie Bell, systems administration analyst. Prior to its imaging and workflow initiative, Beneficials medical testing requests would go through the carriers medical department where a paramed would write up a paper test and mail it back to the prospective insured. To match [the test] to whom it belongswhen you dont normally have a policy number yetyou have only a name and a Social [Security number], says Bell. These applicants arent technically customers yet, she points out. We dont have anything on them other than a paper application on somebodys desk that [the med test] matched to, she says. Our system is tightly integrated now. With imaging, anything that comes into our customer service department, new-business department, claims, or finance is opened immediately in our mail room and scanned. Hard copies do not come into the office. [The document] is dropped into the appropriate workflows. If it is a new application, it goes into our new-business workflow.
This is all done with Oracle DB scripting and OnBase software (from Hyland Software), based on face amount of the policy and age. We decide which test default we need to order and automatically order those, explains Bell. The results come back in, and if they are in paper form, they are scanned into the system and placed into the workflow based on the Social Security number on the test. We match it to a policy and move it to the appropriate person, she says. It has increased our productivity. Our business has gone up, and we have not had to increase staff at all.
Attention, Regulators
Regulatory issues have become a recent driver for content management, according to Weber. Carriers are working to eliminate free-form correspondence be-tween customers and agents or customer service reps. If [carriers] dont control closely what representatives say, they are exposing themselves to regulatory action, he says. On the policy side, carriers need to make sure updated, approved forms are used to create policies. Thats a little trickier than it sounds, given the number of jurisdictions that are out there, how often [carriers] make updates, and how often policies are refiled, says Weber. Next-generation technology makes it easier to manage the library of policies and forms.
Having electronic documents allows carriers to do some regulatory filings electronically. As everybody gets more electronic, [those capabilities] are going to have many more effects on business, notes Ray Carroll, vice president of systems at Pekin Insurance. As for retention of documents, carriers have to examine the individual states to see what each state will accept as a legal document, he adds.
Also in the area of compliance, life insurers such as Beneficial have to conform to HIPAA standards. With the workflow, we know whether we have the appropriate forms, says Bell. On the annuity side, there are certain forms required to come back signed, so on the back end, we mark on the files we need X number of forms, and we track them as they come back in. It has helped us to prove to our auditors we are compliant and how we know [we are compliant].
Short ROI
One reason insurers are so active in document management is there is relatively short ROI, depending on how integrated and how complex the carriers needs are for customization or user control. Carriers using document management generally eliminate the need to spend on outside printing contractors. All carriers have a good shot at improving the look and feel of their documents with their agents and customers, just like the large carriers, points out Weber.
What sometimes keeps carriers from moving to the next-generation document and content technology is they have working systems in place. The decision to unplug working systems on the document side is a little tough to swallow, admits Weber. Companies that decide to do it are going after modern, clean, highly personalized documents. They want their customers to feel like [the carriers] are talking to them directly, and its difficult to do that with first-generation systems.
Carroll believes cost is what steered away insurance carriers from document management solutions in the past. You had the benefits, but offsetting the costs always was difficult, especially since you were going into the unknown, he says. You couldnt be assured you were going to have the cost savings predicted for you.
About five years ago, Beneficial decided to find an imaging and workflow system. The carrier paid a consultant to come in, examine the documents, and give a recommendation on software packages that would do what Beneficial needed done. Due to the expense of the systems offered, Beneficial believed the ROI was not there. There was a high cost for implementation and a high cost for maintenance, and consulting fees for the company to help us modify the system also were high, reports Bell.
Beneficial decided to back up and rethink the issue. We wanted to find a system that was economical and had ease of configuration, she says. Hyland Software came to the top of the list, according to Bell. I dont have a technical degreeIm a business analystyet I can go in and do the work-process breakdown and code the workflow, she says. That was important for us to be able to do that.
Finding the Space
From an infrastructure management standpoint, Krone indicates a major challenge was dedicating a sufficient amount of servers and storage space to the document management system. All those documents have to be stored as TIF or JIF files, and when you get tens of millions of these files, it adds up, he says. AmCOMP had to expand its storage area network in excess of 15 terabytes immediately, and with the scanning and mapping of all its documents, the carrier had to upgrade its SQL servers.
Another problem for AmCOMP was determining a procedure to back up all the images as part of the carriers nightly backup scheme. As most infrastructure people realize, you have to do full backups on the weekends and incrementals each weeknight to maintain some kind of integrity, says Krone. So backing up small individual files always has been a giant hurdle to overcome because we go with the WORM techniquewrite once read many. We had to scan all the files at first and then start backing up that way. Just to scan tens of millions of files can take hours and hours and hours. At that point, we had to implement snapshot technology to take a glimpse of all the images as they are and just back up that snapshot.
Krone points out there are hardware investments when you take on a document management project, although the hardware is not going to be as costly as real estate or manpower. You buy the hardware, and in theory, you are done, he says. If you were going to start collecting paper documents, you would have to get more real estate and more people to handle it. The same thing is true with server and hardware space, just on a smaller level. You are going to need more storage, and you are going to need more servers to access the storage. But its not going to be like expanding offices and trying to deliver old documents off site.
Content Management
Weber envisions a natural evolution of paper to electronic documents to total content management. As carriers improve their document management capability, he believes they do it with an eye on a long-term content-management plan. Newer systems provide options for the delivery of information, he says. For example, you may want to create nice-looking policies that are highly customized and highly compliant. You might also want to have the option of delivering those over the Web, of having the agent print them locally, and at the same time, writing out an archival copy to image. The technology is enabling multiple delivery.
Pekin uses the ImageRight system, but the carrier also has an in-house system that was developed to store the manuals for Pekins two companies (Pekin Insurance, a P&C carrier, and Pekin Life Insurance) and all of the carriers forms. Over the last several years, our administrative services area has been turning that information into text information, says Carroll. What we have planned on doing is developing new types of manuals and forms. Content management will help us extract data in any type of revision it was in. We have a fairly diverse Web site with a lot of content, and Id like to start archiving some of that content in the Web site.
While ROI is readily apparent for document management, with content management, some of the ROI is less tangible, according to Weber, who points to intangibles such as improved service, speed of service, delivery, and agent and customer satisfaction.
Addressing the E-mail
E-mail is gaining more attention in the area of content management. Its such a casual way of communication, companies are not storing or archiving e-mail that is related to customer service breakdowns, says Weber. The trick is balancing the volume of e-mail a company receiveswhich really is skyrocketingagainst the archive and retention needs. You need to have a clear plan to do that, and it probably involves more technology than most carriers have today.
The typical pattern of dealing with e-mail sent to customer service centers involves the CSR printing out the electronic message, getting it scanned, and then putting it into the electronic file. Electronic to paper to electronic, says Weber.
That raises the ugly specter of service reps not recognizing when an e-mail has to be added to the policy record, he believes. Generally, carriers are making headway because e-mail is more an accepted method of communication, Weber asserts. Its becoming part of the contact center routine. Some carriers Ive talked to say up to 20 percent of their requests are submitted by e-mail now. Thats probably higher than average, but its going to get only higher. Its a tidal wave that cant be stopped.
E-mail is a big part of the content management plan for Pekin. We do e-mail changes with our agencies as long as [the content is] something within the HIPAA realm, says Carroll. Our life insurance company is pretty much governed by HIPAA, and even though our P&C company is not governed [by HIPAA], we try to follow HIPAA there so medical information or private information doesnt go back and forth. Where we can, we do things by e-mail. If its something that is medical or regulatory, we do it by fax. All of those systems are attached to our image system, so an e-mail or a fax can come right into the image system.
Paper always has been the stumbling block to automation, points out Carroll. Somebody had to enter it, somebody had to verify it, and somebody had to file it away, he says. But many of the images a carrier receives now are coming in automaticallyno one even has touched them. There is no retrieval as there was on microfilm or in a paper file, and the item is available on the desktop any time. All of that changes the way you do things, he concludes.
Tech Guide: Document/content Management
3I Infotech
Edison, N.J.
732-225-4242
www.3i-infotech.com
3SG Corporation
Dublin, Ohio
877-761-8394
www.3sg.com
Accutrac Software
Los Angeles, Calif.
213-626-3000
www.accutrac.com
AcroSoft
Columbia, S.C.
803-699-7778
www.acrosoft.com
AQS, Inc.
Hartland, Wis.
262-369-7500
www.aqssys.com
Atlatl, Inc.
Durham, N.C.
800-768-0907
www.accu-rater.com
Blue Frog Solutions
Pompano Beach, Fla.
800-861-8908
www.bluefrogsolutions.com
Bowne Insurance Division
New York, N.Y.
212-924-5500
www.bowne.com
Business Software Solutions
Mount Laurel, N.J.
856-866-5601
www.bssnj.com
Cabinet NG, Inc.
Athens, Ala.
800-621-6501
www.cabinetng.com
CCH Insurance Services
Riverwoods, Ill.
800-525-3335
www.cch.com
CGI
Andover, Mass.
952-542-2145
www.cgi.com
Claims Harbor
Atlanta, Ga.
866-448-1776
www.claimsharbor.com
COSS Development Corp.
Mequon, Wis.
262-241-8989
www.cossdev.com
CS Stars
Amarillo, Tex.
806-376-4223
www.csedge.com
CSC
Austin, Tex.
800-345-7672
www.csc.com
dakota imaging, Inc.
Columbia, Md.
410-381-3113
www.dakotaimaging.com
Data Dimensions Corporation
Janesville, Wis.
608-757-1100
www.ddcsolutioncenter.com
Deau Document
Scanning Solutions
Atlanta, Ga.
404-634-3444
www.documentscanninggeorgia.com
Delphi Technology, Inc.
Cambridge, Mass.
617-494-8361
www.delphi-tech.com
Docucorp International
Dallas, Tex.
800-735-6620
www.docucorp.com
Document Sciences Corp.
Carlsbad, Calif.
760-602-1400
www.docscience.com
DST Output
El Dorado Hills, Calif.
800-441-7587
www.dstoutput.com
Easy Link Services
Piscataway, N.J.
800-828-7115
www.easylink.com
Ebix Inc.
Atlanta, Ga.
678-281-2023
www.ebix.com
ePolicy Solutions
Torrance, Calif.
310-819-3200
www.epolicy.com
Esker Software
Madison, Wis.
608-273-6000
www.esker.com
Exstream Software
Lexington, Ky.
859-296-0600
www.exstream.com
Facts Services, Inc.
Coral Gables, Fla.
305-284-7400
www.factsservices.com
FileNet
Costa Mesa, Calif.
704-875-1934
www.filenet.com
FINEOS Corporation
South Portland, Maine
207-879-0400
www.fineos.com
Fiserv Insurance Solutions
Cedar Rapids, Iowa
800-943-2851
www.fiservinsurance.com
Focused Technologies
Albany, N.Y.
866-403-7037
www.focused-tech.com
Fuego, Inc.
Plano, Tex.
972-801-4218
www.fuego.com
GMC Software Technology
Braintree, Mass.
800-250-1850
www.gmc.net
Group 1 Software
Lanham, Md.
301-918-6381
www.g1.com
Hexaware Technologies
Jamesburg, N.J.
609-409-6950
www.hexaware.com
Hoike
Honolulu, Hawaii
808-441-2000
www.hoike.net
HomeTech, Inc.
Seattle, Wash.
800-377-5147
www.hometechinc.net
Hyland Software, Inc.
Westlake, Ohio
440-788-5834
www.onbase.com
Imagemax, Inc.
Valhalla, N.Y.
800-873-9426
www.imagemax.com
ImageRight
Conyers, Ga.
770-860-0065
www.imageright.com
InSystems Corporation
Markham, Ont., Canada
905-513-1400
www.insystems.com
ISCS, Inc.
San Jose, Calif.
888-901-4727
www.iscs.com
ISIS Papyrus
Southlake, Tex.
817-416-2345
www.isis-papyrus.com
Merrill Corporation
St. Paul, Minn.
800-688-4400
www.merrillcorp.com
MFXchange Holdings, Inc.
Parsippany, N.J.
416-385-4815
www.mfxfairfax.com
Optical Image Technology
State College, Pa.
814-238-0038
www.docfinity.com
Perceptive Software, Inc.
Shawnee, Kan.
800-941-7460
www.imagenow.com
Picom Software
Toronto, Ont., Canada
866-742-6648
www.picomsoft.com
SAP
Newtown Square, Pa.
800-872-1727
www.sap.com
Silverlake Software
Eastampton, N.J.
609-267-3882
www.silverlakesoftware.com
Solimar Systems, Inc.
San Diego, Calif.
619-849-2800
www.solimarsystems.com
StrataCare, Inc.
Irvine, Calif.
800-585-3347
www.stratacare.com
SunGard
Birmingham, Ala.
205-870-4100
www.sungard.com
United Systems and Software
Lake Mary, Fla.
407-875-2120
www.ussincorp.com
Valley Oak Systems, Inc.
Alamo, Calif.
925-552-1650
www.valleyoak.com
Whitehill Technologies, Inc.
Moncton, N.B., Canada
506-855-0005
www.whitehilltech.com
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