Deadline Buster

Late last year, months after going live with a document management project, Janet Cochrane, COO of Renaissance Group, had a conversation with her husband, Bruce, who is the CEO of Renaissance. "He told me years from now, when we look back on this project, we may realize this is one of the smartest tech decisions we've made," says the COO. "We're reaping benefits from it almost immediately. We've dumped millions of dollars in technology in the past that either hasn't panned out for us or seemed to take forever to return our investment, so this is one [project] we can feel good about."

The project Cochrane is referring to is the .NET platform from ImageRight that Renaissance, a Massachusetts-based insurance aggregator, has had in service for just more than a year now. "We were growing dynamically, and we realized many of the processes we were performing on a day-to-day basis had slipped in terms of the timeliness and accuracy of some of the core services we provide," she says.

The challenges Renaissance was experiencing were due to the company's growth, Cochrane indicates. When company officials examined the situation they realized it was the volume of work that had created the problem and the solution didn't lie in hiring additional staff.

Renaissance always has looked for better ways of doing things through technology, Cochrane claims. The company purchased a high-end imaging product back in 2000. "We had updated our systems and continually developed new workflows to become more efficient, but it was time to get to the next level," she says.

The company made the decision to go with ImageRight in November 2007, knowing full well the highest volume of work would be coming its way in February. "Quite frankly, we had grown so much we weren't sure we were going to meet all our deadlines [with the prior system]," says Cochrane. "We were looking for a means to deliver the services on a timely basis."

Renaissance made its decision quickly once it reviewed and analyzed ImageRight, Cochrane states. Still, there was the matter of the quick installation. "When we initially told the ImageRight team members the time frame we wanted, they questioned whether we could do it, but to their credit they were with us all the way," she says. "We just made it happen. We were live on Jan. 25, 2008."

The company had been satisfied with its older system but knew technology constantly was changing in the areas of document management and workflow. "We looked at some other systems in anticipation of making a move, but when we were presented with the ImageRight option, it was clear to us this was the way to go," says Cochrane. "Our modus operandi is keeping our eye to the future to make sure we always are ahead of the curve."

Renaissance was familiar with imaging, but Cochrane believes the difference with ImageRight is the product's automated workflow. "I would say the most challenging part of putting the whole project together was getting everyone–particularly internally–on the same page with an automated workflow," she says. "In insurance agencies, even in the best of them with the most documented procedures, individual CSRs will find their own way to process things given their priorities on a given day."

The challenge for Renaissance and ImageRight was to build a workflow that satisfied everyone's needs and give business users the tools to do their job better. The learning curve proved to be short, which was good for Renaissance's anticipated workload. "[Users] were a little nervous, but at the end of the month–even though it was the first month on a new system–they didn't think they would have been able to finish all the work without the ImageRight system," says Cochrane.

Measuring the ROI of a document management project is not always easy because, as Cochrane points out, you can put a dollar amount on staff you haven't hired or staff you've redeployed, but you can't put a dollar amount on some of the real benefits that Renaissance has. "We've been able to take highly trained staff people who were so focused on pushing paper and literally lift that off their shoulders, which gives them more time to communicate with our agents and to use their expertise and the talent they have," she says. "Our agents have noticed the difference, and our staff feels [the agents] are utilizing [the staff's] talents. It's hard to put a dollar amount on that, but we feel it was one of the best decisions we've made."