Storage, Reporting and Managing Made Easy: DocFinity® Provides Business Solutions for Regional Insurance Group
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An insurance conglomerate in the northeastern United States has been providing coverage to families and business owners for more than a century. Made up of three separate insurance companies, they comprise one of the largest providers of homeowners insurance in the northeast, and are all centrally managed at their company headquarters.
The Problem: Paper Overload
The central office is a busy control center, managing claims processing, field operations, underwriting, accounting, and administration, for each of the more than 1100 agents representing the company.
Each of these vital departments produces thousands, if not millions, of documents that must be kept on file for years. After doing business for nearly 180 years, these massive amounts of paper meant the company was facing a document storage problem.
Choosing the Solution
Their IT department set out to solve that problem by purchasing an electronic document management system (EDMS) that would allow the company to scan its paper-based information and store it in a digital repository along with computer-generated reports and documents. After the tedious process of identifying relevant vendors and narrowing the field after each step, they were left with two choices: Optical Image Technology, Inc. (OIT) and a major industry competitor.
The manager of IT applications for the company revealed that they ultimately chose OIT’s DocFinity suite of EDMS products in 2002 for a variety of reasons, one of the most important being the nonproprietary nature of DocFinity, which was key for them in choosing it. DocFinity’s open architecture allows the IT staff to adjust the software to meet the company’s needs without expensive consulting fees. Additionally, the DocFinity API allows them to integrate DocFinity with all of the company’s other software applications, again, with little or no outside assistance. All of these advantages from DocFinity’s nonproprietary, open architecture led management to select the DocFinity suite as its EDMS provider.
How it Solved the Problem
Every department within the organization utilizes DocFinity, from the vital business departments like claims processing and underwriting, to the administrative and accounting departments. Every employee uses DocFinity, whether they are aware of it or not. At any given moment, about 100 users are operating in DocFinity on a typical day. Over the course of one year, more than one million documents are scanned and processed using the software.
This client has currently licensed the DocFinity Core, DocFinity COLD-ERM (Computer Output to Laser Disk – Enterprise Report Management), DocFinity HSM (Hierarchical Storage Manager), DocFinity Barcode Server, DocFinity IntraVIEWER®, DocFinity Dashboard, and DocFinity Print/Fax Server to meet their business needs.
DocFinity IntraVIEWER is the piece in the DocFinity Core that allows users to access all of the functionality of their DocFinity system through a standard Web browser, such as Microsoft Internet Explorer or Netscape. This module is critical to their operations, as it allows the field offices to access policy information over the World Wide Web. Agents simply search for a policy by number or name, and it’s available on their computer instantly in its native form.
“That’s the biggest advantage of DocFinity—increased efficiency,” the manager of IT applications stated. “No more calls on hold. Everything is at our fingertips.” Customers no longer suffer waiting while agents or service representatives search through filing cabinets for their policy information. With a few keystrokes, all that information is immediately available.
While no office can go completely paperless, this insurance group is trying its best to do just that. At this point in time, “every department has been imaged.” With DocFinity Imaging and COLD-ERM, the client has been able to quickly and efficiently scan or electronically generate everything from personal-lines documents, to purchase orders, to accounting reports, to claims checks. These efforts have greatly reduced their storage needs and significantly eased the pains of employees trying to locate the documents they need to do their jobs.
DocFinity COLD-ERM runs automatically at night, automatically documenting policy cancellations and other updates. This module removes the need for paper reports to run, eliminating the need to store reams of reports.
The insurance group currently images and/or processes about 1.2 million documents each year, including all the documents in personal lines underwriting, all agent files, and all the files in the purchasing department. Virtually all management reports are captured and placed in DocFinity using COLD-ERM.
DocFinity HSM has allowed the customer to automatically back up all of its policies, vital financial information, corporate intelligence, and employee records. With HSM, compliance with document-retention regulations is automated, removing the possibility of human error and enabling them to computerize the maintenance and purging of vital information.
Moving Forward
Future plans include utilizing DocFinity Workflow. This will enable them to push documents and images to the right people, for the right actions, at the right time. They are currently in the process of implementing it in their Personal Lines Underwriting Department.
One of the senior level managers in IT indicated that DocFinity is “one of the best, most dependable” software products that he has ever used. He’s looking forward to a long future using OIT’s DocFinity suite to continually improve their business operations.
