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When Paper is the Culprit

Pat Speer May 2007

For many insurance companies, large and small, moving to a paperless environment is desirable, but no easy task. Many employees still derive comfort and a sense of control from tangible paper files, and moving to electronic functioning carries with it a certain sense of anxiety.

The employees of Eustis Insurance & Benefits, a 60-year-old New Orleans provider of personal, commercial, and benefits lines insurance, have proven themselves the exception.

A little more than three years ago, the New Orleans agency, as part of a larger effort to foster sustainable competitive differentiation, involved its 90-plus employees in a larger project. Their task: examine and provide recommendations on how to foster improved overall business functions, reduce cost, and improve productivity and communication with policyholders and partners.

Early in the company's six-month exercise, the type of investments required to accomplish this objective became obvious: the company needed to simplify and improve the agency's document and record-keeping system. So the agency, which boasts annual premium volume of more than $114 million and represents some eight major carriers and 20 brokers, paid a visit to a smaller agency where paperless was the name of the game.

"As we investigated references from different records management companies, we were given the name of a smaller agent, and were impressed with what they were doing," says Keith Oufnac, director of information systems. "The smaller agency scanned all documents that passed through its doors, and they were successful in retrieving information quickly and accurately. We decided paperless was the way to go."

LONG TERM STRATEGIES

They are not alone. More than 7,500 agents participating in the 2006 ACORD Users' Group (AUGIE) Agency Technology Survey, (see chart, p. 41) confirmed their intentions to move to paperless operations.

Reducing paperwork is one of many ongoing long-term strategies of agents trying to simplify processes in order to focus on customer acquisition, customer retention and customer service, according to Jeff Yates, executive director of the Agency Council for the Independent Insurance Agents & Brokers of America (Big "I"), Alexandria, Va.

"It supports the agent's ability to operate with consistent workflow in a multiple company environment and cooperate with all partners to move to effective real-time capabilities," he says.

From idea to production took one year, during which time employees were trained in the nuances of scanning and working with its new document management system, PaperVision Enterprise, provided by Digitech Solutions Inc., Greenwood Village, Colo.

"We scan everything: policies, endorsements and all appropriate mail that comes in," Oufnac says. "Scans are electronically indexed and filed, so as we got the nuances of the system down, our employees learned to function with less and less physical paper."

PaperVision Enterprise supports viewing of more than 250 file types, from graphics to word processing to presentations. The system's check-in/check-out and versioning control ensures that users are working on the latest, most accurate version of the document.

"It functions in similar fashion to an actual file cabinet, where policies, proposals, endorsements, forms and questions from customers are all housed, time-stamped and available for viewing at any time by other employees," says Oufnac.

Eustis ties the PaperVision system to its TAM (The Agency Manager) agency management system from Applied Systems, University Park, Ill.

SUPPORTING SCALABILITY

For Marie Hart, who serves as the agency's vice president, director and commercial lines manager, the systems' ability to scale was an important factor in the decision to choose PaperVision. "We plan to add accounting and may want to add additional records, especially for commercial lines, and the system supports that. Plus, our carriers know we are communicating with a higher level of accuracy, so our apps are processed faster, and we are able to e-mail-rather than snail-mail-critical documents."

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