Founded in 1970, the Strickland Insurance Group is comprised of six subsidiary specialty insurers. An A.M. Best rating of A- and its many professional affiliations including an alliance with Lloyd’s of London have established Strickland as an integral member of the insurance industry in the Southeast. With premium volume approaching 110 million and growing annually, the effort to maintain Strickland’s paper files was becoming increasingly labor-intensive and costly. A technology steering committee unanimously recommended document imaging as the best solution for improving the storage, accessibility and utility of records.
Scope
While Strickland recognized company-wide potential for the benefits
of imaging, the file room of the Policy Services Department was determined
to be the optimal site for its pilot project. Responsible for the issuance
and activities of all policies, the Policy Services Department was the
‘paper mill’ of the company generating an average of 12 pages for every
policy. Over 153,000 files with a total of 2 million documents were being
maintained.
RETURN ON INVESTMENT
The Way It Was
Prior to the adoption of imaging, the task of organizing and managing
Strickland’s policy records was cumbersome and impractical. Folders consisting
of new business applications, amendments, computer-generated printouts,
financial agreements, correspondence, etc. were manually assembled. Twelve
full-time employees were required for the initial manual indexing and storing
of policy folders and all subsequent retrievals and refiling. Access to
policy information was equally inefficient. Policy Service Representatives
(PSR), the company’s front line for assistance, had to leave their desks
to request a policy folder from a walk-up window at the file room. Clerks
retrieved the folders from PSRs and returned them to the file room. Time
spent printing (200,000 pages per month), copying and faxing documents
and searching for misplaced files further impeded productivity and customer
service.
Optika Wins
Strickland selected Optika and its integrated FilePower suite of software
to resolve its dilemma. FileNet and IBM had been considered for the task
but Optika’s functionality and scalability ideally complemented Strickland’s
plan to begin modestly and expand the system over time. Implementation
was entrusted to Document Access Systems, Goldsboro, North Carolina. “It
was very important for us to find a local reseller/integrator” noted Don
Kelley, Sr. VP & CIO at Strickland, “who could assume full ownership
of our system and DAS proved to be the most capable”. The system was installed
and operational within eight weeks.
A Better Way
To achieve Strickland’s objectives of reducing paper and improving
the accessibility and security of policy information Optika’s FPreport,
FPtransact and FPmulti software were utilized to replace Strickland’s hard
copy files with electronic file folders. FPreport, a computer report management
software utilizing COLD (Computer Output to Laser Disk) technology, working
in tandem with FPtransact, an interface between Optika software and external
systems, eliminates the printing of Strickland’s computer-generated policy
documents. Reports are instead downloaded in a batch process from the company’s
IBM AS400 as ASCII text and inserted into the appropriate electronic policy
folders which are pre-built by Optika’s FPtransact module. A folder is
produced for each new client from information extracted from new business
applications and keyed by PSRs into the AS400. File room personnel scan
all remaining policy papers and index them to the electronic policy folders
created the previous evening from the AS400 download. The scanned documents
are immediately discarded. Thus, paperless files.
Results
The impact of imaging was immediate and dramatic. Approximately 5,000
documents were processed daily via COLD resulting in a tremendous savings
in paper and manual effort. Another 3,000 pages were being scanned. Operational
efficiency increased so significantly that after only 30 days 75% of file
room personnel were reassigned throughout the company. By the end of the
first 18 months of operation the system had been expanded twice to a total
of 30 users. PSRs could now instantly access optically stored information
from their desk workstations enabling them to respond immediately to caller
inquiries. Consequently, significant reductions were achieved in call backs
and trips to the file room. Enhancements in workstation functionality including
the capacity to direct fax further reduced paper consumption and PSR leg
work. In less than a half year later a third expansion was completed which
extended the system to 50 users. The quantity of paper documents and reports
converted to electronic images continued to increase. In their second year
of operation, Strickland scanned more than 800,000 pages and processed
an additional one million via COLD.
Looking to the Future
Strickland foresees a continual broadening of the use of imaging throughout
the company. Together with Document Access Systems they are mapping an
agenda for the future. Plans are being developed for the implementation
of Optika’s PowerFlow software for routing and coordinating company workflow.
Step by step, work will electronically move throughout the company. The
assignment and completion of tasks are automatically recorded. PowerFlow
also supports parallel processing which enables multiple employees to work
with the same item simultaneously. Strickland also intends to incorporate
OCR/ICR (optical/intelligent character recognition) technology into its
development strategy. The capacity to automatically extract data from business
forms will further streamline operations. In addition, the captured information
will be loaded into an internally developed software product designed for
the collection of specific policy information which will be accessible
from both corporate and remote offices.
Value - The Bottom Line
To be a worthwhile investment an imaging project must be financially
as well as operationally successful. This is certainly the case at Strickland.
Improvements in their productivity, efficiency and service clearly denote
the value of imaging from an operations standpoint. The economic side of
the equation is equally convincing. “We projected an ROI of a year and
a half for our imaging system” recalled Kevin Grenier, VP of Operations
and Customer Service. “The 75% payback we realized within the first five
months truly exceeded our expectations.”
This success story courtesy of Optika Imaging Systems.