Technology Viewpoint - Document Processing: Urban myths: the paperless office

The idea of the paperless office has been touted as the future of the business environment since the 1970s but, four decades on, paper remains hugely popular, its consumption in offices decreasing by only 1% in 2009.

Despite this apparent failure, there has been some subtle activity in the insurance industry over the last couple of years that has helped make the idea of a paperless office seem more achievable.

Insurers face challenges in managing both physical and digital information. An electronic document capture program provides insurance brokers with the ability to automatically grab information from many common sources such as fax, e-mail, text messages and paper. Such pieces of software work by capturing the data from source, analysing, classifying and then separating it into data groups. Then, the business-critical data contained within the document is extracted and placed into the relevant system, process or workflow.

Reducing errors
A crucial step in such a strategy is to automate the time-consuming and labour-intensive paper-based processes that are at high risk of incurring inputting errors and omissions as documents pass among agents, claims adjusters and brokers. The same applies, more crucially, to monies moving among multiple payers.

It is critical to enable agents, brokers and representatives to process applications and claims quickly as well as deliver to all these parties efficient access to product portfolios, all without generating excessive paper.

By treating document capture as a strategic initiative, transferring paper-driven processes to a digital back-end system that is accessible to all claims and applications chain parties presents a great opportunity for brokers. By doing it, they can reduce costs, increase operational and sales efficiency and gain data transparency for compliance.

Paper, fax, e-mail and electronic data interchange are the primary exchange media in insurance; they comprise the engine that drives most back-office business processes such as claims adjustments, approvals, exception management and payments.

By automatically capturing, classifying and extracting information from documents and forms as soon as they are received by an organisation, then introducing the information into workflows and business applications, insurers can reduce costs, improve customer service levels and reduce risk.

It is not just the office that benefits from document capture. Remote staff working from local offices or at home are not left out either: such employees can use equipment such as scanners to capture documents in order to benefit from the same classification and extraction as their colleagues in head office.

When deciding to implement digital capture, it is important that brokers do not apply a one-size-fits-all approach. An effective option for a large organisation that has great volumes of documents entering the business may be too costly for a small organisation. Conversely, a small organisation can make changes to processes and systems quickly because fewer people are affected. Furthermore, brokers operating in a single local market are not subject to many of the regulatory issues that affect multinational companies. What is important is that brokers drive the switch from paper to digital at a pace proportionate to their requirements.

Clear information
Insurance brokers will then be able to define the rising amount of documents entering the organisation, alleviating the labour-intensive task of reviewing each item and determining the appropriate place to file it.

Taking away the paper aspect of processes altogether is just not a realistic option. Automation of processes is a reality, and one that the insurance sector must embrace.