Online Document Management Can Help Boost Productivity

Melissa Sterrett-Baron, senior product manager at Document Sciences, says xPression can integrate into clients existing business workflow to create and deliver business communications–such as policies, contracts, proposals, quotes and correspondence–in real time and in an interactive format. xPression runs on all leading application servers and is easy to integrate into clients existing IT environment, says DSC.

"Whats different about our solution is that we can take data from any source–such as administrative systems or CRM systems, and we can incorporate those into dynamic documents output in a variety of formats, anything from e-mail to PDF to HTML," Sterrett-Baron says. One of the newest Web-based features is called "Document Requestor Web Service." It allows external systems, such as a CRM system or a Web portal, to request a composed document by specifying the name of the document, the customer record key or all of a customers data in XML format.

"Take a situation where an insurance agency has a lot of agents out in the field," Sterrett-Baron notes. The agency wants to ensure that it can deliver a quote or proposal quickly and still be accurate. "And with xPression, you can do this in real time, using customer data in the existing infrastructure."

And back at headquarters, she adds, staff can use xPression to update the language in documents to be compliant with the latest regulations or to introduce new products to market. xPression can be implemented in a matter of weeks, with training and implementation services provided by DSC.

Sterrett-Baron says enterprise xPression licenses are in the $100,000 to $200,000 range. A lower-cost version called xPression Select is priced at a more affordable level for mid-market insurance companies, she notes.

Exstream Software Inc., based in Lexington, Ky., recently has added a Web application development suite to its Dialogue software. This suite, called Dialogue WebVerse, allows customers to develop Web applications that create online components–from letters, proposals and statements, to policies, enrollment kits and other types of fulfillment–that can be generated interactively in real time, the company says.

"WebVerse is part of the complete software solution that we call Dialogue, which is made up of about 40 integrated modules. Customers buy modules, or suites of them, according to what their applications are and what they need to do," says Kelley Sloane, vice president of marketing at Exstream.

"Dialogueallows companies to create all types of fully personalized communicationsfor printed and electronic delivery," she notes.

"WebVerse allows insurance companies to have their business users create Web applications that allow CSRs or sales agents to interactively collect information from customers or prospects. The end-result is a personalized document that is created in real time and presented to the customer online or in print," says Sloane.

She adds that agents can pull up and key in information in the WebVerse application that someone, probably from headquarters, has created. Because no Java programming is needed to do this, business people can rapidly build and deploy Web applications using an intuitive graphical user interface.

The initial license fee could cost more than $100,000. "We have many different ways companies can purchase Dialogue, from a subscription license to a perpetual license to per-click pricing. A typical Dialogue configuration starts at about $100,000 and goes up from there," Sloane says.

Anacomp Inc. in San Diego offers another option for companies looking to outsource their online document management. Anacomps Web Presentment service offers Web-based archives, with a unified view of all documents.

"We provide an online service that performs essentially the same function that companies might have by constructing systems of their own," says Richard Keele, Anacomps executive vice president of global marketing.

"But we give the opportunity for clients to create systems without their own capital equipment or devoting their own IT staff resource," he explains. "We operate the service as a hosted solution from our own data center and run the software on our clients behalf."

Anacomp says it helps integrate document management across clients entire Web sites, including access to all appropriate documents by agents, customers and claim representatives. With this service, insurance documents can be presented, retrieved and archived using the Internet or private networks via standard Web browsers.

The insurance industry, Keele notes, is a very paper-intensive industry and, many times, policies are printed multiple times. "There are multiple pieces of an insurance company, from the legal department, the audit department and agents in the field, that need access to the policy. So typically, seven, eight copies of the policy might be printed for those who need access to documents," he says.

Additionally, in a typical property-casualty environment, when a policy is issued, actions are later taken against that policy, such as renewal notices, cancellation notices and revisions of coverage. One of the challenges in that environment is to view the entire stream of documents to see the policy as a whole, Keele says.

"One of the advantages of our service is that such changes are sent to our system right away," he notes. "So whatever is printed is sent to our system and stored. Users can log on, and, just with a Web browser with no software on their desktops, do an inquiry on that entire policy as it stands at that instant."

Anacomp can offer training along with online help, he adds.

Pricing depends on the number of pages produced each month. If a company produces a million pages a month, for example, the cost would be a fractional cent for each page, says Keele.

is a staff writer for NUs Property & Casualty/Risk & Benefits Management Edition.

Reproduced from National Underwriter Life & Health/Financial Services Edition, June 2, 2003. Copyright 2003 by The National Underwriter Company in the serial publication. All rights reserved. Copyright in this article as an independent work may be held by the author.