Software centralizes information, eliminates bottlenecks, improves workflow
While dealing with documents traditionally involves labor in the form of gathering, classifying, prioritizing and distributing, new software products pour into the market each year, designed to make those jobs simpler and less time consuming. Here are some of the products that have become available in the past 12 months.
o InSystems of Markham, Ontario, Canada, came out this year with "InSystems Writer," which lets insurers create state-specific documents for filing with state insurance regulators.
Neil Betteridge, vice president of marketing for InSystems, says that in the past, insurance filing officials had to manually cut and paste wordings to create state-specific documents for filing, plus manage separate documents for each state and a master version containing all wordings.
"InSystems Writer also reduces compliance risk and errors by centralizing all wordings while eliminating bottlenecks that slow the filing and policy-wording template creation process," Betteridge says.
The software compresses timelines by letting users prepare for policy issuances as soon as the document is ready for internal reviews, without risking loss of work as the document moves through the internal and state-file approvals, he notes.
"It also reduces the effort required to bring a new product to market by automatically translating the master document into a template for policy production, thereby ensuring the document used for issuance is identical to what has been filed and approved," according to Betteridge.
InSystems Writer prices start at $25,000, the company says.
o The ISIS Group, in Southlake, Texas, this year came out with "Papyrus v. 6.1." It focuses on total integration of the inbound and outbound document management universe based on Papyrus Objects and its Papyrus Document Switchboard.
The new software supports ISIS Papyrus, which unifies all corporate inbound and outbound business into one system. ISIS Papyrus programs are printer and platform independent, the company says.
Highlights of the new version include a full audit trail of documents and system resources, says Annemarie Pucher, co-founder and global head of sales and marketing for ISIS.
In addition, the update will enable highlighting of existing or new information in a PDF, and a full range of system-embedded security functions, such as document encryption, digital signature for workflow sign-off, and ready-to-use templates and workflow for faster project implementation, says ISIS. Large insurance companies can use this product for their basic document needs.
Average product price ranges between $200,000 and $600,000, the company says.
o Optical Image Technology Inc., in State College, Pa., released its newest version (Version 9) of the "DocFinity" suite of document management software this year.
One major upgrade within DocFinity Version 9, says company representative Jill Filby, is a Web Service applications programming interface that allows users to access information through a Web portal or custom application.
Version 9 also includes a new viewer. Written in Java, the viewer can be used by all clients on any operating system. "It has power annotation features, including footnotes," notes Filby. Other functions include the ability to edit documents stored in the Web-access module.
The DocFinity suite is scalable, building on imaging with modules available for workflow. The price of the DocFinity Core ranges from $5,000 to $30,000.