A Document-Powered Policy Management System
The key departments involved in policy management operations are new policy sales, central document processing and customer service. Incoming new policy sales volume is 20% paper and 80% fax/email. This is further divided into standard workflow and exception items.
In 2005, Centex determined that manual document handling systems in use for central document processing should be enhanced. At the same time, the company realized that a new and more efficient policy management system should be developed and integrated with the new document management system. After considering insurance-specific solutions to document management for isolated parts of the operation, Centex began examining LibertyNET Enterprise for the entire operation.
From the start, the Centex/Liberty IMS team planned to deploy both a document management system and an integrated image repository for the new policy management system under development at Centex.
Initial Phases
Phase one of the deployment targeted human resource requirements independent from the development of the new policy management system. Imaging employee documents such as resumes and job applications helped to familiarize Centex employees with scanning operations, and the basics of managing images, folders and automation.
Phase two targeted key functions in the central document processing department. Prior to this effort, cancellation, renewal and reinstatement documents were manually processed page by page—including marking, collection and internal sorting for review and handling. They were stored on site for three months before being shipped to an offsite records management location.
The processes associated with paper filing systems often resulted in misplaced and lost documents, as well as lost productivity during manual searches and slowed critical financial reporting processes.
Now, incoming documents are sorted by type and barcode separator pages are used during scanning for automatic distribution and indexing. Each department now has a single scan operator, and all departmental personnel add index information to documents using a dual monitor configuration for rapid indexing.
Creating the System
In the third phase, the teams worked together to create an integrated solution. Key goals of the integration included:
- Ability to retrieve associated document images for each policy from within the Centrex Advantage Trac system via a transparently-called image repository.
- Ability to measure, monitor and control central document processing operations relating to policy workflow performance and new policy creation processes.
The approach taken by the technical teams was direct server-side database integration. LibertyNET image folders have direct access into the SQL Server tables of the Advantage Trac applications. LibertyNET reads values from various Advantage Trac tables and uses triggers to write values into Advantage Trac. Derived values are then written to specific tables in the database itself. Some of the derived operational information in these tables includes:
- Documents processed within a period of time;
- On-time vs. overdue work items;
- Start-to-finish processing time for work items;
- Which document types process most and/or least quickly; and
- Various measurements of productivity.
The team also worked closely with Business Objects, a leading vendor of business intelligence platforms, to create a series of management dashboards for the system. The dashboards tie together the document processing and policy management functions into a seamless and measurable operation for Centex management.
Greg Lewis, Sr. Vice President and CIO for Centex Insurance, explained why LibertyNET was a good fit for Centex: "LibertyNET excels in implementation speed, cost and flexibility for custom document management workflow and line-of-business application integration. It allowed us to integrate turnkey imaging workflow with our next-generation Advantage Trac policy management system in record time and at surprisingly low total cost."
Requirements to improve policy management operations set the stage for taking a fresh look at how policy creation and document management can be delivered in a next-generation system. Collaborative effort between Centex software developers and Liberty IMS Professional Services delivered the server-to-server database integration technologies that power the new system. The result is a single policy management system with an integrated document management repository.
Centex Insurance is an insurance provider affiliated with Centex Financial Services and Centex Homes. Founded in 1952 as Westwood Insurance Agency, Centex Insurance provides a growing customer base with more than 130,000 homeowner insurance policies, providing homeowners’ insurance policies for Centex-built homes, Centex-financed mortgages and other homebuilder clients.
Liberty IMS is the award-winning provider of LibertyNET software platforms for document management, report management, document imaging and unstructured data management. Major product lines include LibertyNET Enterprise (LNE) and LibertyNET Office (LNO) for deployment of document management systems with distributed capture using multifunction peripheral (MFPs). For more information about how LibertyNET can help your company, contact us by telephone at 714.751.6900 or via e-mail at: sales@libertyims.com