Strategy for the Paperless office

For decades the ruse of the paperless office has set managers and accountants champing on the bit. The lure of savings in costs, space and time are inescapable and at first glance seems to be an easy win. The decision to go paperless is the easiest part,

Why is paperless so engaging –

Saving in paper – one of our clients halved their monthly paper bill – over 4000 USD per month, merely by implementing system controls over printing. Desktop and high speed printers have made it so easy to print vast copies of junk, much of which is not even used, or worse still – not even fetched off the printer. Making it harder to print brings about significant savings.

Space Saving – Filing cabinets, desks and the old piling systems take up space. Space is a scarce resource and should be used effectively. The filing systems being touted nowadays to save on rack space are not cheap either.

Efficiency – lost documents, shared documents, version management, comments made on sticky pads that get lost all add up to inefficient practice. In some cases entire departments are dedicated to the location and transferring of paper files around the office.

Facilitate growth – studies have shown that up to 30 separate documents are often stored and tracked per employee within the HR department. For a small company of 100 staff, this is only 3000 documents, but increases dramatically when this grows to 500 or 1000 employees.

Access anywhere, anytime– Paper documents can only be in one place at any one time. Electronic forms and documents can be accessed by multiple people simultaneously, reducing workflow restrictions and increasing efficiency.

Security – backups, recovery, versioning and electronic access control over documents. Paper documents can easily be misplaced and fall into the wrong hands with little audit controls over who accessed it.

These are all good reasons for going paperless, but surely the primary reason is to improve service to your clients.

How can this be achieved?

By way of example, I would like to refer to the case study of one of our clients – Camargue Underwriting Managers, who are leaders in specialist Liability insurance products.

Their challenge

Camargue specialises in underwriting Liabilities such as Directors and Officers Liability, Employment Practices Liability , Clinical Trials etc. These are specialist risks, requiring significant background information on each of their clients including proposal forms, financial statements, credit records, News feeds etc. from a variety of sources to form a view on the risk. These multiplied each year as new information was gathered.

This paper mountain quickly took over much of their office space; annual renewals became harder to manage and became an impediment to growth. The Camargue CEO, Mitch Marescia, wanted his people to maximize time with their brokers and minimise back office administration.

Camargue has targeted rapid expansion without the accompanying growth in staff numbers and needed to position itself to manage the growth efficiently through thinking and working differently.

Solution

Mitch empowered one of his lieutenants, Lucian Carciumaru, to review their options and propose a solution. This lead to an internal project called ‘Greenfinger’. Various industry experts were called in and the different ‘Solutions’ put forward. Of key importance was the ability to reference the documents quickly and logically into their different financial periods. The recommendation to proceed was quickly endorsed.

The first challenge was to scan and catalogue the existing paper files.At the same time, Genasys worked with Camargue to change the workflow process to automate the request, approve, quote and bind process, taking into account various authority levels and different products. These were configured into the administration platform.

One of the key enablers was the ability to automatically link and track all incoming and outgoing emails to specific customers and policies, keeping the administration platform as the core source of all information, both structured and unstructured. It was especially important to classify the documents according to their structure – financial Year, doc type, client, policy etc.

Lessons learnt

The importance of having a sponsor who drives the process.

Getting buy-in from staff who will have to change their mind set and way of working.

It can be done, and the benefits more than warrant the effort.

Result

Camargue has removed the need for paper files completely, there are no file storage facilities in their new office and have managed to grow their turnover significantly without dramatically increasing staff numbers.

They have now created a competitive advantage by decreasing turnaround times dramatically, and providing rapid service to brokers and clients. Documentation is packaged in sleek and professional formats which will reach the client within minutes.

Further, one has to consider the environmental impact which Camargue has achieved. Certainly something for the insurance industry and general business community to deliberate.