Best of Breed is the Best Approach for Insurance Document Management

How many of you have purchased a new policy administration or claims management system from a vendor that said, “Oh, you don’t need an ECM system, we have built-in document management…”?

Now I’m not going to say that they’re lying, but there’s a HUGE difference between just manually attaching an electronic image to a policy detail screen or an activity record and truly managing the content across your enterprise.

So, here’s a quick top 10 of questions to ask your vendor when they say you don’t need an ECM system:

1. Can I scan my inbound mail directly into your system?
2. Will I have the ability to automatically connect new documents to a policy or claim?
3. How do I know if I am missing any documentation for a transaction?
4. Can I implement my records management strategy into your system?
5. Where do I store all of my accounts payable or human resources documents?
6. If I want to see claims documents from my policy screen, do I have to make copies?
7. When exceptions occur what do I do – is that now a manual process?
8. How do I provide access to documentation if legal doesn’t have rights to the claims system?
9. Is there a way to search for images if I’m not on a specific record?
10. Can you automatically notify our agents when they don’t send all the required documents?

Trust me – they shouldn’t be able to answer many of these questions very well, because that’s not what their system is designed to do.

This week I was actually down at the inaugural Duck Creek Insurance Forum in Charleston, SC and finally talked with another ISV that gets it – you can’t solve your customer’s problem when your technology’s not designed to solve their problem.

They understand that their core competency is to deliver a state-of-the-art policy administration system – not document management. Yes, Duck Creek has a document management component, but they know in order to provide a best of breed approach for their customers – they need to partner with other ISVs.

Hopefully this trend will continue with other policy administration and claims management vendors, but remember to keep the questions above in mind…