With its Web-based system administration tools, Panagon can be managed from any Internet-enabled workstation, allowing remote administrative staff to perform tasks such as adding and maintaining users and groups, storage categories, and customer properties, FileNET said.

Mr. Sarich said that the cost of the FileNET document management products varies according to the size of the organization, how many licenses are bought and how big a system is needed. “The typical installation in a $1 billion-plus p-c company [is] between $3 million to $5 million,” he stated.

As for return-on-investment, Mr. Sarich said he likes to tell prospects “that the technology you get from us is basically free,” due to the reduced costs, increased efficiencies and improved customer services.

To provide document management products, Computer Sciences Corp., headquartered in El Segundo, Calif., (www.csc.com) partners with other vendors, explained Senior Vice President Joanna Creamer. One such partner, DST Systems of Kansas City, Mo., developed a process management product for the mutual fund market that CSC now exclusively resells to the insurance market under the name “Automated Work Distributor.”

AWD is aimed primarily at medium-to-large carriers, Ms. Creamer said. It tracks applications and other information that comes into an insurance organization, and distributes all of the work electronically throughout the organization “based on a set of predefined process flows, service standards, priority levels and skill sets of the workforce,” she explained.

Additionally, AWD has a built-in quality component that helps managers monitor the specific types of errors being made. “You can then spot train if you see too many [employees] making the same kind of error,” Ms. Creamer pointed out. The system also can alert a manager when service levels are not being met.

The latest version of AWD, release 3.0, features faster data recall, greater processing control, a browser-based interface and support for more computing platforms, said CSC.

Ms. Creamer said that AWD runs on various platforms such as NT, AS/400 and Sun Polaris. “We also have a mainframe version that is ready for a beta customer,” she reported.

She said that the 40 or 50 companies tracked by CSC since first installing AWD saw “productivity increases of between 25 percent and 35 percent,” and cost savings of 20 percent to 30 percent. By applying the product to other business areas, they saw productivity improvements in the 50 percent range, she stated.

The ROI, Ms. Creamer said, is usually within 24 months. She said one reason for this is AWD's “out-of-the-box functionality,” meaning that it can be installed without the need to write code. Pricing information was not provided.

IFN Systems, of Petach-Tikva, Israel (www.ifnsystems.com), is an international vendor of document management systems. Marketing Manager Tal Yakobbi said that the company has “extensive experience” in implementing systems for insurance corporations and in FileNET's Panagon technology, which is needed for the IFN product.

IFN's latest product in this field is WINS Insurance for Content & Process Management. Mr. Yakobbi described it as a complete, tailor-made document management solution for insurers. Among the advantages of using WINS Insurance, Mr. Yakobbi listed:

Increased productivity, giving staff and vendors immediate access to critical information and documents.

Improved service by enabling customers, insurers and producers to submit claims, check on existing claims, and communicate with the insurer through 24-hour Web access.

Substantially reduced costs, with reported savings of 20 percent or more due to claims-processing cycle times decreases of up to 30 percent.

Controlled access to sensitive information.

He said that the ROI takes place within a year. Pricing information was not provided.

InSystems, of Markham, Ontario in Canada (www.insystems.com), is another international vendor of end-to-end document management systems.

“We have installations in more than half of the top 100 insurance organizations in North America,” reported Henk Alblas, director of product management-document automation products. Additionally, the company boasts about 55,000 agent and broker clients, he said.

InSytems' flagship is the Calligo enterprise product. Now in version 4.1, it is an integrated solution for creating, managing and distributing documents, Mr. Alblas said. He said Calligo allows for document creation “through a rules-based document assembly capability.” It also handles other documents from within or outside the organization.

He reported that, increasingly, InSystems clients are looking for the ability to send information in a format and by a channel appropriate to the recipient.

“We cover that scenario both with our core Calligo enterprise product and Calligo eDelivery, which specifically provides that multi-channel user capability,” Mr. Alblas reported. The eDelivery product was launched last October.

Among the other advantages of using Calligo products, Mr. Alblas said, are:

They are Web-based. “Deployment of Calligo to a large user population is extremely straightforward,” he noted.

They “provide a strong insurance-focused set of functions.”

They offer distribution management. Mr. Alblas explained that after the initial deployment of the Calligo product through a company's IT department, customers generally can develop, modify and manage their own business processes and documents.

Calligo products can be deployed on various Windows platforms, Mr. Alblas said. In addition, certain “components most critical to performance” can run on “selected Unix platforms.” Although pricing varies, Calligo generally starts at around $100,000 for license fees Mr. Alblas said.

Reproduced from National Underwriter Property & Casualty/Risk & Benefits Management Edition, June 3, 2002. Copyright 2002 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.