For Michigan Millers Mutual Insurance employees, the everyday job of retrieving data from paper documents and then refiling them was a nightmare. "We had a department whose sole job was refiling documents after [the files] had been used," reports Gary M. Smith, assistant manager of the information services department. "We didn't have any capabilities for storage, retrieval, location, or finding out who actually was working on files."

Adding to the carrier's woes was the issue of storing approximately five million documents. "We used up all of our floor and cabinet space," says Smith. "We actually had cardboard boxes stacked three deep and three high around the hallways."

The Lansing-based property/casualty carrier decided it was time to look for an imaging solution. A team was formed from information services and various departments to devise a list of requirements the carrier was looking for. After the RFP process, three vendors remained, and the decision came down to which solution's features and pricing best fit Michigan Millers. The company opted for the DocFinity suite from Optical Image Technology (OIT), Inc.