One step Muse and her team took was to narrow the search down to a vendor that could handle the needs of a company the size of AmFed, which has approximately 125 employees. "We wanted to implement something that would work in all the different areas of our company," she says. "We wanted something flexible."

Over a three-month period in early 2004, Muse and the consultant shopped. After much discussion on what AmFed was looking for, they narrowed it to four candidates who were invited to Mississippi to make executive presentations. At the same time, Muse and her team interviewed each department in the company to discover every process that is performed in order to better understand all the documents that are processed.

Armed with that information, AmFed began to comprehend what it needed, continues Muse. "We wanted a document managing system with a work-force management system built in," she notes. "That was integral to us selecting a product. We felt that would help us streamline our business processes."

ImageNow had the flexibility, scope of functionality, and workflow capabilities to do what AmFed wanted, indicates Muse. In addition, the product was competitively priced.

Another factor that tipped the scales was the carrier was assured by the vendor AmFed would be able to deploy and manage the product internally. "We write our own in-house insurance applications," says Muse. "We never wanted to be vendor dependent. We felt ImageNow would allow that. We were not going to have to [spend] a whole bunch of professional service dollars when we could have someone on our staff maintain the product here and add any new functionality."

Furthermore, ImageNow had the security features the carrier needed to provide confidentiality and comply with HIPAA initiatives. "It also integrated easily," she says. ImageNow proved that to the carrier during its presentation. "We didn't have to jump through hoops to see how it would integrate with our claims and policy administration systems," reports Muse. "It was so simple, an end user could do it."

Getting the most from employees in the transition period was difficult. File clerks were transformed, explains Muse. "You can't quite let them go with one function, but you have to train them to do another function so they are doing dual things," she says. "Your people have to be flexible. Our file clerks turned into document control specialists and learned that task."

Muse affirms the ROI for the project turned out well, but the real benefit is the ease of employees finding information without leaving their desk. "Being able to talk to your manager while looking at the same file is priceless," she concludes. "It has created so much efficiency and improved customer service. I always say we had really good customer service before this product, but being able to answer the question on the first call without playing phone tag while you track down information–it's hard to put a value on that time."

– Robert Regis Hyle