Meridian Awards 2012

At Generali Austria we are creating a multitude of customer facing documents. Typical documents that get created in the insurance business are quotes, applications, policies/policy packets, invoices, reminder invoices/letters, claim forms and letters or chain letters. Some of these are created in batch, some adHoc. Some online, some offline, for example on an agent notebook. We at Generali Austria have been using in the past 3 different approaches to create those customer facing insurance documents:

• Host (zOS) based ISIS-Papyrus solution for batch documents
• Winword based Server Farm for online interactive adHoc documents
• Winword based Visual Basic Application to create offline documents on agent notebooks

Due to the three different technical approaches, some documents fragments, like headers and footer, and even complete documents have been maintained up to three times in different IT -Departements. With the Group 1 Document Technology around DOC1 and EngageOne, that we started to rollout in 2008, we have created a basis to unite the 3 different approaches to create customer facing documents. This base will allow us:

• To use 1 Design Enviornment (DOC1 Designer) to create templates for batch, adHoc and offline documents ensuring consistency in the documents we deliver
• To share design resources among them reducing the maintenance overhead of maintaining separate resources
• To faciliate central processing of documents with Steamweaver, as adHoc and offline documents can be much easier integrated with documents processed in batch, as they share the same processing logic and Metadata concept
• To benefit from postal discounts on adHoc documents which can now be processed and delivered centrally
• To have one IT-Departement instead of three dealing with document related topics resulting in reduced costs
• To release synergy potentials for example through modularisation and standardisation of documents
• To reduce document maintenance and rollout costs for example in the case of acquisitions, rebranding or organizational/management changes that need to be reflected for example in document footers to comply with regulations.
• To include business users in the process of creating and updating text fragments in templates, made possible by the Word Like Interface and Access Control Feature of DOC1 Designer
• To have a better central control and overview over the creation of customer facing documents all over the ogranisation yet still providing the flexibility needed by the various business departements like claims, underwriting or customer services.
• To ensure that regulatory requirements are met for example in regards to archiving. In the past with Word we had to rely on the end user to do this.

When we decided to switch to Group 1 Technology from Papyrus and Word, EngageOne was still slideware on the drawing board. However besides the risk of deciding for a new product, we also saw a big chance to influence the direction the product will take by providing feedback to Group 1 at such an early stage. Therefore we participated actively in the EngageOne beta program. Some of our suggestions have made it into the GA release. Most of our other suggestions made it into the QFD-Study which we also completed. So now we're looking forward to seeing them on the roadmap and hopefully some of them will be in the next release. Our feedback though is not limited to EngageOne. We also provide Group 1 feedback in regards to how we plan to use the product for example by including Business Users in the Template Design process. Another area where we are actively involved in, is the enhanced versioning feature currently being developed for DOC1 which will help us to maintain a complex system in the future.