Agency Marketing Technology—Creating electronic applications 08/05

AGENCY MARKETING TECHNOLOGY

CREATING ELECTRONIC APPLICATIONS

Become a “do-it-yourself” e-forms maker

By Steve Anderson

Many agencies are developing workflows that include managing documents electronically. They are scanning incoming paper documents as well as capturing electronic policies that carriers are sending to the agency. Electronic document management is a great way to improve productivity in the agency. Unfortunately the marketing and sales processes aren’t experiencing the benefits that electronic document management can offer.

Gathering the necessary information for an application electronically and actually filling out the application online continues to be a cumbersome process. This is especially problematic when a carrier does not accept standard ACORD applications. There are many nonstandard and unusual lines of business for which an ACORD form does not exist. In addition, many carriers require supplemental applications in addition to the ACORD forms. It is these nonstandard and supplemental applications that continue to cause extra work.

There are solutions, though, that enable an agency to take paper-based forms and convert them into an electronic equivalent. The technology is in place so that virtually any application can be converted into an electronic form that can be e-mailed to the client, where it is filled out by the client, and then sent back to the agency. We would like to discuss a couple of different options that are available to accomplish this.

OmniForm. One program we have used for a number of years is called OmniForm (www.scansoft.com). With this program you can scan a paper application, import the scanned image into the program and convert it. When the scanned image is run through the OmniForm recognition engine, the text on the form is converted (using OCR—optical character recognition—technology) to the text equivalent. The process recognizes the different fields on the form and places them in the proper place on the electronic form. Electronic fields can include fill-in boxes, checkboxes, tables, and other common form elements.

Here’s an example of how you can use these types of electronic applications to streamline the marketing process. An agency we worked with specializes in writing physician and medical malpractice insurance. The application for this coverage with one of their carriers is 24 pages long. The agency did have the application in a PDF file format that they could e-mail to the physician to complete. The problem was that the physician had to print out the application and write out his or her answers.

Using the OmniForm software, we took the static PDF file and converted it to an electronic version of the application in the OmniForm proprietary format. After OmniForm added the basic fields to the form, we then went back to each page and “cleaned up” any mistakes or areas that did not convert correctly. During this process we were also able to make certain fields “smart” in several different ways, such as:

• “Mark” check boxes in the form (with an “X” or check mark). The mouse cursor changes to a hand shape and you just click on the box to mark it.

• Apply special formatting to number fields such as telephone numbers so that you can just type the numbers and the form puts the dashes in the right spot.

• Add calculation and other functions to fields. We can take a rate field and multiply it by a coverage amount field and insert the result into the premium field. It is like having a mini-rating program right in the form. The premium calculation “smarts” are completed as a by-product of completing the form. The accuracy of the form is assured because you are letting the computer do what it is good at, calculating numbers.

This version of the application is used by internal agency staff to capture the data on each individual application. A bit of tweaking is needed to create a version that the agency can send to the client. OmniForm Premium allows you to save the proprietary version of the application as other standard file types—PDF, HTML, and Word RTF. We saved the application as a PDF file. During this process all of the form functionality is included in the PDF file. The agency could now e-mail the application to the physician. Using the Adobe Reader®, the physician could open the file and type in the information directly on to the application, then save the PDF file and e-mail it back to the agency.

These forms can also be saved as HTML files. This provides interesting possibilities because these HTML files can be placed on an agency Web site where a client can be directed to complete the application and then “submit” the form data to the agency as a data file. This data file can be imported back in to the OmniForm file, and the application can be printed and sent to the carrier.

Adobe Acrobat. A process similar to the one described above is available by using the full Adobe Acrobat® program (www.adobe.com). Acrobat allows you to create a form and place fillable fields on the form. The difficulty with Acrobat is that the process of creating the form and placing the fields is labor-intensive. However, we do like using the PDF file format. It is a standard format and most people have Adobe Reader so they will be able to open and complete the form. We recommend using OmniForm to create the PDF file and then using Acrobat for any specific cleaning up to that file.

Streamlining the process of capturing nonstandard and supplemental application information will go a long way to improving the efficiency of the marketing and submission process in your agency. It will also improve the communication between you and those prospects who want to deal with you using electronic formats. It is well worth the time to investigate the available options. *

The author
Steve Anderson has been a licensed insurance agent for more than 25 years and is editor and publisher of TAAR (The Automated Agency Report). He helps agents maximize productivity and profits using practical technology. He can be reached at (615) 599-0085; e-mails are welcome at steve@SteveAnderson.com or visit his Web site at www.SteveAnderson.com.