How we helped a P&C insurance company expedite data entry into their Policy Administration System using Robotic Process Automation
There’s a reason so many people own automatic coffee makers. Before those countertop time-savers were invented, people resorted to the old-fashioned process of measuring water temperature, pouring, waiting, and then pouring some more. Without the ability to click a button and automate the sequence, you essentially lose valuable time forever. This concept of saving time and money is exactly what helped our client increase their productivity using Robotic Process Automation.
Headquartered in downtown Columbus, Ohio, Encova (formerly Motorists), is a super-regional property and casualty insurance company offering personal and commercial insurance through 2000 independent agents. Encova has been a client of Centric Consulting since we established our Columbus business unit in 1999. We have worked on many types of projects spanning from portal development, mobile development, merger and acquisition activities, and data analytics strategy work.
In this case, Encova was experiencing massive amounts of lost time and productivity when agents emailed applications for quoting. For example, to initiate the workflow, an associate had to open the email and scan through the attached PDF form to enter the account data into the Guidewire Policy Administration System and then create an activity to kick off the workflow. It would typically take a full day for someone to open the email and do the entry.
Encova was aware of the challenges of extracting data from PDFs using OCR (Optical Character Recognition) but did not have the bandwidth to investigate. The application form had multiple versions and the formatting was inconsistent between agencies.