Do Your Documents Manage You?

If an organization develops and maintains its content and documents effectively, the information contained therein can save time and money, and may even generate revenue. If not handled properly, however, content and documents can sap revenue and productivity—and may lead to legal problems when required documents can’t be found.

It’s no wonder, then, that many companies seek innovative ways to manage their business documents and content. The enterprise content-management market is now worth more than $3.4 billion in revenue worldwide, up from slightly more than $2.6 billion in 2006, according to industry researcher Gartner.

Columbus, Ohio-based Grange Insurance is one of the companies buying into these solutions. With more than $1 billion in annual revenue, the company was forced to deal with a never-ending stream of paper documents as it processed auto, home, life and farm policies for thousands of customers. Grange needed a way to make it easy for its network of independent agents to quickly provide quotes and policies to customers, and to process their claims and answer their questions in a timely manner.

Today, the company is benefiting from its investment in an IBM Enterprise Content Management solution, which scans nearly 60,000 documents daily. Grange’s service representatives can quickly access insurance documents online and provide that information to customers via e-mail or phone. As a result, customers are served faster, receiving claim updates, new policy quotes and coverage details in minutes instead of hours or days. This level of customer service has helped the company grow its business without having to hire additional service reps.

“This was the best decision we ever made,” says Jerry Valentine Sr., lead computer analyst. “This solution is now the cornerstone for how our corporate information is stored and processed.”

As Grange discovered, document and content management often involves the transformation of paper files into a digital format. But it can also encompass other areas, such as security, disaster recovery, collaboration, e-discovery and printer management. Baseline recently spoke with executives at enterprises that have launched initiatives to improve oversight of their corporate documents.