Content management remains highly relevant to many organisations of all sizes. Friendly societies however have even more reason to want the benefits that Content Management brings.
Friendly Societies
What are Friendly Societies?
Friendly societies operate similarly to co-operatives, being owned and managed by members, with profits reinvested into the business. Many of these societies were historically established to provide ‘insurance’ services. Given that customers are also the owners, delivering excellent customer service is a top priority.
The Importance of Accurate Records
Maintaining clear and accurate records of all customer communications is vital for delivering excellent customer service. While a good filing system sufficed in the past, the advent of time and technology has introduced additional complexities. Factors such as multiple offices, remote working, email, online chat, etc., have made maintaining a single accurate record more challenging, even as customer service expectations continue to rise.
Customer Service
Organisations in healthcare, insurance, or finance typically have databases holding customer information. While structured data is managed effectively, what about unstructured communication that doesn’t fit neatly into database fields? Managing letters, emails, online chat messages, and a variety of paperwork covering claims, receipts, and other types of physical or electronic documents is essential.
Case Study: Open Connections and IBM FileNet
Open Connections collaborated with a UK-based Friendly Society to put IBM FileNet at the heart of their records. The initial task involved migrating thousands of records from an older, traditional scanning system which had been in use for several years.
With the new system installed and the old one migrated,Open Connections replaced the customer’s scanning system. The use of a more modern and flexible product allowed for efficient ingestion of physical post that was still being received. Automatic handling of different document types ensured each was reliably labelled with the correct tags to ensure they were attached to the right customer record. automatic form reading was used to input key data from application forms directly into backend databases.
The next stage was to add ingestion of email. Several email addresses existed for customers to send requests or information to, and these were integrated into the document flow stored in IBM FileNet P8. These emails included a range of potential attachments, from receipts to medical documentation.
The customer had a very active IT development team who with Open Connections providing training and support developed numerous integrations to back end and front office systems. These integrations ensured that their staff had the documents they needed available exactly when and where they needed them by providing access from inside their front office systems. A single button click can take a user from the database record of a customer to their document history sorted and presented in a style that suits the likely use.
Benefits
Industry leading customer service
This customer and others like them continues to gain business advantage by providing excellent customer service using Content Management alongside their other technologies. Instant access to the right documents ensures anyone interacting with the customer has all the right information available regardless of its source. They can do this wherever they are working.
Whilst customer service benefits alone are enough to justify this system many other benefits are also being seen:
Meeting FCSA requirements
Any business in a regulated industry such as insurance need to demonstrate to their regulator that they have sufficient safeguards in place, including both security and compliance. The comprehensive security and audit provided by IBM FileNet P8 allows the customer to ensure documents are held in a way that guarantees they are only visible to those who should see them and they can evidence who has accessed what documents. The architecture of IBM FileNet P8 is truly enterprise-level, allowing the customer to implement high availability and resilience to a level required by their regulator.
Flexibility and Agility
Modern businesses need to to be able to change quickly to meet new business demands. This has never been more true that during the COVID pandemic. Having all the paper and electronic correspondence available to remote workers was key to keeping the business functioning. Whilst this was an extreme example, the ability to have work performed by people in remote locations adds significant flexibility.
Management of Costs
Several years ago the customer took the decision to move their system to the cloud, as part of this their document storage was moved to S3 which provides relatively low cost long term storage for their document history with all the resilience that they need being included in the S3 offering. They were also also able to ‘right size’ their servers by monitoring the on premise servers before the move. As a result the main server used by the customer runs on very modest hardware an important factor to consider when comparing different solution to be used on the cloud.
Future Proofing
Open Connections first implemented IBM Content Management for this customer in 2002 and have been working with them ever since. With one technology upgrade and many minor upgrades later the customer is still on IBM’s flagship Content Management system. This means their investment in integrating the solution into many parts of their business has paid off many times over. New options for running the solution in containers either on RedHat OpenShift or many of the cloud providers’ own native platforms mean the customer still has many options to consider. With the advent of Artificial Intelligence we can also show the the customer how this can be beneficial in many areas such as:
- reading and extracting data from complex incoming documents
- identifying contents of attachments on emails
- writing outgoing documents in a more conversational style
- searching across their document store for common concepts or trends
The new options ensure this solution is continually moving forward with technology.
If you would like to hear more about the benefits that are possible or to discuss how your organisation could benefit as well contact us using this page.