5 Trends in Document Management

Insurers need to establish the business case for a new vision of document management. Celent comes to this conclusion in its new report “The Market Dynamics of Document Management.” Insurers tend to deal with complex internal structures and multiple document composition engines, which hinders the document and communication management processes. Considering the need to work with multiple distribution channels and to communicate through various vehicles means that insurance companies definitely need to rethink their approach, the report states.  

For the first of two document management reports, Celent talked to 90 insurance professionals from around the world and identified five trends that require specific attention:

1. Centralization of competence and simplification of the application architecture
2. Roles of business and IT users are changing
3. Communication management requires improvement of customer understanding
4. The growing importance of outsourcing
5. The emergence of notepads and smartphones

Each of these five trends presents different levels of cost-saving potential and business impact. Many aspects related to document automation and management have a direct impact on insurers’ internal organization, resources at the business, and the IT level and systems. A multiplicity of IT tools are available for insurance companies, making the choice difficult.

The majority of insurers use multiple tools to manage both mass and personalized documentation. Celent attributes this to evolution; insurers historically have either developed applications internally or acquired them after a merger. Since maintaining multiple tools costs more and adds complexity to the application architecture, Celent advises insurers to assess the business case for simplification, taking into consideration the breadth of functionality of modern document automation systems.