Scanning Time

As recently as January 2005, to meet Sarbanes-Oxley retention and retrieval requirements, Burlington, Mass.-based workers' compensation insurer AIM Mutual Insurance ($132 million in annual premium) manually scanned 8,000 pieces of paper into its storage system a day. To streamline the process, AIM partnered with document management software provider Laserfiche (Long Beach, Calif.). Now, "Once [a document] is processed, the software brings over any critical information that can be indexed, providing us with more accuracy" for legal inquiries, explains Paul Kelley, services manager for AIM Mutual.

To support Laserfiche's imaging and document management software, AIM upgraded its fax and scanning hardware to Panasonic (Secaucus, N.J.) UF-9000 fax machines and KV-S3065C scanners. Laserfiche consultants also recommended that the carrier provide mobile scanners to agents in the field, allowing claims adjusters and sales/underwriters to submit documents electronically for processing, storage and retrieval. Now, AIM Mutual's back office is able to process 50 pages per minute electronically, and the time needed to store, search and retrieve files has been dramatically reduced. --Maria Woehr