QBE Manages Global Print Distribution with Solimar

QBE Regional Insurance is a major property and casualty U.S. insurer located in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin that sells its products through more than 1,400 independent agencies. Rated "A" (Excellent) by insurance industry analyst A.M. Best, QBE Regional Insurance writes $1.5 billion in annual policy premiums and operates in 33 states. As one of the leading property and casualty insurers in the United States, they are a member of the Australia-based QBE Insurance Group, which is one of the top 25 insurers worldwide with assets of $26.5 billion and 10,000 employees across the globe. Solimar Systems interviewed John C. Bell, Document Services Manager at QBE Regional Insurance to discuss their implementation of the Solimar® Print Director™ Enterprise system.

In order to reduce the volume of paper documents and take advantage of their workflow systems, QBE wanted to create electronic documents for viewing without manually using a scanner. However, the majority of QBE's applications were developed to produce Metacode/DJDE legacy print streams, rather than viewable files. "We had no facility available in the print center to easily create and route electronic documents other than scanning paper," said Bell. Additionally, with consolidation efforts in the near term, a great deal of document system flexibility would be required.

"The Print Director system essentially supports any data stream type in either direction, which provides a great deal of flexibility."

John C. Bell, Jr.
QBE Regional Insurance

During the process of selecting an alternative solution, QBE identified five critical business objectives to achieve:

• Establish a vendor neutral print environment
• Re-purpose legacy print streams to enable online electronic document viewing
• Provide an efficient reprint operation that eliminates reprocessing jobs on the host Enable the manipulation of various incoming and outgoing data stream types
• Establish a vendor relationship with a strong and responsive technical support staff

Migrating to the Solimar® Print Director™ Enterprise (SPDE) system enhanced the QBE print center operations without the financial, human resource and business interruption costs of re-programming applications. The Metacode/DJDE legacy data streams used for print were re-purposed and automatically transformed into electronic TIFF documents for viewing. "The SPDE system essentially supports any data stream type in either direction, which provides a great deal of flexibility, especially with different printers and archiving systems," explains Bell.

The financial impact of implementing the SPDE system has been very positive for QBE. The company has discovered many ways to leverage SPDE to its benefit and believes the solution offers additional opportunities to improve operations in the future. Thus far, QBE is achieving impressive sustainable ROI results, including:

• Cutting labor expenses by $10,000 per year
• Reducing business process costs by $5,000 per year
• Decreasing reprint operations expenses by $2,500 per year
• Shortening document application turnaround time by a 1⁄2 day

The SPDE system also provides flexibility in how QBE chooses to configure its data center in the near term and in the future. It allows for more hardware choices and data stream options, while at the same time reducing the overall risk of technology obsolescence. "We are now in a position to look at multiple vendors for new printer hardware, instead of just one," states Bell. "We also can work with multiple host systems, data formats, and electronic output systems."

"The Solimar technical support staff has been friendly, timely, and accurate. I am very impressed."

John C. Bell, Jr.
QBE Regional Insurance

Comparing the SPDE experience with their previous operations is like night and day. "Unlike our previous system, SPDE is easy to use with a very good UI, and it's customizable by us," said Bell. "The Solimar technical support staff has been friendly, timely, and accurate. I am very impressed with their web-based support tool that allows them to see what I see at the same time. It's great for resolving issues together in real-time. It certainly is a refreshing change from the support of other vendors."