Up In The Air Over A New Document Management System
People are often daunted by fresh technology installations; completely revamping a system can be intimidating. Just as difficult, perhaps, is attempting to seamlessly transfer from an existing to a new system. Compare it to a driver trying to change vehicles — while both cars barrel down the road at 120 miles per hour. Poor judgement could be disastrous, if not fatal. For that reason, the transition between two systems can be fraught with stress and tension.
Ask Valley Insurance Companies of Albany, OR. The $160 million insurance provider was using an IBM Image Plus system to manage the company's massive quantities of paperwork. The solution worked well. It reduced paperwork. It improved efficiency. It was not, however, Y2K compliant. So, when the company learned of the problem in 1998, it knew that the coming year would be consumed with achieving a new solution.
Transferring Document Management Systems
"Transferring systems is, without doubt, harder than creating a new one," ponders Carroll Clabaugh, vice president of information technology at Valley Insurance. "Creating a system allows you to choose among a number of open options. Transferring from an old system is very limiting, because you have to mirror the systems and processes of the old system. It would have been too disruptive to completely change the way the old system worked. So, we used the IBM Image Plus as a guideline for the new system, keeping its strengths and abandoning its shortcomings for superior solutions."
Clabaugh and his staff made a list of criteria for the new system. The first was to replace the noncompliant IBM system with a new system that would still operate on an AS/400 platform. The second was to increase functional and architectural capabilities using the industry-standard TIFF image storage format. And the last was to find technology that more strategically complemented the company's workflow and imaging requirements.
Initially, Valley Insurance approached IBM to solve its problems. "We told IBM that we had a problem with our current system and asked for its strategic direction," recounts David Capps, manager of information technology and client support at Valley Insurance. "In the end, we didn't feel that IBM's strategy was the right direction for us, and we began assessing other vendors."
Valley's strict criteria helped the company narrow its search immediately, and the company soon homed in on Magellan Software. Based in Irvine, CA, Magellan provides electronic content management and e-business solutions. Valley Insurance negotiated terms with Magellan in late 1998; and by January 1999, the project was under way.
Valley began the project by mirroring existing workflow and imaging processes. This was difficult, since all the images on the system had to be converted to the new system architecture. Valley had 4 million images saved in a proprietary format called mo:dca. Rather than resaving all mo:dca files as TIFF files, the company configured the system to read old files by converting the database format.
Another change Valley Insurance wanted was the conversion of its existing jukebox technology to DASD (direct access storage devices). Because of the company's workflow system, employees often need immediate access to documents. The jukebox technology would not allow multiple users that kind of real-time access. "The jukebox technology is good, but ours only held six drives," says Clabaugh. "If you've got a thousand requests for data from one jukebox, and you can only serve six at a time, you're going to have problems."
The Magellan system allowed Valley Insurance to move its optical files to DASD by reading from one format to another in a caching routine. This allowed data to be downloaded and accessed very quickly. Over the course of one weekend, the company was able to convert and backlog 18 months worth of files.
Valley Insurance's conversion to the new system did not, however, end in its Albany, OR headquarters. The company had to convert the system corporate-wide — in Sacramento, CA, and in a sister company in New Hampshire. Valley Insurance achieved this by staggering the implementations for each site. The installations took place between September and December 1999, just in time to avoid any Y2K concerns.
Clabaugh and his staff coordinated the transition over a weekend. This allowed the company to conduct training for the new system the entire week prior to the transition. Then, as employees arrived at work on Monday morning, the training was fresh in their minds.
Stewart Wetter, programmer and Webmaster at Valley Insurance, says one of the biggest difficulties for new employees was moving from the IBM monochrome screen system to a Windows GUI (graphical user interface) environment. "People initially complained about having to use a mouse so much," comments Wetter. "Once people got used to it, though, they generally found it easier."
Configuring A New Document Management System
Valley Insurance Companies runs a very paper-intensive business. Nearly all applications come to the company by mail or fax. All the paper ends up in one place, though: the scanning department. There, staples are removed from the paperwork in preparation for scanning. Once prepped, the batches of paper are run through a Kodak 3500 scanner, which converts the hard files into TIFF images. The scanned images are then brought on-screen by employees who use the digital image to set indexing parameters. This is done with a "screen scrape" function that transfers seven key fields into indexing information.
Once indexed, a "release" function transfers the images to the company's AS/400. This begins an automated workflow that transfers the image to the appropriate queue. Workflows are displayed in a window on the right side of the user's screen. This allows users to monitor all incoming work. Once a user completes a task, it is then routed to the next appropriate person in the workflow. The new system allows the company to set more parameters for the workflow process, too. The system can designate time limits for items in the workflow. For example, if a document is time-critical, a limit of three days might be placed on it. The system can send an e-mail notification to a manger, or direct the work to the manager's queue. This ensures that no items sit in the queue longer than the designated time frame or get lost in the workflow system.
New Document Management System Brings Unexpected Benefits
Valley Insurance Companies was able to transition smoothly between two systems. Somewhere in the process, the company also enhanced the functionality of its system. The old system would not interface with Word documents — a serious shortcoming. The new system doesn't have this problem. The old system also would not allow interfaces with the Internet. But, the company is already planning Web-enabled features for the new system. Another enhancement allows insurance agents to submit photographs via e-mail as JPEG attachments. The old system didn't allow for this. Previously, agents would mail hard copies of photographs to Valley. The company would scan the images and save them, but rarely in color, because the files occupied so much space on the server. The JPEG format not only allows for e-mail transfers, but also color images.
When asked to assess the success of the installation and whether the company met the criteria it had outlined, Clabaugh quickly responded. "The new system is a complete success in my view. Not only were we able to seamlessly transfer systems, but we also increased functionality," comments Clabaugh. "We plan on continuing efforts to improve. We're happy with the system now, but we still see much more potential. It's our job to make sure we get as much out of this system as possible — and I feel confident we can do that."
Doug Campbell
Ask Valley Insurance Companies of Albany, OR. The $160 million insurance provider was using an IBM Image Plus system to manage the company's massive quantities of paperwork. The solution worked well. It reduced paperwork. It improved efficiency. It was not, however, Y2K compliant. So, when the company learned of the problem in 1998, it knew that the coming year would be consumed with achieving a new solution.
Transferring Document Management Systems
"Transferring systems is, without doubt, harder than creating a new one," ponders Carroll Clabaugh, vice president of information technology at Valley Insurance. "Creating a system allows you to choose among a number of open options. Transferring from an old system is very limiting, because you have to mirror the systems and processes of the old system. It would have been too disruptive to completely change the way the old system worked. So, we used the IBM Image Plus as a guideline for the new system, keeping its strengths and abandoning its shortcomings for superior solutions."
Clabaugh and his staff made a list of criteria for the new system. The first was to replace the noncompliant IBM system with a new system that would still operate on an AS/400 platform. The second was to increase functional and architectural capabilities using the industry-standard TIFF image storage format. And the last was to find technology that more strategically complemented the company's workflow and imaging requirements.
Initially, Valley Insurance approached IBM to solve its problems. "We told IBM that we had a problem with our current system and asked for its strategic direction," recounts David Capps, manager of information technology and client support at Valley Insurance. "In the end, we didn't feel that IBM's strategy was the right direction for us, and we began assessing other vendors."
Valley's strict criteria helped the company narrow its search immediately, and the company soon homed in on Magellan Software. Based in Irvine, CA, Magellan provides electronic content management and e-business solutions. Valley Insurance negotiated terms with Magellan in late 1998; and by January 1999, the project was under way.
Valley began the project by mirroring existing workflow and imaging processes. This was difficult, since all the images on the system had to be converted to the new system architecture. Valley had 4 million images saved in a proprietary format called mo:dca. Rather than resaving all mo:dca files as TIFF files, the company configured the system to read old files by converting the database format.
Another change Valley Insurance wanted was the conversion of its existing jukebox technology to DASD (direct access storage devices). Because of the company's workflow system, employees often need immediate access to documents. The jukebox technology would not allow multiple users that kind of real-time access. "The jukebox technology is good, but ours only held six drives," says Clabaugh. "If you've got a thousand requests for data from one jukebox, and you can only serve six at a time, you're going to have problems."
The Magellan system allowed Valley Insurance to move its optical files to DASD by reading from one format to another in a caching routine. This allowed data to be downloaded and accessed very quickly. Over the course of one weekend, the company was able to convert and backlog 18 months worth of files.
Valley Insurance's conversion to the new system did not, however, end in its Albany, OR headquarters. The company had to convert the system corporate-wide — in Sacramento, CA, and in a sister company in New Hampshire. Valley Insurance achieved this by staggering the implementations for each site. The installations took place between September and December 1999, just in time to avoid any Y2K concerns.
Clabaugh and his staff coordinated the transition over a weekend. This allowed the company to conduct training for the new system the entire week prior to the transition. Then, as employees arrived at work on Monday morning, the training was fresh in their minds.
Stewart Wetter, programmer and Webmaster at Valley Insurance, says one of the biggest difficulties for new employees was moving from the IBM monochrome screen system to a Windows GUI (graphical user interface) environment. "People initially complained about having to use a mouse so much," comments Wetter. "Once people got used to it, though, they generally found it easier."
Configuring A New Document Management System
Valley Insurance Companies runs a very paper-intensive business. Nearly all applications come to the company by mail or fax. All the paper ends up in one place, though: the scanning department. There, staples are removed from the paperwork in preparation for scanning. Once prepped, the batches of paper are run through a Kodak 3500 scanner, which converts the hard files into TIFF images. The scanned images are then brought on-screen by employees who use the digital image to set indexing parameters. This is done with a "screen scrape" function that transfers seven key fields into indexing information.
Once indexed, a "release" function transfers the images to the company's AS/400. This begins an automated workflow that transfers the image to the appropriate queue. Workflows are displayed in a window on the right side of the user's screen. This allows users to monitor all incoming work. Once a user completes a task, it is then routed to the next appropriate person in the workflow. The new system allows the company to set more parameters for the workflow process, too. The system can designate time limits for items in the workflow. For example, if a document is time-critical, a limit of three days might be placed on it. The system can send an e-mail notification to a manger, or direct the work to the manager's queue. This ensures that no items sit in the queue longer than the designated time frame or get lost in the workflow system.
New Document Management System Brings Unexpected Benefits
Valley Insurance Companies was able to transition smoothly between two systems. Somewhere in the process, the company also enhanced the functionality of its system. The old system would not interface with Word documents — a serious shortcoming. The new system doesn't have this problem. The old system also would not allow interfaces with the Internet. But, the company is already planning Web-enabled features for the new system. Another enhancement allows insurance agents to submit photographs via e-mail as JPEG attachments. The old system didn't allow for this. Previously, agents would mail hard copies of photographs to Valley. The company would scan the images and save them, but rarely in color, because the files occupied so much space on the server. The JPEG format not only allows for e-mail transfers, but also color images.
When asked to assess the success of the installation and whether the company met the criteria it had outlined, Clabaugh quickly responded. "The new system is a complete success in my view. Not only were we able to seamlessly transfer systems, but we also increased functionality," comments Clabaugh. "We plan on continuing efforts to improve. We're happy with the system now, but we still see much more potential. It's our job to make sure we get as much out of this system as possible — and I feel confident we can do that."
Doug Campbell
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