Strong growth in recent years has seen New Zealand Health Insurer Accuro adopt a hybrid cloud strategy and explore forms-based automation with its Laserfiche document management platform.

The hybrid cloud model sees Microsoft Office 365 deployed for email and office productivity for 30 staff while virtual servers host enterprise applications in an Auckland data centre and a dedicated data link to Wellington.

Originating in Wellington as the Hospital Service Welfare Society in August 1971, Accuro initially provided health cover to those workers employed by the 30 National Hospital Boards

Accuro is a 100% not-for-profit membership organisation with over 30,000 members. It offers a range of health plans for new Zealanders.

The firm began looking into enterprise content management (ECM) systems as a way to move from paper-based to digital workflow, and also to automate how that information moves and is used in everyday business processes.

The firm discovered Laserfiche through its copier and MD supplier Ricoh, one of the Australia/New Zealand nationwide resellers.

Now Accuro is looking to become one of the first organisations in the world to implement all-digital claims processing using Laserfiche Forms.

Claim forms are currently available as PDF downloads on the Accuro Web site which are then mailed, faxed or emailed in for manual scanning.

Initially the OCR capability was used to simply apply a filename to the scanned document based on the membership number. This was then used to allocate the file to the relevant folder for manual processing and data entry into Accuro's in-house developed CRM system.

An in-house developed CRM system is used for customer management, with SAP BusinessObjects for business reporting and Navision Finance.

"We are trying to find a solution through the use of Laserfiche to automate workflow with claims and membership management," said Connor O’Brien ICT Operations Manager at Accuro.

"There should be no need for paper-based environments anymore.

"Most of the other companies that have rolled out this product in New Zealand have deployed it as a document management system and are only starting to look at the Forms functionality. Whereas we've done it the other way around, we haven't actually deployed the document management functionality yet we have gone straight into the forms and the workflow.

"Initially we looked at some in-house processes that would be simple to implement and help us build our familiarity with the Laserfiche system.  

“We have now developed a fault logging system for our ICT dept., automate change notifications and requests, and leave applications have all been moved from paper into Laserfiche with automatic calculation of leave balances and automatic processing for manager approval.”

Accuro took the approach that it would help build familiarity with Laserfiche forms by applying it to some simple internal processes in parallel to the development work on the complex workflows required for membership applications and claims forms.

"We don't want to go live with anything until, we are 100% sure that it's working so we are running all the workflows in-house and debugging these. Putting them online for the public will be the final step," said O’Brien.

"One of the things we have found is that it will have a major impact in terms of shortening the time to process a membership application. It also provides advantages in terms of having much better visibility of what stage an application is at.

“Previously an application that arrived via mail or fax would just disappear into a black hole and pop out the other end. With the Laserfiche workflow you can pinpoint who it’s with, where has it been, where is it going to and what's holding it up.”

SharePoint portal

A SharePoint portal in Office365 is being used for some collaboration and notification tasks, but O’Brien is finding that non-technical staff are finding life easier working via the drag and drop interface to Laserfiche forms.

“You can create a simple form quite quickly and publish it. The HR manager can use it and so can the Operations Manager whereas they weren't so keen on SharePoint.”

Before implementing to more complex workflow onto their public-facing Web site Accuro have some work to do to update to a CMS-based platform. 

There is also the potential to implement digital signatures, although O’Brien feels that a secure logon facility will be sufficient.

Long term records management will remain within the CRM system

“Our CRM system stores all the applications and claims forms and supporting documents, what Laserfiche is doing is automating the process to create an electronic document that is named correctly before it is uploaded.

“The retention of all those scanned documents and invoices and referrals is within the CRM system not the Laserfiche database,” said O’Brien.

“Everything is also stored in paper archives but we want to get to a point where we don't have to retain the paper as well.”