Central States Health and Life Insurance of Omaha Case Study

Founded in 1932, Central States Health and Life Insurance of Omaha (CSO) was originally known throughout the Midwest as a quality provider of credit protection for loan recipients. Having grown tremendously in the years since, CSO is now licensed to conduct business in 49 states and offers a full line of individual health, life, work-site, and disability insurance plans. In accordance with their goal to be "the best supplemental insurance company in the country," CSO is ever vigilant in their pursuit of more responsive and efficient customer service.

THE SITUATION: One area in which CSO saw room for improvement was at its flagship division - the Credit Insurance Division (CID). The 200 professionals at CID were relying on Imnet SARD systems to print credit insurance applications and associated paperwork - about 800 documents per day. When they were purchased 7 years ago, the SARD systems were considered proficient at printing high volumes of documents stored as images on digitized film. With the emergence of new technologies, however, the systems were now regarded as bulky, difficult to use, and costly to maintain. Other critical issues included the frequency of systems failure and the resulting delays for CSO policyholders.

Long-time members of AIIM (the Association of Information and Image Management), the MIS group at CID sought recommendations from their local chapter colleagues. There they met Greg Pauba of Digital Information Management, an OnBase Solution Provider that several years ago had made the transition from providing film-based imaging solutions to providing PC-based information management systems. After a detailed analysis of CID's application and needs, Greg recommended the OnBase Information Management System from Hyland Software, Inc.

THE SOLUTION: CID received proposals for other imaging solutions as well -including FileNet, Eastman Software and OTG. While OnBase was not the least expensive solution, CID determined it to be the only one capable of addressing their complete set of requirements. True integration among the OnBase modules would permit users to access all appropriate information through a single, easy to use client interface. Point and click configuration would allow complete customization and an expeditious installation. The scaleable architecture would enable CID to roll out the system to an initial base of users and add as many additional users as needed in the future. Compliance with open standards would ensure compatibility with CID's preferred hardware and software.

CSO acquired the complete solution from Digital Information Management. The initial installation included three OnBase processing modules: OnBase Imaging, OnBase COLD (Computer Output to Laser Disk), and OnBase Document Import Processor. CSO also purchased enough concurrent OnBase Client licenses to accommodate the printing needs of 200 agents. Originally, the system storage, a Dell 6100 database server with 18GB of hard disk storage running Microsoft SQL Server, two Plasmon jukeboxes with 400GB of optical storage apiece, a Mekel film scanner for the conversion of film to digital images, and a Bell & Howell Copiscan 3338A scanner for the input of paper documents.

THE RESULT: With the OnBase system now installed and running at CID, users are witnessing all of the improvements for which they had hoped. From scanning to printing, the OnBase system continues to accommodate the agency's high volume of storage and retrieval with a minimum of interruptions. The conversion of 15 million documents from film to digital images is also proceeding well, thanks to the OnBase Document Import Processor. The DIP module is importing, indexing, and storing documents to optical disk 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, at a rate of 4,000 images every 45 minutes.

Greg Pauba aims to introduce OnBase to the other CSO divisions, as well as to encourage the adoption of additional software modules. "Optical Character Recognition, Exception Reporting, Workflow, and Internet Server would provide great benefits to the entire agency," said Greg. "There's no reason to maintain inefficient processes that drain resources when better tools are available."

CSO is one of many successful OnBase installations for Digital Information Management. Greg Pauba attributes his success at selling OnBase software to its uniquely integrated and open architecture, as well as to the company that stands behind it. "OnBase is a wonderful product made by a wonderful company," Greg commented. "Hyland Software bends over backwards to support their dealers and to make our customers happy."