Trisura is one of Canada’s fastest-growing specialty commercial carriers. The company’s devotion to superior service, as well as its innovative solutions for contract and commercial surety, directors’ and officers’ liability, fidelity, professional liability, media liability and warranties, have helped it grow to nearly $100 million in premiums in just eight years.

Of course, that much revenue —across a broad spectrum of lines and products —generates a significant amount of paperwork. From documentation, endorsements and application forms to correspondence with end customers and brokers, each policy (and there are thousands of policies) comes with dozens or hundreds of documents. In the early days, Trisura was capable of handling all that on paper. But as the company grew, paper started to become a major problem.

There had to be a better way. And fortunately for Trisura, there was.

Making the Switch to Document Management With NTI

By 2009, Trisura managers were getting their first inklings that an efficient, electronic document management solution was necessary. But despite some inefficiency in retrieval and day-to-day use, the firm’s staff of 40 was still able to keep up with their document demands. Barely.

In 2011, Trisura finally hit the tipping point. Filing cabinets containing seemingly endless manila folders and tabbed binders took up an excessive amount of floorspace —to say nothing of the paper files piled on every underwriter’s desk. Keeping up with demands centered around policy renewal and maturation was borderline impossible. Simply finding the right paperwork took up an inordinate amount of staff time —negatively affecting productivity and hampering growth. And all that wasted storage space wasn’t cheap, either.

Clearly, it was time to deploy a proper document management solution.

To do so, Trisura first drew up a list of specifications. These included:

·         Ease-of-use and an intuitive interface

·         Seamless intra-system navigation

·         Integration with a Microsoft-centric IT ecosystem (Microsoft Office, Windows platform, SQL server)

·         Shallow learning curve

·         Highly responsive support

After a head-to-head evaluation of a number of solutions, Trisura approached Toronto technology solution provider Novacc Technology, Inc., about Cabinet SAFE, a complete paperless document management software solution, designed to allow organizations to increase efficiency, improve security, save physical space and reduce their carbon footprint –all without fundamental changes to existing workflows and processes.

Custom Planning and Deployment

NTI presented Trisura with their deployment options and guided them through the initial decision-making process. Trisura chose a phased approach, determined who internally would first use SAFE, and selected a backfile conversion (mass scanning of existing paper documents to create a holistic digital database) allowing staffers full access to digital versions of documents – and allowing managers to outsource storage of all those paper files to a far less expensive facility.

With a solid plan in place, the actual deployment of SAFE went smoothly, thanks to NTI’s rich knowledge of the software and its custom configuration capabilities. NTI suggested and implemented a number of innovative solutions based on expanding on SAFE’s robust core capabilities, including the use of Cabinet’s Synchronizer module to automatically create a folder in SAFE when a new account is created in the policy administration system. This one seemingly minor feature has saved Trisura staffers countless hours of time, significantly reduced duplicate data entry and helped ensure accurate information in a business where accuracy means everything.

Finding New Efficiencies With NTI

Just over two years after NTI configured and launched SAFE for Trisura, the insurance carrier is reaping the benefits each and every day. Every corporate risk underwriter has the solution open and running throughout their workday, giving them instant access to policy information that used to be contained in a large filing room. A typical workflow, for instance, involves an underwriter pulling up account information at renewal time, reviewing financials, corresponding with a broker, issuing a new quote and re-filing updated information. On paper, this could all contain hours of non-value-added tasks. Today, that number is essentially zero.

In the accounts payable department, invoices are digitized, then processed—from intake through approval, then to payables and back to signing officers, who are required to give final review before signing checks. Once again, SAFE has significantly cut back on wasted time and effort throughout this process.

With NTI’s custom-built solution allowing access to SAFE from within Trisura’s claim system, the claims management department enjoys similar efficiency. This is especially important, since a single piece of missing information can mean the difference between a smooth claim and one requiring many hours of extra work.

 “NTI has been a really great partner. We know what results we want to get out of the SAFE system, but have questions about implementation. All we have to do is present them with the final functionality we’re looking for and they come right back with creative solutions adapted to meet our specific needs, configuring the changes quickly and efficiently,” said Dragan Popovic, Trisura’s Vice President, Information Systems. “With the Cabinet SAFE solution NTI deployed, all of our information, enterprise-wide, is secure and easily accessible, all in one place. No matter what we need, information is at our fingertips – and users are very happy.”