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Bowermaster & Associates Success Story

For over fifty years, Bowermaster and Associates, based out of Cypress, Calif., has experienced tremendous growth. Since opening in 1954, they have expanded to five regional offices. Today, they maintain a client base of more than 5,000 customers across the nation and abroad. The family owned and operated insurance agency provides services covering property and casualty, group benefits insurance, financial services, and HR consulting. Bowermaster has been guided strongly by its pledge to provide dedicated and efficient service to its customers while being an agency that lives up to its commitments.

Bowermaster and Associates prides itself in being "The Next Generation Insurance Agency." Martin Mullan, Vice President of Operations, has been with Bowermaster and Associates for 13 years. In his time there, he says the agency has made a "concerted and ongoing effort to remain on the cutting edge of the automation available to small businesses and specifically the insurance industry." As Bowermaster decided to open additional sales offices, they wanted to keep support at their main office. However, the only way to do this was to invest in a formal, dedicated document management system. At that time, their processes saturated the agency with paper files in office and off-site at a storage facility.

The Need for a New System

According to Mullan, previous processes were extremely time consuming. As files were created, they were placed alphabetically in file cabinets. At least once a year the expired contents of the files were transferred to a "dead file" and those files were stored on site for two years. After two years, they were moved off-site to a storage facility. If data needed to be accessed, the person responsible for the file would have to search for it to view any information sought after. If the file was off site, the person had to drive to the storage facility and find the box containing the required file. When information from the file needed to be emailed or faxed to a client, it had to be scanned first. After the file was finished being used, it was set on top of other file cabinets and waited to be re-filed by clerks, which sometimes meant returning it to the off-site facility. In order to accomplish their goal of centralizing their processes, administration felt they had to go paperless.

The search for a partner to address the industry specific needs of Bowermaster proved difficult. They needed software able to integrate with their management system, Applied Systems’ Vision. This software was the backbone of agency automation, housing not only all of their client and prospect data, but also accounting and personnel information. "Our agency had literally tens of thousands of paper files that were tied to records kept in our Vision database," explains Mullan. Bowermaster ultimately chose PaperWise because it was able to customize to such an extent that they were able to address historical, existing, and new documents with the same workflow and without duplicating entries. The PaperWise solution was also capable of using existing indexing in the Applied Systems database to link to scanned images of the file that had previously pointed to paper copies.

Integration with Ease

Bowermaster used a desktop management program called Paperport, in addition to Applied Systems' Vision, for scanning images. This program, however, did not integrate with Vision. They needed a solution that would allow them to house and retrieve the images associated with their clients, yet able to integrate with their industry specific management system; PaperWise accomplished this with ease. Bowermaster Management and IT Manager, Aaron Tuomala, worked side-by-side with PaperWise consultants to create new workflows to produce the most benefit for Bowermaster. By the time they were ready to go live there were thousands of active client files in the system. These files were systematically scanned and then linked to the Vision database. The same process occurred for all of their historical files; though budgeted to take 12-14 months to accomplish, the entire process took only eight months to complete. Dozens of file cabinets in their offices were eliminated, along with their need for and cost of an off-site storage facility.

Every item scanned into PaperWise was indexed to a unique "activity" in Vision. The integration between Applied Systems' Vision and PaperWise gave Bowermaster the ability to find images and documents through Vision using a hotkey to PaperWise. They could also use PaperWise’s advanced search capabilities to find data brought over from Vision, making all their data easily accessible. Key data fields associated in Vision automatically populated corresponding data fields in PaperWise, making indexing and retrieval seamless while also eliminating the possibility of keypunch errors and double entry. Eventually Bowermaster moved to dual screens for simultaneous viewing of both systems, which further increased their efficiency. Today, maneuvering between Vision and Paperwise is "as easy as toggling," says Mullan, "There were huge gains in efficiency by using the PaperWise solution."

A Method for Mail

For Bowermaster, a main area of concern was the workflow and efficiency of dealing with timely distribution and delivery of incoming mail. This problem was remedied using a barcode scanning feature. Today, when mail is received, it is sorted and placed into separate folders for each recipient. The agency's clerk then collects the folders and places the corresponding employee barcode cover sheet on each piece of mail. The mail is then placed into a high-speed scanner and documents are forwarded to the proper recipient through the bar code. According to Mullan, this method has made scanning faster and guarantees employees will accurately receive their mail the same day, every day. Another beneficial feature is the PaperWise Dashboard which monitors the amount of mail in an inbox. Mullan has found that the dashboard function "allows managers to ensure that employees are handling their mail in a timely fashion." Using PaperWise, associates are able to go straight to their PaperWise inbox for all their mail.

Their method for processing physical mail was not the only efficiency gain Bowermaster received. "We underestimated the benefit of being able to attach incoming and outgoing emails electronically through PaperWise to our clients," says Mullan, "we focused so much on the paper that we failed to factor in the efficiencies associated with the speed and ease of saving our emails, faxes and Word documents through PaperWise. Once we started using this feature my staff was like 'Wow, this is awesome!'" Before PaperWise, staff members had to print out emails, documents, and faxes, and then place them in paper files for the corresponding clients. Now documenting email is simple. Time is saved because emails and faxes are stored in the system with just the touch of a button.

Secured Files

Documents in the insurance industry not only have to be kept for several years, but the information in most documents is sensitive and needs to be secure. Bowermaster was able to find remedies for these standard requirements through the PaperWise solution. One major concept that helped them was the ability to index documents by department. Having documents for different departments segregated made it possible for administration to ensure only those granted access could view and retrieve certain documents. With this feature, it is possible to restrict employees from manipulating or deleting images from the database. "We have everything on PaperWise... so we need security on those items," says Mullan. Security options within PaperWise were easily customized, allowing Bowermaster to satisfy all of their specific needs.

Continued Satisfaction

"Being new to a document management system, we originally viewed PaperWise as supporting Vision. As we became more familiar with PaperWise, we realize we could go straight through it to retrieve all our documents," says Mullan, "PaperWise can stand on its own." PaperWise allowed Bowermaster to expand and open additional sales offices while keeping support centralized. According to Mullan this has not only made their operations run more efficiently, but the expanded capabilities have directly and dramatically impacted their bottom line. Bowermaster gained a system that allows their processes to run more smoothly, as well as saving time and money on paper and storage. "PaperWise allowed us to expand in a way we could not have without a superior document management system," says Mullan. The service industry is one where the demand for things is often "right now." With the PaperWise system, Bowermaster has been able to respond more quickly to their clients' needs, and in return, are able to meet the level of service expected by their customers.