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The McLaughlin Company Success Story

Founded in 1929, The McLaughlin Company has insured thousands of labor organizations, trust funds, associations and businesses over the years. They represent a broad array of insurance markets including Travelers, Royal Insurance, Hartford, Zurich and Ulico. Through long-established brokerage arrangements, McLaughlin has access to hundreds of additional companies. Through the years, the scope of their services has broadened to include risk management and their area of operations has expanded from the Washington, D.C., area to the entire nation. Serving some 4,000 clients totaling $25 million in premium volume, McLaughlin’s 27 employees rely on peak efficiency to interact with the company's network of 40 independent agents.

The Challenge

The insurance world is paper-intensive. "We constantly have to manage the storage and retrieval of paper — including e-mails, faxes, documents, spreadsheets, etc. that come into the office and the paper that is produced by the office," says Comptroller Susan Good. With 4,000 clients interacting with multiple insurance markets, the variety and quantity of forms grows exponentially.

Handling data electronically is equally challenging. According to Good, McLaughlin was successfully using Applied Systems TAM Ver. 7.1 as the center of their automation. The system integrates with Microsoft Word, Excel, Outlook and other programs to handle underwriting, claims, accounting and marketing in one integrated program.

But connecting the continued influx of forms and attachments to associated clients was becoming a nightmare. Much of the information captured was at the discretion of the employee causing the results to be inconsistent. A previous imaging system that promised to smooth integration of data was not living up to expectations.

"The OCR didn't work well and retrieval was difficult," Good explains. "Data conversion was problematic due to a lack of data normalization of images in our old imaging system."

McLaughlin had a solid business management software suite that could deal with specialized demands. "TAM was the most user friendly agency management system that would do all the processing necessary to run our insurance agency," Good says. But the bottleneck continued when it came to inputting critical paperwork and keeping associated items connected with clients. They needed the extended features, flexibility and performance of a dedicated document management system.

The PaperWise Solution

PaperWise was selected because of their ability to solve all of the customer's unique problems and fully integrate with their existing management system.

PaperWise worked with the customer several weeks before the install to develop a strategic plan and ensure that all specific issues and requirements were addressed. Once on site, PaperWise engineers installed the system on the customer's primary and terminal servers. An extraction was run from the old imaging system that successfully imported all images and index information. PaperWise installed scan stations, user workstations, provided in-depth user training, and remained on site while the system went live.

While PaperWise supports back-end scanning, McLaughlin chose the increased efficiency of front-end scanning. All incoming materials to the mailroom are now scanned into PaperWise and electronically routed to users for immediate processing. The documents are only handled once for scanning into the system, eliminating lost documents and delivery delays. As documents in the queue are processed, they are indexed with TAM and PaperWise together with a single keystroke.

The PaperWise Enterprise architecture made full use of McLaughlin’s TAM platform. The strengths of the company's existing data management system have been maximized and overall productivity and efficiency are soaring with PaperWise in the equation.

Good reports major time savings. "Where we used to have to first file paper and then retrieve paper from large files, we can now quickly index images to activities. We retrieve images in seconds rather than minutes."

PaperWise allows McLaughlin personnel to handle any array of documentation and quickly update a myriad of client and activity files.

"Through PaperWise," Good says, "we can index any attachments (spreadsheets, PowerPoint images, documents, e-mails, faxes) to clients, policy activities, checks, cash receipts, vendors, companies, etc. in TAM with a single keystroke."

Users didn't give up their desktop scanners. Visioner Strobe scanners are used to scan occasional documents at the user workstation. With a keystroke, they are sent from PaperPort to PaperWise where they are indexed to a client, policy or activity.

The workflow through TAM is smoother. Document retrieval is rapid and reliable. A full-time document-scanning clerk is no longer needed.

By streamlining and standardizing data storage and usage, according to Good, McLaughlin is enjoying heightened management control of the insurance world's ever-growing paper trail. PaperWise is the driving force behind that control.

"We're using PaperWise as the conduit for all attachments to our database," Good says. "We're able to manage paper and processes, viewing all the paper involved on a given desk. Our goal is to have PaperWise used as the default printer on every workstation in the company."

Whether it's a document, spreadsheet, e-mail, fax, photo or any variety of form, McLaughlin employees enjoy flawless interaction between PaperWise, TAM and PaperPort.

In addition to the accomplishments of the initial install, a complete success is dependant on an ongoing relationship. Frequent dialog between PaperWise and McLaughlin results in continuous improvements to both the product and the integration. PaperWise tech support ensures that McLaughlin’s questions are met with quick and accurate answers. "Tech support is excellent," Good says. "We've enjoyed a fast response and encountered knowledgeable staff."

McLaughlin and PaperWise — it's a partnership that is sure to expedite the insurance needs of union clients for years to come.