Delivering exceptional customer service is vital for GPE, whose wealth management and employee benefit solutions are relied on by companies across Europe. SoftCo Cloud and SoftCo Managed Services have been instrumental in helping GPE meet the compliance challenges of a dynamic insurance market, delivering a new and fully optimised end-to-end business process for document management.

Compliance and process challenges

Document retention and compliant storage requirements are key challenges for the entire insurance industry. But for providers like GPE, who manage client employee policies that can extend over decades, the sheer size of client files makes document processing, storage and retrieval an even greater challenge.

In 2010 GPE performed an exhaustive vendor selection process for a partner who could deliver on its vision of electronic storage of all client policy documentation. At the time GPE held thousands of client files solely in paper format, a practice that not only limited access to information, but also put that information at potential risk from disaster such as fire or flood. A new and optimised business process for document management would also reduce costs and improve visibility for GPE.

After a tendering process GPE chose SoftCo, recognising the company's financial services experience, its leading edge Business Process Automation (BPA) technology and the cost competitiveness of its solution.

The SoftCo Solution

SoftCo Managed Services provide a total solution for Generali's document management challenges, incorporating an innovative cloud-based infrastructure that offers total security and better cost efficiencies:

• SoftCo has allowed GPE to automate the business process surrounding client policy documentation: SoftCo collects, scans and processes all GPE documentation on-site in SoftCo’s dedicated Managed Services location.
• all documents are uploaded to SoftCo Cloud, a secure on-demand document management and BPA platform hosted on ISO27001 compliant infrastructure. SoftCo Cloud minimises the IT burden on GPE and facilitates compliance with industry regulation
• web-based access to secure archive allows faster document searching and retrieval for staff in all GPE locations, in Ireland and Europe
• full lifecycle management allows automatic alerting of documents approaching the end of required retention periods
• easy upload of e-mails and other client policy documents from a staff member's browser direct to SoftCo R8 in the SoftCo Cloud

Adding Value to Generali’s Business

SoftCo Cloud offers a range of benefits to GPE, including the ability to leverage a fully compliant cloud-based storage and retrieval platform with no capital costs, maintenance costs or upgrades.

Scalability is also seamless: the SoftCo Managed Service easily handles fluctuations in the volume of documents being captured, which are typically around 1000 documents per week but can rise to as much as 3000 per week.

Generali PanEurope says that the overall SoftCo solution -- which also incorporates six years of archived documents to give a complete digital archive -- has delivered clear value to its operations:

"It was a burden to have to search through paper files for required information, and staff say they love having everything available from their browser and easy to find," said Birgit Smith, Business Analyst, Generali PanEurope. "We are delighted with SoftCo’s document management solution: it's fast, it's easy to use, and it gives us great control," she said. "We also get excellent service on any change requests. It's a great working relationship."

Birgit has already recommended SoftCo to colleagues and clients based on the success of the end-to-end solution from SoftCo and the professionalism of its approach.