imason Case Study - Intact Broker Manuals

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1 Intact Financial Corporation imason Case Study - Intact Broker Manuals This document summarizes a case study conducted on a Broker Manuals solution provided by imason inc. PREPARED BY IMASON INC. NOVEMBER 2010 imason imason Case Study - Intact Broker Manuals Intact Financial Corporation 1

solution provided by imason inc. PREPARED BY IMASON INC.

2 imason imason Case Study - Intact Broker Manuals Intact Financial Corporation 2

3 Solution Profile Challenge Intact Insurance is part of Intact Financial Corporation, Canada's largest provider of home, auto and business insurance. Intact s Western Division (one of four, the other three being Ontario, Québec and Atlantic) distributes documentation to thousands of brokers who sell Intact Insurance products. Brokers and their employees depend upon this documentation to do business with Intact. The Savers manual is just one example. This manual contains about 200 pages and Intact sends six to nine updates to over 1,200 broker locations each year. Printing and distribution costs alone make distributing all this paper very costly. And the costs don t stop there. If the documents are not updated in a correct and timely manner, this generates numerous broker inquiries to Intact Insurance underwriters. As well, there is a risk of incorrect processing of new business and endorsement transactions, and incorrect premiums being charged to customers. Adding to the complexity, manuals change by province in response to different insurance regulations. This makes the process of authoring and updating manuals much more cumbersome. Since independent brokers work with various insurance companies, it becomes imperative that Intact Insurance investigate ways to make things better, faster and easier for brokers, says Les Sunohara, Manager, Technology Services for Intact Insurance. SharePoint allows us to be customer focused for both brokers and employees. Solution Intact Insurance maintains a web portal that serves as a conduit through which brokers interact with Intact Insurance. That portal now houses the Savers manual within the SharePoint application. A joint project between Intact Insurance employees and Microsoft Gold partner imason inc., the Savers manual resides on a Microsoft SharePoint 2010 site which Intact protects using the portal s authentication tool. Intact Insurance realizes important advantages from this SharePoint site, including the elimination of having to print all their documents, which brings environmental, procedural, and cost benefits. The SharePoint experience was augmented to feature navigation options that are intuitive and effective for reading manuals. A table of contents on the left side of the screen mimics what brokers know from the paper manual, which makes it easy for SharePoint novices to learn. Quick links and powerful search features cater to more advanced users. imason imason Case Study - Intact Broker Manuals Intact Financial Corporation 3

Brokers and their employees depend upon this documentation to do business with Intact. The Savers manual is just one example.

Most people use the portal to find information, but SharePoint also allows specific authors to prepare, review, approve and publish content, introducing accountability into the process.

4 Most people use the portal to find information, but SharePoint also allows specific authors to prepare, review, approve and publish content, introducing accountability into the process. In addition to this four-role authoring process (which works well for creating complex content), there is also the option of having one person play several roles when preparing simpler documents, thus speeding up the publishing process. Whether posting simple or complex documents, the resulting accountability, version control, and workflow tracking ensures that brokers always get the correct information right from their screens. Above all, Intact seeks an easy-to-use system, since complexity would hamper the adoption of even more robust tools. Any time I go to a website, I lean towards the ones that are easy to use, and stay away from the complex ones, says Sunohara. Results Intact Insurance s Western Division was the first to put content online, both for internal staff and brokers. Given initial feedback from these two groups, SharePoint won t be confined to the Western Division. Feedback that is received goes straight to Intact Insurance s Sales and Business Development department thanks to an imason idea: including a feedback dialog box in the online manual. That s important because we need to get feedback from the people who actually use the system every day, says Sunohara. Some of our other survey processes don t address that. The intent is that SharePoint will spread not just across Intact Insurance, but all of Intact Financial Corporation (Intact Insurance s parent company). We want to improve our ease of doing business with all brokers and employees, as well as stay true to our value of being socially responsible, Sunohara says. We ll continue to look at ways we can optimize SharePoint based on what serves brokers and employees best. imason imason Case Study - Intact Broker Manuals Intact Financial Corporation 4

thus speeding up the publishing process.

5 Q&A Summary Wanting to have the ability to provide up to date information in a more efficient manner and being socially responsible convinced Intact Insurance to source an application called SharePoint. Starting with a manual for a tool they call Savers, Intact Insurance eventually plans to publish all product manuals using SharePoint. To find out more about how Intact will benefit from this technology, we spoke with Les Sunohara, Manager, Technology Services for Intact Insurance. Keystone: Why did Intact undertake this project? LS: We want to make it easier for brokers to do business with us, and we continually look for tools that will help us achieve that. Using SharePoint as a central repository for all our product manuals meets that goal. Keystone: What exactly do you need the new system to do? LS: We want brokers and employees to be able to access the most current versions of Intact Insurance manuals in one, convenient location. With SharePoint, we can update information quickly and efficiently so users know they are always accessing the most recent data. Another benefit achieved through this implementation will be the reduction in the number of pages we need to print and distribute; an environmental and cost saving bonus. In the future, we have other uses planned for SharePoint. These will include publishing insurance wordings, rate pages, forms, etc. We can use SharePoint to do many things. Keystone: Why did Intact invest in this system at this time? LS: This was a large cost commitment, but we have a strong mandate at Intact Insurance to always provide excellent service and be customer driven. By making information easily available to brokers, with a simple yet sophisticated system, we can ensure ease of doing business with us. For this reason, Intact Insurance felt that the investment in SharePoint was worth it. Keystone: How have users reacted to the new system? LS: Brokers have commented on how easy it is to use, and our employees say the same thing. In fact, they are asking for more content to be placed on SharePoint. It s simple things such as the ability to find content through multiple ways that enables all users from the novice to the expert to locate information quickly and easily. Keystone: What is it like working with imason? LS: The team at imason are very helpful and great to work with. They offered useful suggestions such as putting the Feedback dialog box right in the application, which we appreciated. We re looking forward to working with them to take this system to the next phase with more documentation and enhanced functionality. imason imason Case Study - Intact Broker Manuals Intact Financial Corporation 5

To find out more about how Intact will benefit from this technology, we spoke with Les Sunohara, Manager, Technology Services for Intact Insurance. Keystone: Why did Intact undertake this project?

6 Home Page Brokers access the system through this portal and a single-sign on experience. imason Customer Profile Intact Financial Corporation 6

7 Manual Details An example of a page inside the electronic manual. imason Customer Profile Intact Financial Corporation 7

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