User-friendly, personalized solutions like chatbots or the facial recognition software on our smartphones are commonplace these days. Like the team at Helvetia, these smart services need information in order to work effectively. "We used to have information silos all across our company," says Markus Saladin, Head of the ECM Program and the Information Management Competence Center at Helvetia. "But we need this information to be available wherever our employees have direct contact with customers." It was time for a company-wide ECM strategy.

Helvetia has expanded rapidly in recent years with the acquisition of the insurers Alba, Phenix and National Suisse. The number of employees in Switzerland grew to around 3,500 virtually overnight. Information volumes and the IT landscape grew in parallel. "We had a heap of redundant systems," says Michael Schwendimann, Head of Solution Architect and the lead on the ECM Integration project. "We wanted an ECM solution that would deliver information in real time and steer it flexibly through departments and systems across the entire organization." 

Helvetia began using SER's archiving software back in 2007. The insurance group's recent expansion prompted it in 2015 to revisit attempts to find the right-fit ECM solution. "ECM systems are like apples — they all look the same on the outside, but they can be sweet, sour, crispy, mealy or even worm-eaten on the inside. All of them store and display content. But which one genuinely meets our needs?" asks Michael Schwendimann. Ultimately, the users themselves decided. In a series of workshops, they produced a 110-page evaluation catalog containing 433 requirements. The responses of 20 vendors were then compared to see how they stacked up. And the award goes to... Doxis! The ECM platform from SER was chosen as the software to get Helvetia in shape for the digital future. "We want to be fully ready to cope with the demands ahead," says Markus Saladin. "Having the right ECM solution in place is both a prerequisite for and an important step towards digitally transforming our insurance organization."

In 2015 alone, Helvetia handled some 115 million documents — and this number grows by six million each year. It was clear from the outset that the main goal with Doxis was to open up documents and data to everyone company-wide, not keep everything hidden away in information silos. "Today, employees in every company division and across all sites can access the ECM system and directly provide customers with the right information to handle inquiries quickly and efficiently," explains Michael Schwendimann.

Giving users a cross-system overview of customers and business cases is another key pillar of the digitalization strategy. All relevant information is available through the digital customer files in Doxis — including correspondence and medical documents, financial disclosures, policies and damage claims, data from business applications and the integrated CRM system, and much more. Helvetia's new motto is: less searching, more finding. And employees aren't the only ones who benefit. Policyholders will soon be able to access selected information from Doxis directly via the integrated customer portals.

Efficiency at Helvetia has improved significantly thanks to the digitalization and automation of its processes. "Information arrives at our company by email, on paper, or via our portals. Not only is it all automatically recognized and processed, but Doxis also archives it directly in the correct file. The content is then made available to the right employee to answer the customer," says Markus Saladin. This is possible thanks to automated Doxis workflows that forward customer communication to the employee with the relevant expertise and availability. In turn, policyholders receive a fast response and their inquiries are handled swiftly.

Intelligent functions like this are also helpful when employees need to file documents in Doxis. "We automate as much as possible — for instance, we set up the software to populate a number of fields automatically," says Markus Saladin. "The ECM solution makes case processing much more efficient and transparent." With Doxis, employees can share documents and tasks across divisions and sites and maintain full traceability throughout — be it in French, German or English. "ECM flows throughout the company and supplies data to ensure that information gets to the right places," says Markus Saladin.

Helvetia is stepping up its digital transformation efforts. The number of Doxis users stands at some 1,000 at present, with the next wave of departments to be added soon. Not only is the ECM platform growing — it also has enormous potential as a tool for collaborating with external partners and much more besides. Helvetia is systematically undergoing a digital transformation of its business processes from end to end and creating a basis for even better customer service and innovative operational models.

This article first appeared in the Swiss publication IT business (3/2019).