Xerox Survey Reports Productivity as Top Business Priority for ACORD LOMA Attendees

In a survey of property, casualty, life and annuities professionals, 39 percent of respondents indicated that increasing productivity is their first priority in improving business processes, while 33 percent cited the need to reduce costs. Xerox Corporation’s Global Services division conducted the survey at the ACORD LOMA Insurance Systems
Forum in Las Vegas.

The survey results also revealed that 33 percent of respondents
indicated multiple data formats such as e-mail, electronic files and hard copy documents pose a challenge in efficiently managing information, while 28 percent reported a lack of consistent work processes across their enterprises as an efficiency challenge. Seventy-nine percent of respondents influence decision decision-making within their organizations.

Research from Gartner Inc.1 indicates that technology investments within the insurance industry are increasingly focused on supporting business process management and improving core document practices.

However, Xerox’s ACORD LOMA survey findings indicated that only 29 percent of organizations have taken steps to implement a structured approach such as Six Sigma to increase the efficiency of business processes, including policy or claims processing.

Adoption of industry-wide XML (eXtensible Markup Language) standards has also reportedly become an important tool in information and document management. For 39 percent of respondents, the biggest hurdle to implementing XML industry standards is the lack of time, money and resources.

Other challenges included processes that do not support integration and business partners not yet using standards.

“Insurance companies are being charged with creating more efficient ways to access required data and information to accelerate policy and claims processing,” said Julie Dorey, vice president, Insurance and Financial Services Xerox Global Services. “These survey results reflect an opportunity to implement a structured approach that redesigns key business processes, enabling an organization to achieve measurable gains in productivity and cost savings.”

The survey was conducted on Sunday, May 23, and included 156 attendees. Forty-four percent of respondents were from property and casualty lines of business, with 38 percent from the life insurance business, and 18 percent from multi-line organizations.