I recently became distracted from my regular routine by an undeniable force that seems to be taking health insurers by storm. Having worked in insurance technology for nearly 15 years, there are only a few times that I can recall observing a common theme invade the landscape of insurance like the SBC issue is currently doing. Perhaps only when Y2K was about to end the world did I notice an acronym strike such trepidation into the world of health insurance carriers.

I'll not proclaim to be an expert in the intricacies of the Affordable Care Act, but given the frequency of enquiries from our existing insurance customers and the general stir in the health insurance space, I took some time to review the legislation and think about its ramifications. In a nutshell, it seems that virtually all health insurance carriers will need to meet requirements established to provide clear and consistent communication to enrollees and members about their plans. This includes:

• Provide SBC document to members and enrollees upon new enrollment, when coverage changes, at renewal or upon request
• SBC must be provided as soon as practicably possible but no later than within seven business
• Distributed SBC must conform to the content and formatting requirements, in a linguistically appropriate manner, as established in the specifications provided by DOL/HHS
• Requirements take effect starting in September 2012

It is likely a given that an insurance carriers ability to meet such requirements will pose some significant challenges. At a minimum, a coordinated effort among many organizational areas is inevitable as policy fulfillment, marketing, claims, compliance, information technology and other departments may well play a role in preparing for adherence to the SBC mandate. As well, the technical impacts of building a solution to support SBC production may be no small feat as it is likely to involve data and processes from multiple systems such as policy/plan administration, claims, CRM, etc. The unfortunate risk of non-compliance is a frightening prospect with each violation bringing a $1000 penalty; a price that would quickly add up to major bucks given that a violation is counted at the level of each member, not just per group.

With the consistent drone of the frustrating impacts of the SBC directive being echoed by health insurance providers, we took some time to review how we could help. Since the principal requirement for the SBC revolves around producing compliant and consistent communication, it seemed like a natural fit to consider how Xpertdoc's powerful and flexible document output platform can deliver some relief. It was also quite advantageous that the regulators provided a Microsoft Word version of the SBC template that could be used directly for implementation in Xpertdoc. This allowed the document to be deployed quickly, guaranteed conformance with the specified formatting and will allow future updates to be made very easily.

We also wanted to consider how we could provide an end-to-end solution for generating SBC documents that insurers could have in their back pocket given the looming deadline for compliance. So, we leveraged our ability to quickly and easily deploy in a cloud environment and created a data entry form, Xpertdoc template and a web-available user interface that allows an SBC to be created with specific plan information that is entered. You can view a video demonstration of this complete SBC solution at http://xpertdoc.com/en/industries/life-insurance/summary-of-benefits-and-coverage.aspx.

While this manual mode of producing SBC documents may not be a preferred long term solution, it would serve as a great contingency plan. It's also important to note that modifying the process to integrate with your existing systems and data would be a straightforward exercise of using Xpertdoc's flexible integration options and re-mapping the SBC template to the data model of your source systems - providing compliance through a fully integrated solution within a matter of weeks. Should a cloud deployment not meet your corporate standards or needs, our on-premise solution is also quick to implement. If you prefer Xpertdoc to continue to maintain your SBC template as changes to the mandate occurs, this can also be provided as an as needed service or on a subscription basis.

If you are feeling the pain of preparing for SBC compliance, I invite you to check out the Xpertdoc Solution that has been pre-built for SBC production. Watch the video, visit our website or contact us for a deeper dive demonstration, hands-on trial or more information.

All group insurance providers operating in the US are mandated by the US Government to provide clear and consistent information to consumers about their health insurance coverage. The Affordable Care Act ensures consumers receive, in plain English, a Summary of Benefits and Coverage (SBC) on a standardized form that will help them understand and evaluate their health insurance choices. More details are available on this requirement on the HealthCare.gov web site.

Many health care insurance carriers are finding themselves in a bit of a scramble to meet the September 2012 compliance deadline. Xpertdoc is addressing this
requirement with many carriers who are pleased to see the Xpertdoc Solution
already allows them to rapidly comply with this regulation change, while providing
a strong and solid path to a more comprehensive integration in the future.

Here are three ways the Xpertdoc solution can help:

Well, continuing on our drive for end-user empowerment, ease of use and ultra-quick / easy deployment, we're launching a repackaging of our tried-and-true batch capabilities into a new offering called "Document Services". This release comes fully-loaded with readily available features and operations such as Word, PDF and HTML output, dynamic table-of-content, page-level enhancements, document assembly (concatenation or stitching), and compliance-grade auditing and track changes.

What's really new about this is how easy it now is to combine, mix and match these capabilities.  And even more exciting is that Document Services are now available not only On Premise but also as a true, full-featured, secured cloud offering.

Stay tune for general availability announcement soon, and don't hesitate to contact us directly for priority access, to schedule a demo or just have a general discussion on specific scenarios and capabilities.

It's been a few months now since I joined Xpertdoc and I am getting to a state where I feel pretty comfortable with the technology, especially with the knowledge that a great team of experts is at the ready whenever I need help. While working on several projects for clients from a variety of industries including insurance, property management, communications and public relations, I have seen adopters of Xpertdoc experience the many merits of the solution with very quick implementation cycles. I have also been in touch with many of my friends and contacts from the past and I continue to witness the struggles and challenges facing users who remain stuck on legacy document automation platforms such as Mosaic, Calligo and IStream.

Prior to departing my previous post at Oracle, I participated in several sales cycles and proposal development efforts for users of Calligo that were looking to move to something current and supported. With Oracle's decision to abandon the Calligo/IStream product line, they were selling the Documaker suite as the replacement application. Anyone who has evaluated the potential conversion from one of the legacy Word-based document automation tools has quickly realized that the paradigm for document authoring and assembly is substantially different in Documaker. The mere fact that Microsoft Word is not leveraged automatically means that a risky and integrity-threatening change in file format is going to be required. Such conversion attempts were soon observed to be fraught with challenges such as:

• Loss of document fidelity
• Complex and un-trackable migration processes requiring much manual intervention
• Excessive learning curves for users to learn unfamiliar new authoring environment
• Poor test results requiring exhaustive regression testing iterations

I recall participating in several humbling discussions with Calligo users trying to explain why a conversion from their system to the 'next-generation' successor offering would require two years to complete, cost millions of dollars and be exposed to a high risk of document fidelity loss. That was a tough sell!

I am happy to say that one of the things I have been working on since joining Xpertdoc has been an evaluation of the conversion options for legacy Word-based document automation systems. It would seem obvious that a transition to Xpertdoc, a system underpinned by Microsoft Word templates, would be a far more natural and less burdensome transition for users of systems that also leverage Word. And that theory has proven to be the case. There are a few distinct advantages of Xpertdoc that will pay significant dividends in lightening the load of an effort to modernize your current Word-based system:

• No file format conversion necessary - i.e. continue to take advantage of your significant investment in creating formatted Word documents that reflect your regulatory, branding and marketing preferences
• Functionality, features and familiarity of Word will not intimidate your authors
• Minimize re-training as there will be no need to learn a new and complex document authoring environment
• Easy creation of one-to-one baseline for testing by producing snapshot of Word document output of current system for comparison against Xpertdoc generated Word documents post-conversion
• Opportunities for manageable optimization of documents by implementing Xpertdoc's ability to isolate technical complexity from document content conducive to business user management
• Leverage Xpertdoc's powerful content auditing technology for conversion analysis and execution as well as testing assistance

I'll make a point of talking about it in more detail in a future posting, but one detail to highlight is that with the move up to Word 2007 or higher, you will be adopting a new file format in Word that is based on the Office Open XML(aka OOXML or OpenXML) standard - the .docx file. This is an XML-based file format that has become the new benchmark for representation of office document types. In bringing your documents up to this latest file type, you will not only be able to continue to experience the advantages of working in Word but you will also future-proof yourself from using a proprietary format on its way to obsolescence. This may not seem all that important but for those of you who may have done Word upgrades from very old versions of Microsoft Word in the past or even worse, WordPerfect to Word conversions, the advantages will quickly become evident. It's also worth mentioning that leveraging the OOXML format helps to overcome some of the shortcomings of legacy Word-based systems such as the reliance on Winword.exe for document automation, document integration and re-purposing challenges, etc. Xpertdoc was the first software provider worldwide to be certified by Microsoft as an integrator of OpenXML.

There is one final point I'd be remiss in omitting as it perhaps offers the most potential beneficial and impact to those of you who may be considering an undertaking to convert your Word-based document automation platform. Among the biggest struggles that I have seen while participating in conversions in the past was the inability to analyse, track and test the activities required to complete the process. I remember seeing many a project plan where task after task was defined for environment installation, component development, integration and so forth, yet only one or two lines allocated for Document Conversion and Document Testing despite these being among the most time-intensive components of the project. The document conversion was the black hole of project planning if for no other reason than a lack of understanding of what it entailed. Xpertdoc has developed a different approach to conversion, thanks to our Content Auditor technology, whereby a much deeper understanding and decomposition of your documents is possible to help you determine the optimal approach for conversion and to assess its scope and size. Add to that a unique ability to compare and report on document contents at a very granular level, your ability to track what is happening to your documents is much enhanced. The net result: you have a conversion process that is much more well-defined, easy to track and monitor and thus much simpler to manage.

I think I'll flex my technical muscles in my next posting…which is about as intimidating as a boxing bout between Strawberry Shortcake and Dora the Explorer (boy, it's obvious I have a 3 year old girl at my house); perhaps talk a little about the merits of OpenXML and the architecture of Xpertdoc. In the meantime, head on over to www.xpertdoc.com to find out more about us, I recommend the Business Value section for some interesting analysis and even some video clips on our new e-signature integration.

During the recent Webinar hosted by xRM4legal, we explored how two specific areas of the legal professional's activities are burdened with heavy manual processes- resulting in high inefficiency and cost increases: (i) the existing processes for document generation; and (ii) the existing methods of contract review.

Take a look at the Webinar for a view into how some law firms have started to address these pains with both easy to use, deploy and support software as well as more efficient processes. Adoption by legal professionals is rapid as these tools leverage their knowledge of existing familiar tools like Microsoft Word, so gains are felt operationally and fiscally within days!

With such capabilities at their fingertips, legal professionals are able to develop strong ties with their clients - building trust respect and loyalty - through timely relevant and personalized client communications…

When reviewing your maintenance and renewal expenditure for applications on their way to obsolescence, it would be a good time to assess the value obtained for these dollars spent given the aforementioned issues and to begin to think about your longer term need for transitioning to an alternative technology offering full support with much less risk of negative business impact.

To support firms that have been struggling with the announced sunset of the IStream / Calligo / Mosaic support, Xpertdoc is offering an easy solution that offers firms a cost effective turnkey migration:

For more information on this offer, please contact Xpertdoc.

Topics of discussion will include:

• Best practices for document migration

• Conversion of content and business rules

• Document migration testing and content compliance validation

• Options for integration with your existing systems and data sources

An Xpertdoc Solution case example will help to showcase the immediate and long term benefits of bringing the document output generation capability to the Business Users' desktop! Learn more about this webinar and register here.

I narrowly escaped the shedding of a tear a few months back when I was 're-structured' out of Oracle's organizational plans. Having put in about 13 years with the company that started out as Insystems but eventually ended up in Oracle's portfolio of acquisitions after several other incarnations as Standard Register, Whitehill and Skywire, it was a daunting prospect to think that I would be abandoning the comfort and familiarity of the environment I had known for well over a decade. It was far from a surprise as Oracle had redundant offerings for document automation software in their toolset and had chosen to move forward with the Documaker application instead of the IStream software where the majority of my background was rooted.

Nonetheless, a shock to the foundation such as sudden unemployment causes one to undergo some personal reflection, but with the support of my family and a full complement of qualified professionals, I was able to soldier on. Among my revelations, I suffered a particular disappointment in my recognition that there existed a large base of users of the document assembly and insurance process automation software that I had spent so much time supporting, implementing, marketing and selling who I would no longer be in a position to help. Upon surveying my situation and that of the insurance document automation market landscape, I realized I was not yet prepared to abandon my experience and expertise - who many would argue is primarily attributable to a reliance on those far smarter than me - to move onto something brand new.

Witnessing the demise of Mosaic, Calligo, IStream, <xml> Transport, Documerge and several other commonly used document assembly platforms, it became clear that there were bound to be many users of these applications left with no long term outlook for support or evolution of these applications. Sure these systems may still work and meet current needs but I have seen too many times the crippling effects of continuing to rely on applications that have minimal vendor support. Consider these questions:

• What level of assistance would you expect to obtain if you encounter a bug that requires core software modification to resolve? The answer is probably pretty obvious when you consider that the software is not undergoing active development and the vendor no longer has processes or staff in place to handle such a situation
• Have you noticed that COBOL programmers seem to drive very nice cars? As applications become outdated, qualified resources to help support and maintain these systems become sparsely available and very expensive to acquire.
• Ever had a corporate mandate to upgrade an application that is at the foundation of a core system that does not support the version to which you want to upgrade? This is all too common of a scenario when you continue to use a platform that the vendor has abandoned and you are left supporting these one off configurations that do not conform to your preferred standards
• Customer support responsiveness is always acceptable to meet your needs for issue resolution and assistance, right? I have heard many a complaint about the support systems of vendors' over the years. This can only be expected to worsen when an application becomes obsolete and the internal skillset starts to drop off and resources are re-deployed.
• You may not want to be leading edge, but do you really want to be trailing edge? Understandably, avoiding the risk that unproven new technology introduces may be important, but being on the trailing edge of technology can be equally as risky as a result of exposure to the issues noted above and as the opportunity cost of experiencing the benefits new and efficient technologies can offer is foregone

While waiting to find my next unsuspecting employer, or the winning lottery numbers, I spent some time leveraging the contacts that I had made over the years in working with dozens of insurance and financial services companies across North America to do some analysis. The majority of these organizations were using one of the aforementioned legacy and soon-to-be-obsolete systems, and were not well-informed of its support status. Stated more simply, the vendors were not being very forthcoming as to what level of support and product maintenance these organizations were getting for the maintenance dollars they were often still being charged. In addition, most companies acknowledged that they would certainly have found this information useful in decision-making and planning for their current and future investment in and usage of the legacy software.

I will admit that I was somewhat surprised and miffed; in many cases organizations were unwittingly continuing to pay maintenance and support bills from vendors (often times in the tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars) simply because it was budgeted and had been for many years without any additional rationalization of value obtained from such expenditure. There should absolutely be some onus on the consumer to evaluate the on-going value reaped for their software support and maintenance spend, but a little good-faith honesty from the vendor would have been the high road to becoming a respected solution provider. Furthermore, complex tiered support policies are often difficult to decipher and make it hard for the application user to understand what they are actually getting under their support agreement. Even when you see terms like lifetime support and extended support, I urge you to take a good look at what you are being offered, and what the vendors can reasonably deliver for applications that are no longer under active development.

I can fully appreciate the constraints preventing many organizations from abandoning legacy applications such as IStream and Documerge in one fell swoop. Conversion costs, resource limitations, user re-training, software investment expense among other things can make justifying the adoption of a new solution challenging. Implementations of the traditional alternatives that you have seen in the document automation market space are often hindered by these issues and can be stricken by impediments to easy deployment such as:

• bloated application footprint
• proprietary development tools that require significant training and technical expertise to comprehend
• limited flexibility in configuration scenarios and strong configuration preference for vendor-supplied stack of applications
• difficult and inflexible conversion option availability for existing legacy content

For those that follow the market analysts, you will realize that it is not too often that attention-grabbing new entrants in the document automation marketplace come along. I had been a regular follower of the Celent, Forresters and Novarica industry reports when I noticed the appearance of Xpertdoc early in 2011. Still employed by Oracle at the time, I went only as far as checking out their website, watching some clips of their software in action and making a mental note that the solution looked quite interesting and different from most other options.

Fast forward to the summer and exhausting my tolerance - I mean financial reserves - being a stay at home dad a few months after departure from Oracle, I decided I must begin the search for gainful employment. In a rare occurrence of actually being able to recall something that happened more than 24 hours ago, I summoned my positive recollections of Xpertdoc and made contact with the leadership at this organization. I don't think it took long to realize that this was a very innovative organization and even more importantly, one that had a clear focus on the insurance industry with an advanced solution that differed from most others. Just as intriguing for me, with my exposure to so many insurance organizations stuck on legacy document automation systems, was the ease of conversion and adoption that Xpertdoc offers. Never had I seen a solution with such availability of comprehensive functionality in a package that was so easy to understand and so flexible to implement. I liked the look of it so much I joined the company and have been diving headfirst into implementing the software and promoting its merits as a fantastic replacement for legacy document automation platforms.

In a future postings, I promise to share some of the features that I think make Xpertdoc so exciting and of such high potential value for anyone suffering from the risks of using software on its way to obsolescence and who has been dissatisfied with other available options. Stay Tuned!

Xpertdoc was recently invited to collaborate and present on an xRM4legal webinar on December 6^th 2011. In that presentation, the legal community attendees heard of the inroads leading law firms and legal departments are making when embracing the Xpertdoc Solution as a core technology in their client communication processes.

Highlights were shared from several law firm case studies. Scenarios showcased how these firms - in the face of market competition, client pressures and internal inefficiencies - managed to introduce the Xpertdoc Solution to improve their communication processes to deliver tailored, relevant and timely documents to their clients. All this, while enjoying a healthy ROI even through the Pilot deployments!

Document Automation Assessment Made Easy

In a special offer from xRM4legal and Xpertdoc, interested parties may avail themselves of a ½ day Discovery Workshop in which the firm's client communications process will be reviewed and assessed with pointers from industry best practices brought to light on the identified operations. On completion of this workshop, a summary report including findings and recommendations will be prepared for your firm. This workshop can be facilitated remotely at no cost to the firm, or if an onsite face-to-face exploratory evaluation is preferred, nominal charges for travel costs will apply.

Xpertdoc Portal & Template Manager

Latest release is 2.1.8

The recent releases added:

• Extended support for SharePoint advanced features such as document sets.
• Extended support for Cloud-based operation.
• Added form design options and user interface features to improve overall usability.

Xpertdoc Template Designer

Latest release is 11.0.5.6

The recent releases added:

• Enhancement releases with support for additional image types and objects as well as model and macro-enabled documents.

Xpertdoc Designer/Portal Extension

Latest release is 2.3.0

The recent releases added:

• Usability enhancements.
• Support for secured, encrypted SSL connexion.

Xpertdoc Server Component (Converter and Fulfilment)

Latest release is 2.3.0

The recent releases added:

• High-performance and stability improvements when running over sub-standard hardware
• Support for limited Content Auditor, document compare and change tracking capabilities.

Visit the Xpertdoc Forum for the latest release notes: /en/support/forum.aspx