eucon Information systems: "Check it"

Success Story:	Automated checking process for automotive claim documents
Customer:	eucon Informationssystems, Münster, Germany
Systems integrator:	IBM Global Services
Products:	PROSAR-AIDA, PROKEY
Publications:	Eucon Success Story (PDF)
Company Background:	eucon Informationssystems has been an independent data expert since 1997, working in the automotive components industry. The company has concentrated on providing database solutions, information management and services for the whole of the automotive industry for more than five years. In addition to carrying out research, analysis and editing of automotive components, eucon develops individual catalogues and software systems, generates competitor analyses and arranges benchmarks. More than 150 companies currently place their confidence in eucon′s solutions and services.
Initial Situation:	Until now in the automotive insurance industry, checking workshop invoices, expert opinions and estimates has been a labour and cost-intensive activity with little formal structure. First all incoming claim documents need to be sorted, sifted and distributed to the apropriate reference person in the mailroom. Claim documents mainly consist of tables spread out over numerous pages that are checked by the person responsible, who then uses her experience to decide if a claim document needs to be recalculated by an internal or external claim adjuster. If the decision is made that the claim document is justified, the complete document is forwarded to the appropriate financial department in order to make the relevant payments. Manual processing process of paper files This manual process is very time intensive, expensive and error-prone. There are also exceptional cases that only can be handled with additional expenses.
Challenge:	The insurance industry pays for most of the accident repair costs because the all-manual process of automotive notifictaions does not provide the time for methodical checking. The implementation of an early scanning and automated data entry system for automotive claim documents promises to provide significant economic advantages per claim. Unjustified cost cannot always be identified reliably. Charging costs for small parts, transfers, disposals and/or cleaning for example is unjustified. Market data for necessary calculations and strategic decisions can only be collected and administrated if a huge investment in time and effort is made. In order to reduce this effort claim documents need to be adapted to different databases, checked for justification and used for data administration. The integrated table recognition function of PROSAR-AIDA provides the possibility of reading digitised tables and extracting relevant document content through predefined rules. PROSAR-AIDA′s data base comparison tool enables the check of relevant document contents for justification and the workflow system enables the use of extracted data for administration purposes of databases. In order to process automotive claim documents from several insurance companies, recognition technology that is able to recognise and record data while ignoring the layout is required. The rule based recognition technology of PROSAR-AIDA is a free form technology that does not require specific form layouts but instead uses predefined keywords, which are searched for independently of their position on the page.
Solution:	eucon informationssystems, an insurance service provider, offers an innovative processing for claim documents. Claim documents are digitised and electronically processed. Automated processing process of digitised paper files All incoming claims are scanned directly after delivery (early scanning). PROSAR-AIDA′s OCR/ICR recognition technology classifies all images and compares the results with the eucon customer database. The classification process does not depend on the layout of the claim document. Subsequently detailed specifications of each claim are extracted by the system (technical data extraction) and verified with the data collections of automotive parts or reparations (technical verify function). Uncertain or wrongly recognised values are displayed by PROKEY, the correction and manual indexing software. A freely configurable justification filter makes it possible to display unjustified costs in the so called "check report". After the document processing is finished the check report can be delivered in an individually preferred format to the financial department or to the referee of the automotive insurance.
Results:	All incoming claim documents are processed electronically instead of manually. As PROSAR-AIDA achieves a recognition rate of 90 percent of the table data, it is possible to collect all relevant information that is necessary for a reliable identification of unjustified costs. The electronic check process "Check - it" Furthermore, the lower labour and cost-intensive processing of claim documebnts provides the following advantages: Reduces the number of menail tasks for highly qualified referees Automatic optimisation of technical data collection ("Best Practise" service provider) Automatic calculations Improvement of data quality Reduction of processing time Customer loyality because of improved customer service Cost reduction by identifying unjustified reparation costs The automation of the claims processing process enables eucon to offer extra services like evaluating data, connecting data to Management-Information-Systems as well as offering activity recommendations.