The "Word styling" ward of the asylum

At Exari we take Microsoft Word styling seriously. Your documents depend on styles not just to look good, but also to remain error-free. With templates, it's garbage in, garbage out. If templates aren't well styled, then the documents you create from them are at risk.

The importance of good styles
Properly styled contracts, letters and other documents ensure:

• Your outline numbering remains intact, and updates correctly when changes are made
• Cross references and tables of contents are automatically generated and maintained
• Changes to branding and look-and-feel can be implemented quickly
• It is easy to retain a consistent look-and-feel across related documents

That's why our training classes always include a segment on getting styling right in Word.

Outline numbering - Word's problem child
As anyone who's ever drafted legal documents knows, Word outline numbering is a minefield. This is because Word tries to hide complexity from its users - and outline numbering is unavoidably complex. As Word styles guru, Shauna Kelly puts it, "You seem to go round and round in circles, and never end up with what you want. And just when you get close, it falls to pieces."

It's essential that you use styles for outline numbering. Otherwise, you'll end up spending years of your life fighting Word. (Unfortunately, even when you have set up your styles '100% by the book,' there are still some risks. This last week alone, we've found three new bugs in the way Word's outline numbering handles particular scenarios. Trying to report these issues to Microsoft is worthy of another blog post...)

Conclusion
Any organization serious about streamlining document production must invest in Word styling capabilities. The upfront effort in 'getting it right' will be repaid many times over in the long run.

Have you discovered any tips or tricks that help with outline numbering? Please share in the comments below.

This post was authored by Justin Lipton, Exari's Chief Technology Officer.

Legal Departments Must Modernize

In today’s economy, companies are continually challenged by three major issues: Complexity, Dynamics and Speed. It is important to manage these challenges successfully in order to remain a top-performing company. Part of meeting the challenge includes the focus on long term success versus short term gains. It requires a way of thinking outside the box (executing against the trend) and a review of old habits-- how things have been done versus how things could be done.

Looking at the legal departments of big international corporations, it is astonishing that legal experts in most companies still tend towards old habits of manual legal contracting and over-managing operational details. These habits include slow contract creation (e.g. by cutting & pasting word documents) which is time-intensive and error-prone.

On the other hand, top-performing companies have modernized a huge part of their contracting process with automation, gaining various benefits; especially time (speed), which they can use for higher complexity or bespoke deals. Automating the contracts process can help corporations meet all three of today’s challenges.

Complexity
Business terms and conditions are growing in complexity. One way to address this is with a more intelligent precedents system, which gathers your precedents and clauses in a central place where you can find them without wading through a sea of confusing examples and captures extra knowledge in each precedent.

Dynamics
Document automation software allows companies to capture, manage and analyze all of the information in their contracts. How many are outstanding and when do they expire? How many contracts need to be renewed next month? Having the information at your fingertips allows you to adjust quickly to changing dynamics.

Speed
While agility is important, speed can increase errors. Automation allows you to increase your speed and DECREASE your errors. You can lower your drafting costs and speed up your response time.

Again, thinking outside the box is needed as well as the ability to modernize and embrace technology where it makes sense. No doubt about who will survive and thrive in the long run.

This post was guest authored by Christian Hostmann, Exari Systems GmbH, Munich. Christian is Exari's Director of Sales for Europe.

Document Assembly is ... SEXY?

And the Academy Award for the best Document Automation Technology (for the fifth year in a row) goes to …Exari

Thank you Gwyneth, thank you Brad - wow this is great. You dream of these moments but never really think its going to happen, but here we are and, well, I’m lost for words. I just want to thank some of the unsung heroes behind the scenes that have made this all possible……

…. And then I wake up.

OK, so Document Automation isn't the most exciting thing in the world and it’s hardly going to keep the attention of the person you’re trying to impress at a dinner party, but we think it’s important.

Making key documents more accurate and compliant while producing them faster and consistently anywhere in the world is all very well but it’s not exactly SEXY.

Contracts only really matter when something goes wrong and they are dissected in Court. It’s hard to explain to your boss that implementing document assembly has saved a fortune in legal costs because you are producing tighter contracts because he’ll say “that’s just your job”.

We’re never going to experience the thrill of a Top Gun sortie or hold someone’s beating heart in our hands but we have found a way of making what we do more exciting – by making our customers more money.

In the Insurance industry there is a constant drive to produce new products and get them to market ahead of the competitors to gain first mover advantage. There is a finite (albeit enormous) amount of Insurance premium to go around and in a soft market phase there are lots of hungry mouths to feed. Underwriters and Brokers need to constantly seek ways to help new clients buy more from them and retain the clients they have.

Modern Document Automation technologies are enabling products to be created from scratch, in a fraction of the time it had. Traditional ugly, client unfriendly Wording plus Endorsement Policies are being replaced by dynamic documents that are specifically tailored to each customer. The result is an unambiguous product that is clear and concise. Add to this an improved renewal experience for the client where they only have to amend last year’s answers and you have established a happy and loyal customer.

We are making it easier for clients to submit their proposal information, providing them with a better product and ensuring they stay customers of our customers.

That is leading to more premium, more commission and better bonuses… now that’s sexy.

This post was guest authored by Martin Kett, Exari's Vice President of Insurance Client Development. Martin expects Exari to win the first Oscar ever awarded for best performance by Document Automation software.

Continuous Improvement and Solvency II in the London Market

The London Reform Group just released their review of 2009 and plans for 2010. The key theme of the letter to CEOs from Chairman Barnabus Hurst-Bannister, is that progress has been made on key reform matters, but that “We are now engaged in the sort of continuous improvement exercise that all markets must pursue or risk being left behind by their competitors.”

The thing about market reform is that it needs a great deal of quiet persuasion and work behind the scenes to move firms forward – so these things take time.

Solvency II, an EU statute, has a different effect. While reform tends to be non-mandatory, Solvency II will hit the industry hard with fines and worse, loading to capital if a firm fails to provide the relevant controls and cross-checks demanded. So every CEO, CFO and COO is going to have to make sure their organization is up to the job.

Make no mistake; Solvency II will get priority when it comes to demands on managers. But there are a number of requirements embedded in the legislation, especially in the Operational Risk area, which will not only hold good for the “solvency inspectors” but also provide impetus to the Market Reform program.

Let’s look where this overlap may occur. Essentially, insurance is the promise to pay the valid claim of an insured when covered by the policy documentation. The reputation of a firm can be tarnished when claims payment records are poor or slow. As noted by Hurst-Bannister, progress has been made by London in speeding up claims payments but there is still more to do in ensuring that the wordings that represent the promise to pay, are what all parties thought they were agreeing.

From an Operational Risk perspective, is the price of the risk that was agreed actually represented by the final policy document? Time and effort is spent by brokers and carriers to ensure the alignment of price with risk and then represent that in wording that will stand up to legal scrutiny. BUT whereas the Market has improved the way underlying risk data is transmitted electronically utilizing ACORD standards, the actual final documentation is invariably handled in word processing that leaves it open to mistakes, typos and other failings.

So what can be done to improve this potential operational risk? A major step forward is to introduce a smarter approach to documentation. What if you could combine the best of all worlds – take the data and the words and represent them in a re-usable and ordered manner? You can, using XML, better known as the underlying “language” of the ACORD message set.

Imagine being able to capture all the changes to clauses, coverages and data in a policy and be able to report on who changed what and when. Brokers can flag changes to market clauses, so compliance officers can look at exceptions rather than every risk. Underwriters could receive an ACORD message with all the structured data AND a message containing the tagged text from the slip enabling them to handle exceptions in a more granular way.

Even if a carrier was relying on word processing to reflect changes back to the Broker, document assembly systems could reconvert the Word document and highlight changes to continue the process back in a controlled fashion.

And when the inevitable claim comes in – a quick scan of the record would indicate any non- standard clauses and route the claim through a different track for handling, leaving the standard policies to go through fast track claims processing. Once documents are created in XML, this type of process improvement is easy.

So why not add a review of your documentation processes to this year’s plan and tackle both Market Reform issues and position yourself for the Operational Risk aspects of Solvency II?

This post was guest authored by Geoff Maskell, Exari's Vice President of Sales for Europe. Geoff focuses primarily on Exari’s Insurance and Investment Banking clients.