ISO CD product integrates data retrieval into agent workflow

Rough Notes, Nov 1999 by Strazewski, Len

Agent-user likes ISO Suite's enhanced print capabilities, looks forward to Internet-based product

Where is the Commercial Lines Manual? I thought it was stacked up here!"

A traditional bound manual with thousands of paper pages like the ISO Commercial Lines Manual is the size of a piece of decorative sculpture, but like an single document, it still can get lost or misplaced easily.

And once an agent finally locates the tome, left underneath a desk in the back of the commercial lines department or on top of a filing cabinet somewhere near the photocopy machine, the process of locating the correct forms for the right state and the proper years can take much too long. Add the task of creating a fresh policy from an ISO manual form and hours can be spent.

ISO Suite, a new CD-ROM-based database from Insurance Services Office in New York, takes the old Commercial Lines Manual and thousands of pages of other ISO insurance industry information and incorporates them into a single, searchable computer product that can be used by dozens of agents simultaneously at the desktop workstations.

The new product, released earlier this year, is updated monthly and designed for use on a single personal computer or an office local area network (LAN), according to ISO.

"With this new delivery system, customers access ISO material faster, reduce distribution costs, eliminate paper manuals and enhance employee productivity," says LeRoy A. Boison Jr., ISO senior vice president of insurance services. "Now customers can focus on growing their business and leave it to ISO to provide timely insurance information in a format that meshes with their workflows."

ISO Suite is the latest step in an evolution of electronic delivery of ISO forms and insurance information, adds Domenick J. Yezzi, vice president of specialty commercial lines. The new product is the successor to Commercial Lines Electronic Manual Services (CLEMS) an earlier generation of electronic delivery originally developed in 1992. The earliest system was designed for networks driven by mainframe computer systems and had limited search and retrieval features and only basic printing functions for forms, according to Yezzi. Later versions of CLEMS included more functionality but still used the paper manual paradigm.

"To create CLEMS, we took each of the ISO manuals' multistate rules, loss costs, forms and endorsements, and reduced them to a digital form that could be stored on CD-ROM and displayed on workstations," he explains.

However, the early attempts focused on the accumulation of data, not on the manipulation of the data and forms with personal computer tools such as database programs and word processors. Users viewed one manual at a time and had to move from section to section.

The new system operates on Microsoft Windows 95, 98 and Windows NT 4.0 operating systems and features Folio database organization, including powerful search capabilities, query tools and built-in hypertext links that allow agents to locate information according to criteria they can define, he says. Agents can select a line of business, the state and the effective date of policy and display the relevant rules and policy forms in a single computer window.

"Users can switch instantly from among rules, policy forms and related information. ISO Suite has been designed to work seamlessly with customers' workflows and provide a single point of access to insurance information from any location at any time," he says.

The Suite reference library includes ISO Commercial Lines Manual information for 12 lines of business, state and multistate rules, loss costs, the classification tables including Standard Industrial Classifications and North American Industrial Classification Systems (NAICS) codes, policy forms and endorsements, rating plans and fire protection classifications of communities based on ISO's evaluation of fire protection capabilities.

ISO Suite+, a version of the database for insurers, allows companies to combine companyspecific and proprietary information with ISO materials to produce their own manuals and policy forms. Insurers can date-stamp rules and forms with their own effective dates and combine their own rules, rates and policy forms for endorsements. ISO Suite+ source documents are delivered in the popular Word for Windows 6.0 and Folio Flat File (FFF) formats. The database contains more than 80,000 documents and 200,000 applicability records.

Additional data viewable with ISO Suite+ includes:

* A.M. Best's Electronic Underwriting Guide and Loss Engineering Manual

* American Insurance Services Group's Premium Audit Advisory Service Classification Guide

* International Risk Management Institute manuals on risk transfer and workers compensation

* Rough Notes Policy Form and Manual Analysis

ISO Suite is delivered to agents monthly and can run on single or client workstations as well as LANs. The retail price for an ISO Suite single state database is $395 and includes up to five users at a single location. Countrywide ISO Suite database costs $2,795.