Location: Blackmore Vale and Shaftesbury, Dorset, United Kingdom
Industry: Dairy and Food Processing and Manufacturing
Website: www.bvdairy.co.uk
Founded in 1958 as a family farm in England’s West Country, BV Dairy is now a thriving modern business. Each year, the company purchases 35 million liters of milk from dairy farms within a 25-mile radius of their production facility in Shaftesbury, Dorset and turns them into dairy products for food distribution and manufacturing firms. BV Dairy’s range includes their award-winning Dorset clotted cream, as well as yogurts, buttermilk, soft cheese, and mascarpone.
Acting as general managing agent for one of the country’s largest and most innovative life insurance underwriters is a demanding challenge for The Tassey Group of Berlin, New Hampshire.
The agency serves as the sole representative for the insurance carrier over a wide swath of territory that includes New Hampshire, Vermont, and parts of Maine and Massachusetts. In essence. the Tassey Group is the “face” of the insurance company for the 300 independent brokers that sell the policies, providing a host of marketing, education, and application processing services that brokers need to be effective.
Acting as general managing agent for one of the country’s largest and most innovative life insurance underwriters is a demanding challenge for The Tassey Group of Berlin, New Hampshire.
The agency serves as the sole representative for the insurance carrier over a wide swath of territory that includes New Hampshire, Vermont, and parts of Maine and Massachusetts. In essence. the Tassey Group is the “face” of the insurance company for the 300 independent brokers that sell the policies, providing a host of marketing, education, and application processing services that brokers need to be effective.
According to Michael N. Chambers, a principal of the agency, “An incredible amount of followup goes on during processing policy applications. We’re always going back to the broker for more information, such as medical records and child ages, and they’re calling us to check the status. So we’re always referring to the application file, and a day rarely goes by when we don’t pull 20 to 25 files.”
Before DocStar, The Tassey Group navigated this mound of paper by hand. Applications and other information were photocopied and filed, with original documents sent either to the insurance company or back to the applicant. Files often included large documents, such as medical reports up to 80 pages long. Many documents consisted of hard-to-decipher handwriting and poor-quality photocopies.
With the help of DocStar partner PIF Technologies, Tassey’s redesigned process, signed applications, and other original documents are now scanned into DocStar ECM and the originals stored randomly in a box for bulk shipping at a later date. Copies of these documents are sent immediately via fax to the insurance company, without the manual steps of printing a hard copy and dialing the fax machine.
“We immediately saw how DocStar ECM saved time in responding to customer requests, as well as headaches,” Chambers said. “While competitors boast about one-day turnaround, we can deliver quotes by fax within two to three minutes.”
DocStar has produced substantial increases in efficiency and reduced operating expenses. Simplified filing enabled the agency to eliminate one clerical position and shrink copying expenses-previously running at an annual volume of about 40,000 copies-to almost nothing.
Perhaps the greatest benefit is the ability to respond quickly to customer inquiries, which builds further momentum behind The Tassey Group’s customer service-oriented business strategy.
“If someone calls to check an application status, we electronically search for the information and give the person an instant answer,” Chambers said. “We used to sift through the paper files, which took an average of three minutes.”
“Most of the time, we wouldn’t keep a customer on hold while we looked – they’re busy people so we’d take a message and call them back after we found the information. Sometimes, this resulted in ‘phone tag,’ so the customer didn’t get an answer for a couple of days.”
Installing DocStar ECM and migrating to new filing processes also was painless for the agency.
“I learned how to use the system in a couple of hours,” says Chambers. “Everyone’s job is a little bit easier.”
