The surety industry has launched a three month pilot program to evaluate the use of structured data, conforming to data standards, for improving surety underwriting. The program is based on XBRL, the standard for financial reporting. A surety or surety bond is an arrangement where one party stands good for the potential liabilities of another. Sureties have to be reviewed on a regular basis. Greg Davenport of Liberty Mutual Surety says: “Sureties evaluate hundreds of contractors every 3-6 months. The WIP (Work in Process) is typically sent in PDF format and must be hand-keyed into our system before analysis can begin. This process is time-consuming, labor-intensive and costly.”
The inefficiency of re-keying data is a well-worn theme, so I won't spend time reiterating Davenport's message. Instead, I'd like to draw attention to the role of image-only PDF in delaying straight-through processing. PDF is a wonderful format, but not (in its plain vanilla version) for data sharing.
Many organizations which formerly opened snail mail and keyed information into applications now use email instead. Here, PDF attachments rule. PDF lets you keep to your old forms and your old business processes while cutting out trips to the printer and saving time in the mail room. At first glance, it looks like a great move.
There's a thinking error here. Just because a few people spend more time glued to their chairs doesn't mean you get a major boost in productivity. The re-keying is the real problem here, not the paper. I include copy-and-paste here – it's not much more efficient than re-keying although less likely to result in mangled data. (However it's easy to lop off characters when you're using a mouse to highlight text.)
The aim of the paperless office (remember that?) is not primarily to save filing space or trees. It's to speed up the business flow. Replacing actual paper with virtual paper isn't the solution. You have to liberate the data from the substrate.
The PDF format does recognize data fields and you can do fillable forms with PDF – we have ACORD Forms like that. But even if you use PDF for structured data, you still need data standards regulating their use.
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