Unica Insurance

Perimeter Group captured, imaged and indexed over 3 million documents for the Claims Department at Unica Insurance.

Project Requirement

To provide Project Management and Imaging services for the conversion of Claims files to industry stand Adobe PDF electronic data following the standards of the Canadian General Standards Board 72.34 – Electronic Records as Admissible Evidence. Upon completion and approval by Unica, we provided secure destruction services for the scanned files along with secure destruction of files that were not being scanned located in the file room located at Unica’s Mississauga location.
This project has converted existing file room space into revenue generating space, eliminate the need to store physical files, eliminate lost or misplaced files, provided immediate on-line access to the files, find potentially lost or misplaced documents, eliminate insurance costs to protect the physical archive and off-site storage facility, while recycling the files for the benefit of the environment.
Perimeter Group provided all services necessary from start to finish to complete all aspects of this project both on site at Unica and off site at Perimeter’s secure imaging facility.

Overview of the Project
Perimeter Group proceeded with an imaging and secure destruction project with respect to Claims files stored in the file room at Unica’s Head Office in Mississauga Ontario.

Quantity of Documents
There were approximately 6,400 files or 800 banker’s boxes of these files which required scanning with the balance of the files being securely shredded.

Deliverables
Indexing and Packing of the Files for Transport – On Site at Unica The indexing and document selection of which files require scanning and which files were to be shredded had been taken on internally by Unica and Perimeter was provided with an Excel spreadsheet for the initial pick-up files. Perimeter personnel worked with Unica personnel to remove the files from the shelves, had Unica personnel verify the file number to the spreadsheet and place the file in either the scan boxes or shred boxes as determined. Perimeter personnel provided the logistics of preparing and packing the boxes and moving the files to the truck and loading.

Indexing & File Naming
Unica indexed the files and provided Perimeter with the spreadsheet to allow the creation of the separator sheets which contains the file name.

Scanning Structure
Perimeter scanned each file as one single Adobe PDF. Document Preparation and Scanning was done Off-site at Perimeter Group’s secure production facility.

Preparation
Perimeter completed all document preparation required including staple removal, paperclip removal, insertion of separator sheets with the file name and folder information.

Scanning
We recommended scanning the documents at 200 dpi grey scale for optimum image quality. As the closed files are ultimately being shredded, we believed it was imperative to capture the best quality image possible from the original paper documents in order to ensure that all information contained on the original document was in the electronic file. Perimeter scanned the documents at 200 dpi grey scale or photos at 150 dpi colour.

Searchability
Perimeter processed the PDF files through “hidden OCR” to make the machine text searchable. Perimeter used an industry leading software solution to complete the hidden OCR which provides a much higher “hit ratio for searching than PDF’s that use Acrobat. Coupled with the grey scale image, the
“hit” ratio can be 300% – 400% higher in hits than straight Acrobat.

Compression
Perimeter processed the PDF files through compression to reduce the file size while maintaining a very high-quality image.

Quality Control
Perimeter tracked all bankers’ boxes and the files contained using bar code tracking, verification to the index of files completed on-site, back-end verification to match the electronic file quantities to the index. We used professional imaging equipment with Ultrasonics for duplicate page detection and ensured that all documents contained in the physical file were captured to the electronic file.

File Formats
File format was multi-page, industry standard, searchable Adobe PDF that can be viewed using Adobe Reader, Adobe Acrobat or other software capable of reading PDF on PC’s, Laptops, Tablets, Smart Phones etc.

Data Deliverables
Data was delivered on USB External Hard drives. We also offered to provide secure, Canadian based cloud data delivery with encryption. It was possible to upload files to the Unica DMS.

Location of Project
This project was completed on-site at Unica for file indexing and packing and off-site for prep and scan.