The Bond Agency has a straightforward mission: to provide superior bonding services to contractors and businesses of all types by simplifying bond applications and bond processing. With iAutomate: Erlon Surety to manage the entire surety workflow process, and iAutomate: SmartForms for forms generation and document management, The Bond Agency is using technology to meet its goal.

Based in Dover, DE, The Bond Agency is aptly named. “We are a bond-only agency; all we do is surety bonds,” says Karen Gasper, Bond CSR at The Bond Agency. The agency has a team of four to process license and permitting bonds, fidelity bonds, public official bonds, contract bonds, and maintenance bonds, and switched from manual processes to iAutomate: Erlon Surety in 2008.

“We needed a system to store all information on transactions from beginning to end,” says Gasper. “With iAutomate: Erlon Surety, anyone can open up a transaction and find out what has happened, the contact info, and all of the information they need to generate a bond.”

Having the information in house in an easily accessible database has improved a number of workflow processes for The Bond Agency, including renewals. Prior to using iAutomate: Erlon Surety, the agency relied on data from its surety company because it had no easy way to generate a list.

The Bond Agency also uses iAutomate: SmartForms in conjunction with iAutomate: Erlon Surety. This document management solution enables firms to transform any paper-based form into a reusable PDF template, and to enhance and secure document storage, retrieval, and sharing. Gasper estimates that iAutomate: SmartForms has halved the time it takes for her team to prepare a renewal.

“Once the form is set up in iAutomate: SmartForms, it’s just a click of a button to process renewals,” says Gasper. Because iAutomate: SmartForms enables users to create fields that merge with information from the iAutomate: Erlon Surety data base, users can quickly and easily generate forms and letters without manual rekeying. “The renewal letters print out and I don’t have to manually fill in data,” says Gasper. “It has cut my processing time in half.”

The Bond Agency has built a library of close to 200 forms that it can easily reuse, store, and share. “It’s very user friendly, and has cut down on my time tremendously,” says Gasper. “I can’t say enough good things about iAutomate: SmartForms.”