WFL has used the iAutomate: Erlon Surety workflow management solution long enough to understand the benefits it delivers to the company’s busy surety department, including streamlining operations and eliminating manual processes. But it also has discovered new ways to integrate the product throughout the enterprise that benefit its entire customer base.

Based in St. Louis, MO, WFL offers a variety of insurance products for employee benefits, surety bonds, and commercial insurance. While its surety department is extremely busy, and generates a significant portion of its revenue, it has the fewest team members on staff. “This is attributable not only to our good employees, but to the tools that they use. They could not maintain this volume without iAutomate: Erlon Surety,” says Darlene Glaze, manager of corporate technology for WFL.

WFL started using iAutomate: Erlon Surety more than 10 years ago, and while Glaze notes that the surety industry has changed dramatically within that time, iAutomate: Erlon Surety has kept pace with market changes. Challenges include the need to streamline and automate the creation of reusable forms as well as to adapt to carrier requirements.

For forms creation, Glaze applauds the development of iAutomate: SmartForms, a document management solution that enables firms to transform any paper-based form into a reusable PDF template, and to enhance and secure document storage, retrieval, and sharing. “Life before was driven by the typewriter, which was so painful. Now we can scan in a form, create merged fields, and reuse them,” says Glaze. “iAutomate: SmartForms is an important application for us.” The agency is building a database of forms, which it makes available to customers online via its web site.

Another important integration is with carriers’ technology systems. Glaze says that iAutomate: Erlon Surety’s ability to integrate agencies directly with carriers to streamline bond approval and processing is vital to increasing efficiency. “The carriers are all moving in the direction of online processing, and iAutomate: Erlon Surety is right there with them,” says Glaze.

These efforts toward enabling increased integration are setting the development team at Insurance Automation Group apart, and enabling WFL to deploy new features that benefit its existing customer base. For example, because many WFL clients purchase multiple lines, including P&C, surety, and benefits products, Glaze asked Insurance Automation Group to work with her team to create an online portal to streamline access.

Contractor customers can log in to the WFL site and generate reports, view bid results, or submit bond requests around the clock. In addition, if the client also purchases benefits or P&C programs, it can use the same login to access other appropriate online tools. “This single-sign on enables us to offer our clients access to tools 24/7, and access all of the information they need to work with us,” says Glaze. The developers at Insurance Automation Group worked closely with the WFL web team to ensure client security and to protect WFL data.

“Insurance Automation Group is open to this kind of development, and its data base is structured so that it can accommodate these kinds of projects,” says Glaze.

The partnership between WFL and Insurance Automation Group continues to grow, says Glaze, in part due to the openness and innovation of the development team, but also because of the company’s expertise in the bond industry. “The iAutomate: Erlon Surety group has hired people from the bond industry with strong surety backgrounds,” says Glaze. “It gives them the edge to have this kind of talent on board to keep moving the product forward.”