Technical FAQs

Accusoft has been remote since March 2020. The executive team is committed to ensuring the safety and well-being of its employees during this time. While these measures are necessary, they come with different challenges for team communication and bonding. Over the past seven months, Accusoft’s leaders have gotten creative, finding new, virtual ways for their teams to connect, not only about work but personally as well. Here are some of the unique ways Accusoft has kept its employees engaged, informed, and connected while operating remotely.

Company-Wide Town Hall & AccuTalk

Accusoft’s executive team hosts a company-wide, virtual town hall once a month to give updates on the company’s performance during COVID-19. Leaders share updates and answer questions about the state of business. The meeting helps provide clarity about what’s going on at Accusoft during the pandemic. It alleviates some of the uncertainty about how this situation is impacting normal business operations.

“We know it’s crucial to keep our employees informed about the business,” states Jack Berlin, CEO of Accusoft. “While it’s difficult to be out of the office, especially for me, I know it’s what’s best for our team. While we are remote, we need to ensure that employees are informed and understand how we are handling this situation from the top down.”

AccuTalk, formerly Chalk Talk, is held once a quarter on a virtual platform. This company-wide meeting highlights the accomplishments of each department and their goals moving forward. During AccuTalk, the leadership team shares information about the successes and challenges of the team’s quarter and what they can do to meet their new goals in the following quarter.

Diversity and Inclusion Initiatives

Accusoft is committed to upholding its core values, including diversity and inclusion. Over the past several months, there has been social unrest on important issues related to this core value. Accusoft recognizes how this has impacted its employees and aims to provide a safe space for individuals to share thoughts, ideas, and feelings around the subject in a productive way. Individual team members have contributed to the activism Slack channel, which discusses trending news stories, ways to be a better ally, and community events to get involved in. 

Team Celebrations and Gatherings

In addition to informational meetings and activism groups, team leads and managers have hosted team bonding events including everything from Zoom lunch celebrations for team member’s life events to virtual gaming parties. 

The PrizmDoc team has a monthly birthday happy hour and a weekly lunch meeting where they play GeoGuessr. The marketing team has even gathered for a socially distant happy hour in-person to support a team member’s family food stand. 

“It’s important that we get together in a safe environment to reconnect with each other. We can easily forget that the human on the other side of the screen, whether visible to us or not, is a colleague that we once interacted with closely in person,” says Christine Hairelson, VP of Employee Experience at Accusoft. “We are all facing different challenges during this pandemic, and it’s vital that we connect with each other on a personal level as well as a business one.”

Virtual Events and Holidays

In addition to the team-specific events, Accusoft’s Event Ninjas, a group of dedicated volunteers from all teams, has put together several virtual events for the company to participate in over the past seven months. The team has planned a trivia night, ice cream social, beer and cheese tasting, and a virtual Halloween party. The goal is to keep everyone connected and engaged. 

“While we may not be able to all gather together safely, we can still connect with each other and share milestones, celebrate holidays, and help each other through this challenging time,” states Megan Brooks, VP of Marketing.

Want to work for Accusoft? Explore all of our open job opportunities on the Careers page, and apply to join our team.

TOTVS Fluig, a leading business management systems provider, improved document viewing by integrating Accusoft’s PrizmDoc solution, addressing challenges with Microsoft Office files. PrizmDoc offered advanced features like text search and annotation. Transitioning to an Accusoft cloud environment ensured scalability and compliance. With PrizmDoc, TOTVS Fluig efficiently handles millions of viewing requests, focusing on core products while relying on Accusoft. Their partnership promises future growth and innovation.

The insurance market is booming. As noted by research firm Deloitte, the property and casualty (P&C) sector saw a massive income uptick in 2018 and steady growth last year that’s predicted to carry forward through 2020. To help manage the influx of new clients and handle more claims, many firms are spending on insurance technology (insurtech) — digital services and solutions that make it possible to reduce error rates and enhance operational efficiency. InsurTech SDKs are important components of this transformation.

Both in-house insurtech solutions and third-party platforms often excel in specific areas but come up short in others, putting insurance firms at risk of writing off potential gains. While solution switching and ground-floor rebuilds offer one route to success, there’s another option that’s more custom to your business needs: software development kits (SDKs). Here’s a look at three top SDKs that offer customized functionality potential.

FormSuite for Structured Forms: Solving for Data Capture

Time is money. The faster insurance companies accurately complete and file documents, the greater their revenue potential. And as noted by KPMG, the need for speed is more pressing than ever. Many insurance sectors have seen substantial increases in both claims and new applications as the COVID-19 crisis evolves. 

As a result, accurate and agile forms processing is critical to keep up with demand. If current insurance software can’t quickly capture forms data, recognize standard form fields, and let users easily create standard form libraries, policy processing falls behind.

FormSuite for Structured Forms makes it easy for developers to build in form identification and data capture that includes comprehensive form field detection with OCR, ICR, and OMR functionality and the ability to automatically identify scanned forms and match them to existing templates.

ImageGear for .NET and C/C++: Simplifying Conversion

Conversion is critical for insurance firms. Depending on the type and complexity of insurance claims, companies are often dealing with everything from Word documents for initial client assessments and .GIF or .JPG images of existing damage to contractor-specific PDFs or spreadsheets that detail necessary materials, time, and labor costs. The result? A mash-up of multiple file types that forces adjusters to spend valuable time searching for specific data instead of helping clients get their claims process up and running. This makes it difficult to recognize value from emerging digital initiatives. 

Accusoft’s ImageGear for .NET and ImageGear for C/C++ empower developers to integrate enterprise-class file viewing, annotation, conversion, and image processing functions into existing applications, allowing staff to both quickly collaborate on key tasks and find essential data across a single, easy-to-search document.

ImageGear: Streamlining PDF Capabilities

While insurance technology offers substantive opportunities for end-users to capture, convert, and retain data, this technology can also come with the challenge of increased complexity. According to recent research from PWC, for example, firms looking to capitalize on insurtech potential must be prepared to rapidly develop new product offerings and embrace the expectations. 

As a result, companies need applications that streamline current functions and allow them to focus on creating cutting-edge solutions. For example, PDF is a file format that is still used by enterprises worldwide to maintain document format consistency and maximize security. When it comes to converting multiple files into a PDF, software can be expensive and introduce data security issues. 

This can all be solved with an SDK like ImageGear, which makes it possible to integrate the total PDF package into any document management application, both reducing overall complexity and freeing up time for staff to work on new insurance initiatives.

Insurtech forms the framework of functional futures in policy applications, claims processing, and compliance reporting, but existing software systems may not provide the complete capability set companies need to make the most of digital deployments. These top SDKs offer insurance IT teams the ability to integrate key services, improve speed, and boost security at scale. Learn more about Accusoft’s SDKs at www.accusoft.com/products. 

TAMPA, Fla. September 9, 2020 – In August, Tampa Bay Tech’s Software CEO Council (TBSC) met to tackle what so many CEOs and founders are experiencing right now as the country continues to reopen. The outlook was optimistic amongst the group as all attendees reported that their businesses were maintaining financial stability and growing headcount.

During this quarterly meeting, TBSC usually gathers to discuss business ideas, philanthropic efforts, and community involvement. This meeting was a little different considering the effects that COVID-19 has had on the market.

“It’s important for TBSC to keep our meetings going, especially during a pandemic,” states Seng Sun, CEO of SunView Software. “We can rely on each other to share feedback and ideas regarding the management of new COVID-19 protocols.”

Prior to the meeting, the members participated in a brief survey about the impact that the pandemic had on their businesses.

“Across the board our CEOs reported challenges in the past several months, but I was encouraged by the optimism for not only ending the year in a positive place, but heading into 2021 with solid strategies to grow,” reported Jill St Thomas, Tampa Bay Tech’s Executive Director. “The commitment of these leaders to support one another absolutely embodies our mission of building a radically connected tech community in Tampa Bay.”

“We need to understand the way the pandemic has influenced not only our own business plans and strategies, but how it will affect the technology landscape in Tampa Bay,” states Jack Berlin, CEO of Accusoft. “We have light-hearted meetings, but we do discuss serious subjects. I took over a page of notes on ideas my peers shared, and I’m interested in implementing them across my teams.”

Members of the group in attendance included: Jack Berlin, CEO of Accusoft, Kevin Coppins, CEO of Spirion, Seng Sun, CEO of SunView Software, Ed Holmes, CEO of FairWarning, Gregory Ross-Munro, CEO of Sourcetoad, Paul Toomey, CEO of Geographic Solutions, Chris Karlo, CEO of Mercury New Media, Jody Haneke, CEO of Haneke Designs, and moderator, Jill St. Thomas, Executive Director of Tampa Bay Tech.

For more information about TBSC, visit the group’s website at https://www.tampasoftwareceos.com/.

About Tampa Bay Tech

Tampa Bay Tech is a 501(c)6 non-profit technology council that has been engaging and uniting the local technology community for 20 years. With over 100 companies representing thousands of tech employees – as well as thousands of students within the area’s colleges and universities – Tampa Bay Tech provides programming and initiatives to support all those in the technology space. Through their membership and partnerships, their mission is to build a radically connected, flourishing tech hub where opportunity is abundant for all. Join the TBTech community at tampabay.tech and follow us on Facebook, Linkedin, Instagram and Twitter.

About Accusoft

Founded in 1991, Accusoft is a software development company specializing in content processing, conversion, and automation solutions. From out-of-the-box and configurable applications to APIs built for developers, Accusoft software enables users to solve their most complex workflow challenges and gain insights from content in any format, on any device. Backed by 40 patents, the company’s flagship products, including OnTask, PrizmDoc™ Viewer, and ImageGear, are designed to improve productivity, provide actionable data, and deliver results that matter. The Accusoft team is dedicated to continuous innovation through customer-centric product development, new version release, and a passion for understanding industry trends that drive consumer demand. Visit us at www.accusoft.com.

KnowledgeLake had long utilized an in-house viewing solution that allowed customers to view documents within the platform. Although this legacy viewer had gone through many iterations over the years, it was deployed as part of an on-prem solution. When KnowledgeLake transitioned its on-premise products to a cloud-based solution, they decided to evaluate Accusoft’s PrizmDoc as an alternative to their in-house viewing solution.

From large payouts and losses in some segments to rapid growth in others, the insurance industry has experienced seismic shifts due to the COVID-19 global pandemic. To keep some semblance of normalcy during these changes and the aftermath, organizations are turning to InsurTech solutions for help. 

According to Deloitte, InsurTech investments remain strong, with COVID-19 simply shifting priorities to virtual customer engagement and operational efficiency rather than cutting budgets. Data collected by Venture Scanner indicates that the global InsurTech market generated $2.2B in the first half of 2020.

The Challenge of Advancing a Product to Meet Immediate Needs

Tasks once completed manually at insurance companies can bottleneck an entire system in just a few days and prevent insurers from winning much-needed revenue. For this reason, providers are scrambling to make fast efficiency gains while minimizing risks that could lead to unrealized business opportunities due to slow processing. When it’s feast or famine, with customers either signing up or making claims in droves, there’s no time to waste.

As a product developer in the InsurTech space, this puts you in a precarious position. After all, how can you add functionality overnight when it takes time to build those new capabilities? While some organizations may have the available workforce to rally and build new features quickly, most don’t. 

If you’re like most in the development space, finding and retaining talent is a challenge. What’s more, they’re likely already looking at a project backlog spanning many months—if not years. For this reason, augmenting existing solutions with white-label, third-party plug-ins is an attractive option. Now, let’s turn our attention to the type of functionality insurers need to navigate recent shifts.

4 Essential Capabilities for the Insurance Industry in the Wake of COVID-19

Pew Research found that by June of 2020 roughly 3% of Americans had already made a mass exodus from highly populated areas like New York, New York and San Francisco, California due to challenges posed by the COVID-19 global pandemic. This number has likely grown since June and will likely continue to grow as hubs of economic growth continue to shift and settle. 

For each insured individual that moves and retains insurance coverage, there’s paperwork. For many, they’ll even switch providers as their previous provider may not be able to provide competitive rates in their new location. The sheer change-management involved in migrations of this scale is daunting. Without the ability to process requests faster, insurance companies could find themselves struggling to keep up. 

To help your insurance industry clients effectively navigate the road ahead, your applications need to include greater data-capture, data-conversion, and optical character recognition technologies that reduce the need for manual intervention in document processing. 

1. Data Capture Efficiency  

As the number of file formats increases, insurance organizations need the ability to quickly capture and process hundreds of different image formats. Beyond simply capturing them, they often also need to aggregate and convert those multiple formats into a single, secure, and digitally accessible PDF.

Rather than trying to build everything from scratch, sometimes partnering with a third-party software developer can give you a leg up on all the delivery time associated with expanding feature sets for the insurance industry.  

Essential Capabilities Should Include:

• Support for multiple file formats
• Automated image-correction and optical character recognition technology
• Clean integration that maintains or improves processing speed 

Once data is captured, it then needs to be managed. To explore document management capabilities to consider when expanding your feature set for the insurance industry, click here. 

2. Identify Form Fields

Whether potential buyers are requesting new policies or current customers are evaluating existing policies, precise and efficient data-capture technologies can improve the ability of insurers to access important data and analyze policies. Adding these capabilities requires quite a bit of strategy. First, one must consider the core challenges involved in effective data capture: 

• Poor inputs that aren’t easy to correct and capture 
• Poorly designed forms that reduce image recognition success  
• Imaging technology that can’t recognize a robust number of file formats and fonts 

When contemplating the structure of boxes for character collection, our experts found that using a square shape rather than a rectangle results in less data loss. While rectangles may, at first, appear to save space and therefore be a more effective option, research showed that they typically don’t provide the average user enough space to clearly write letters or characters without interfacing with the boundary lines. Thus, square boxes improve data transfer success. 

Figure 1: Examples of ineffective rectangular boxes versus effective square boxes for character capture. 

This is just one factor to consider when streamlining form processing within an insurance technology application. To explore more research on this topic, download the Best Practices: Improving ICR Accuracy with Better Form Design whitepaper.  

3. Confidence Value Reporting for Data Recognition

Not all optical character recognition technology is created equal. That’s why it’s important to make sure any solution you either create internally or partner with a third party to integrate provides ongoing confidence value reporting for data recognition. Having this capability in place can alert you to problems before they lead to costly issues — like duplicated efforts, a poor customer experience, or incomplete data hindering contract processing. 

4. Use OCR to Identify Different Documents

Optical character recognition (OCR) can help insurance companies cut down on manual effort by identifying different forms automatically, which equips application developers like you to create automation within your company’s product that routes identified forms through predefined workflows. 

Without OCR, significant manual effort is required to process forms required to execute insurance contracts. When evaluating OCR capabilities to add to applications, keep in mind these essentials:

• Successful Character Recognition Rates – Given the highly regulated nature of insurance along with high fines for shortcomings, it’s often well worth the extra investment to get a solution with 99% accuracy versus 95%. 

• Multi-Document Recognition with High Confidence Values– Given the broad number of file types insurance organizations receive, having a software package in place that cleans up documents before running them through optical character recognition tools improves the likelihood of extracted data being usable. With cleaner data in hand, insurance agents are empowered to make better recommendations to customers, ensuring they’re not over or under insured.

These are just a few items to consider when adding document viewing and forms processing features to your application. While automated workflows may have given organizations heartburn in the past, the reality is that high-volume, fast-changing environments can’t survive without them. Markets are changing so quickly that without automation to help bring order to the chaos, the tidal wave of requests will overtake the underprepared. 

Help your clients better respond to not only COVID-19, but also future-proof their ability to streamline claims by expanding document viewing and form processing capabilities. To learn more about our insurtech capabilities, explore our content solutions for insurance companies.      

The infamous cloud and its capabilities has quickly gained popularity in the average household as tech giants like Google, Apple and Amazon have created an expectation that cloud storage services are standard features.  But while cloud storage may be convenient and cost-effective for personal use, there are many business cases where on-premise servers and storage remain the primary choice. 

Today, the debate for ‘cloud storage vs. on-premise’ seems like it would be similar to ‘tablet vs. desktop,’ but many would be surprised to find that in a survey done by IDG Communications and referenced in an article by EnterpriseCIO.com, 56% of respondents, say their on-premises applications are here to stay.  Cloud storage and viewing have many benefits that appeal to today’s mass-market: simple set-up, easily accessible, cost-saving – but when it comes to the most highly regulated industries in the world the benefits of on-premise provide are second to none. 

The same goes for document viewing.  In a world where the average person sends and receives 121 business emails per day, according to a report by DMR, we can imagine the number of attachments shared between colleagues and professionals in a year. Secure document viewing has become a necessity for several industries, but particularly those highly regulated. While companies may find it a tall order to create an on-premise environment with secure document viewing capabilities, Accusoft’s HTML5 document viewer can be deployed on your own infrastructure to create security and compliant-friendly document viewing.

Integrating a document and image viewer on your own server allows an organization to have confidence that even their most sensitive information is protected at all times. The top 4 benefits of on-premise viewing include:

• Control
  Maintain complete control over your data using on-premise servers and increase the functionality within documents.  By integrating  HTML5 viewing capabilities into an application, it ensures that documents never have to leave a secure environment, even when they’re being shared with people outside your organization. Highly regulated industries and organizations can’t afford a data breach, so the added benefit of physical security of servers weighs heavily on the decision between on-premise vs. cloud.
• Security
  A document viewer API integration into the on-premise server adds multi-level data protection with 256-bit AES encryption and configurable user permissions for privacy and protection. Companies are able to use in-house security features and systems that allow them to deploy firewalls, anti-malware, etc. when their data is stored on-premise infrastructure.
• Compliance
  Instead of adding risk by bouncing off third-party servers, integrating an HTML5 viewer into your current application provides added flexible across  many platforms.  The self-hosted version resides on any organization’s servers. The key features of Accusoft’s HTML 5 viewer support secure, GDPR compliant efforts.
• Speed & Accessibility
  Since the data is stored on the local network and not reliant on an internet connection, if network problems occur, data can still be accessed. The local server also allows for faster file transfer and seamless document sharing. Adding a image and document viewer API empowers developers to provide users with responsive filing viewing without the need to download plugins or open any other applications.

Get Started Today
To learn more about PrizmDoc, Accusoft’s HTML 5 image and document viewing API and the on-premise server integration, click on the resources below or, contact us today.