• Total Economic Impact study shows 9 month payback period for Aia’s document composition software

London, 10th December, 2009 - Aia Software (www.aia-itp.com), a leading author and developer of intelligent document composition software today announced the results of a recent study commissioned by Aia Software and conducted by Forrester Consulting on its behalf. The Total Economic Impact (TEI) study, completed in November 2009, of insurance and financial services organisations in Europe found that companies looking to implement the ITP Document Platform can see large productivity benefits and cost savings with a risk adjusted return on investment (ROI) of 277% and a payback period of just 9 months.

Forrester Consulting conducted independent in-depth interviews with five Aia Software customers and constructed a case study depicting a composite of the insurance customers that have deployed the ITP Platform.  The key findings indicate that the ITP Platform delivers:

• Rapid ROI and a short time horizon for achieving payback
• An increase in productivity for business users when document creation and delivery are made more flexible and efficient
• A requirement for fewer IT resources when business users assume ownership for and manage their own documents
• Reduced risk of errors and more assured compliance with regulations resulting from greater document accuracy and standardisation of text
• Postage cost savings when documents can be combined into fewer mailings

Paul Dirven, CEO of Aia Software said, “This impartial TEI study shows the tremendous potential for insurance and other financial services companies to make significant savings by implementing Aia’s ITP Platform.  It also reinforces our ‘business managed, IT controlled’ philosophy which is the key to achieving such a rapid ROI, whilst improving control, flexibility and reducing exposure to compliance and regulatory risk.”

The study indicated that by removing IT as the ‘broker of document construction’ - while maintaining IT’s role as the controller of the document systems and infrastructure, organizations can gain speed, agility and customer intimacy while making gains toward ensuring regulatory and internal compliance.

The risk-adjusted ROI of 277% for the composite company, along with a rapid payback (breakeven point), raises confidence that the investment is likely to succeed, especially after the risks and uncertainty that may threaten the project have been considered and quantified.  Other business benefits and drivers for investing in Aia’s document composition software include:

• Reducing staffing costs by minimising the number of IT personnel required to manage documents.  Additionally the same or fewer staff are able to produce a higher number of documents whilst maintaining accuracy.
• Developing new documents and templates in hours rather than days or weeks as previously required.
• Addressing the high cost of maintaining legacy systems involved in document production.
• Ease of integration to link to any new insurance or financial system and exploit web-based capabilities.
• Facilitating greater compliance and conformity through the use of standard text blocks and other information that is known to meet regulatory requirements.
• Increased flexibility and document intelligence as ITP enables companies to produce individual, custom-composed correspondence.
• Greater business agility allowing institutions to react to changing market conditions faster or to implement new policy wording more quickly.

Christoffel Klimbie, Sales Director, Aia Software UK stated, “The TEI framework established by Forrester Consulting shows that there is a clear business case for insurance and other financial institutions to benefit from the ITP Platform.  In addition to reduced costs and greater productivity, the business value to be gained from enhanced business agility and faster time to market/time to value leads to higher levels of customer satisfaction which in turn may lead to greater profitability.”

A copy of the study by Forrester Consulting, “The Total Economic Impact of ITP Document Platform” may be downloaded from www.aia-itp.com or via the direct link http://www.aia-itp.com/en/news/analyst-information/request-form-tei.html.