Equitable Life & Casualty Insurance Co. (EL&C) is a life and health insurance company for senior Americans, founded in 1935. Headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah, the company has 3,600 Independent Agents Nationwide and about 135 employees in the main Utah office.

Business communications at EL&C have come a long way from its first mailing in 1935, when the founder invested $20 in 2,000 penny post cards and recruited his family to handwrite and distribute the company's first premiums. The current president challenged the Document Production Systems & Support team to automate the production of mailings that included a personalized letter, a fully completed user application form, and the client's policy statement. Adobe PostScript and Xerox VIPP (Variable-data Intelligent PostScript Printware) were used for the task.

All correspondence sent to EL&C clients today combine graphics and data for personalized documents for every client. To implement an automated workflow, the company switched from Metacode to Xerox's VIPP language. Using Lytrod Software's Proform Designer, EL&C converted 18,000 forms and related resources to Adobe PostScript. The Lytrod Designer software was also used to create the personalized letters and policies. By implementing the Xerox, Adobe and Lytrod Software production solution, document production was streamlined significantly, reducing the time required to issue policies from 30 days to 4 days.

To further automate and personalize correspondence, EL&C added the Xerox VIPP Thin Printer (VTP) solution with Adobe Distiller Server and PDF Libraries to the production workflow in 2002. They use VIPP applications to personalize, assemble and print documents, and then send them to the VTP for the mass-production of indexed PDF files.

Article from Volume V Issue 26, June 27, 2003 of Digital Queue

Digital Queue: is a weekly publication of Digital Output, 5150 Palm Valley Rd., Suite 103, Ponte Vedra Beach, FL 32082; tel: 904/285-6020; fax: 904/285-9944; Web: www.digitaloutput.net. Subscriptions: $99 for 26 weeks; $149 for 50 weeks. Editor: Michael McEnaney ( ). Associate Editor: Toni McQuilken ( ). Designer: Chris Petrello ( ). Publisher: Douglas Apelian ( ).