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Letter to the Editor

eAutoclaims and Enterprise Logistics Complete Trial of CIECA X12, Open Electronic Transaction Standards for the Automotive Collision Industry

PALM HARBOR, Fla. -- eAutoclaims, a company that provides the insurance industry with online claims management solutions through both an ASP and outsourcing solutions services, announced the successful completion of the first real world external trial of CIECA X12, the open electronic transaction standards for the automotive collision industry. Collision Industry Electronic Commerce Association (CIECA) has established universal electronic transaction standards that are designed to promote the interconnection of data across insurance companies, claims processors, and body shops that utilize a range of claims handling systems, databases, and estimating software programs.

As part of this trial, eAutoclaims and Enterprise Logistics, in a joint effort with Comp-Est, developed the implementation of the technology. Participants in the three-way trial included Royal & SunAlliance as the initiator of the auto body repair assignment, eAutoclaims as the online system's provider of the claim and Greg's Collision Center as the participating body shop. Using the CIECA standard format, Greg's Collision Center received the claim, created the auto body repair estimate using Comp-Est's estimating system and transmitted the estimate back to eAutoclaims along with a series of encapsulated digital images. The participants successfully received the data into their different computer systems and eliminated the need for any rekeying of data.

"We are proud to have been a part of a cooperative effort between industry leaders which strives to continually provide the claims management and auto repair industry with innovative technology to eliminate the necessity for human intervention of entering Administrative Data into the estimate," remarked Dave Mattingly, VP of Information Technology of eAutoclaims.

"This is a very exciting time for the industry. Open standardized communication based on CIECA X12 implementations will fundamentally change the way industry partners do business by increasing in the operating efficiency, lowering the cost of processing claims and minimizing the possibility of entering incorrect information into the system. We are thrilled to be able to introduce the automotive claims community to this technology," stated Brian Hemker, General Manager of Enterprise Logistics.

"I remember very clearly having to manually erase and re-write estimates and repair orders. As an industry, we are standing at the door of increased efficiency in transferring data between the involved parties. CIECA, eAutoclaims, and Enterprise Logistics are standing firm in their support of the collision repair industry to increase the ease of use and transfer of information among all users. The technology will definitely be used to move the industries forward to better serve our customers and insurance partners," commented Dale Napier, General Manager of Greg's Collision Center.

Roger Cadaret, Executive Director of CIECA, said, "Enterprise Logistics and eAutoclaims embraced the idea of demonstrating the soon-to-be-final industry standard electronic estimate. They also used the recently finalized assignment standard, sending it from an insurer via eAutoclaims to a shop via the communications tool for the Comp-Est estimating system (Enterprise Logistics). They then sent the estimate in the CIECA standard via the Enterprise Logistics communication tool to the insurer via eAutoclaims. This not only was a highly successful demonstration of the transmission of both new standards, but also a demonstration of the inter-connecting of two e-commerce vendors, which is going to be critical to the future of the industry."

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