Sign InHow to Standardize Field Documentation Across Distributed Adjuster Teams
Most insurance carriers invest heavily in claims cycle time, building dashboards, setting regional targets, and holding teams accountable to settlement benchmarks. But the gains they're looking for often stall at the same bottleneck: inconsistent field documentation.
Distributed teams working with ad hoc processes and inconsistent tools will inevitably produce inconsistent outputs. So when claim files land on a desk reviewer's screen, the quality can swing drastically. This leads to supplement requests, callbacks, and re-inspections that add cost and erode policyholder trust.
According to J.D. Power's 2025 U.S. Property Claims Satisfaction Study, the average property claims cycle time has reached 32.4 days, the longest since the study began in 2008. Much of that delay traces back to documentation gaps that force rework at every downstream stage.
The most effective way to reduce variability is to standardize field documentation, specifically how it's captured, measured, reviewed, and shared. The quality of a claim file should depend on the process rather than the person.
Why inconsistent field practices harm claims workflows
Documentation variability in the field rarely comes from negligence. When dozens of adjusters spread across multiple regions rely on different habits and different interpretations of "good enough," inconsistency becomes the default outcome rather than the exception.
The root causes tend to be structural:
Insufficient onboarding depth: New adjusters may follow SOPs closely during their first weeks, then gradually drift as caseloads ramp up. Experienced adjusters, meanwhile, often improvise based on years of personal habit, sometimes for the better, sometimes not.
Inaccessible reference materials: Traditional SOPs live in PDFs or LMS platforms that aren't practical to consult mid-inspection. So adjusters rely on memory, which introduces variation with every claim.
Process drift over time: Even well-documented SOPs erode. Rework often stems from missed discovery questions, compliance gaps, and outdated processes that no longer reflect how work gets done in the field.
Manual capture methods that magnify differences: Traditional notes and photos are often incomplete or difficult to align with estimating software, introducing guesswork and delays downstream. When the output depends on each individual's sketching skill and photo technique, no two claim files will look alike.
These issues cascade through the rest of the workflow. Desk reviewers spend extra time interpreting ambiguous photos, estimators request supplements, and approvals stall while the back-and-forth consumes time and resources that could go toward resolving other claims.
Addressing this means replacing the documentation practices that create variability with structured workflows that make consistency the default.
A 6-step framework to standardize field documentation
Standardizing documentation requires structured workflows across capture, verification, review, and reuse, so the right approach is also the easiest one to follow.
1. Standardize what gets captured
Without a defined minimum, what one adjuster considers thorough might be another's shortcut. Firm capture requirements help ensure no critical area or detail gets missed, regardless of who handles the claim.
Every site visit should produce documentation of:
The entire structure, not just the rooms with visible damage.
Both damaged and undamaged areas, to provide comparison context and support scope accuracy.
Exterior and interior conditions, because claims reviewers need full spatial orientation to make decisions.
A folder of images without spatial context forces the reviewer to mentally reconstruct the property, and two reviewers will reconstruct it differently. Experienced adjusters capture hundreds of photos from multiple angles to document the damage as well as the surrounding context, and they create detailed sketches showing room dimensions, damaged areas, and repair requirements. Since the quality of that record depends entirely on individual skill, consistency suffers.
Many insurers are turning to reality capture technology to solve inconsistent spatial capture. Digital twins are 3D models that provide a complete property record—including walls, ceilings, transitions, and spatial relationships, in a single visit. Rather than depending on which angles the adjuster chose to photograph, a 3D scanning process documents everything automatically.
2. Standardize how documentation is created
Defining what to capture is only useful if the process for capturing it is equally consistent. SOPs need to be executable at the point of work, not buried in a training binder back at the office.
In many claims operations, adjusters are overloaded, documentation is inconsistent, and re-inspections are routine. Much of that friction traces back to capture workflows that vary from person to person.
Matterport's platform provides an easy, repeatable scan path through a property. Whether the adjuster is a 20-year veteran or a new hire on their third claim, the same process produces the same type of complete digital twin. The documentation standard is built into the workflow rather than left to individual judgment.
Organizations that need to scale capture without scaling variability can also use Capture Services, where trained technicians handle the scanning and deliver finished digital twins that meet the same standard regardless of location or claim volume.
3. Standardize measurements and sketching
A consistent capture process gets you complete documentation, but that isn't enough if the measurements inside that documentation are unreliable.
Manual sketches have been a documentation staple for decades. They’re familiar, accessible, and often seen as a fundamental adjuster skill. However, they remain one of the biggest sources of adjuster-to-adjuster variability.
Common issues related to manual sketching include:
Time to produce on-site: Adjusters must measure, draw, label, and verify dimensions by hand, extending field visits and pushing back the start of estimate writing and file submission.
Dimensional errors: Small measurement mistakes, scaling inconsistencies, or transposed numbers can materially affect scope calculations, resulting in estimate revisions and additional cycle time.
QA difficulty: Handwritten notes or missing context make it challenging for desk reviewers to validate measurements, leading to increased callbacks and re-inspections.
Inconsistent quality across adjusters: Differences in drawing clarity, labeling practices, and attention to detail lead to inconsistent file quality, creating unpredictable review timelines.
These issues compound quickly. When estimators have to wait days for sketches to be completed, and then discover dimensional errors that require a return visit, the claim stalls at a stage where momentum matters most.
Matterport addresses both of these problems. Automated Measuring captures precise dimensions inside the digital twin, and because those measurements come from scan data rather than tape measures or laser tools, they don't vary based on the adjuster's technique. Reviewers can confirm dimensions remotely without requiring anyone to return to the property.
On the sketching side, Matterport Sketch automatically generates floor plan files formatted for estimating platforms like Cotality Estimate. Instead of hand-drawn diagrams that vary in accuracy and legibility, teams get machine-generated floor plans and SKX files that feed directly into the estimating workflow. This removes one of the most common sources of dimensional error and supplement requests. Files are also produced instantly, so teams can move through the estimation process very quickly.
4. Standardize context, QA, and feedback
Better capture and measurement tools raise the baseline, but without a structured QA process, gaps will still go unnoticed until they cause problems downstream. Too often, quality reviews happen days after the site visit, based on a set of photos that lack the context a reviewer needs to give useful feedback.
The typical QA failure mode looks like this:
Reviewer flags an issue: A reviewer identifies a problem from ambiguous documentation.
Feedback lacks specificity: Written feedback references "the photo of the kitchen" without pointing to a precise location.
Adjuster can't pinpoint the concern: Without clear context, the adjuster doesn't know which area or which issue needs attention.
The cycle repeats: The adjuster either guesses and moves on or the back-and-forth continues.
Vague feedback prevents adjusters from correcting the specific behavior that caused the issue, and over time the same gaps show up again and again.
Effective feedback needs to be specific, visual, and timely. Matterport Tags and Notes support this by embedding QA directly inside the digital twin:
Location-specific feedback: Reviewers can drop a Tag on the exact spot in the 3D model where documentation is missing or unclear, removing ambiguity about "which wall" or "which room."
Clear condition verification: Notes attached to specific locations create a communication thread tied to real site conditions rather than abstract descriptions.
When adjusters can access visual data and precise measurements inside the model, the need for return trips, reinspection requests, and follow-up calls drops significantly. Corrections become specific enough to act on, and the same gaps are less likely to reappear in the next claim.
5. Standardize review and collaboration
A claim file passes through multiple hands before resolution. The field adjuster captures it, but desk reviewers, contractors, and policyholders all depend on that same documentation to do their jobs.
Key stakeholders who need accurate, consistent records include:
Desk adjusters who verify coverage and approve settlements remotely
Contractors who plan restoration scope and materials
Policyholders who need to understand what happened and what comes next
When field documentation is poor, the effects ripple outward. Desk reviewers can't validate coverage confidently, contractors scope repairs based on incomplete information, and policyholders receive conflicting updates. Site revisits multiply and estimates miss the mark.
Digital twins serve as a shared visual reference for every stakeholder in the claims and restoration lifecycle. A desk adjuster in one state can walk the same property that a contractor in another state is scoping, with both referencing the identical model and identical measurements.
Integrations and exportable assets from Matterport connect this documentation with claims management, estimating, and construction systems, so the digital twin feeds directly into downstream workflows rather than sitting in a separate silo.
6. Standardize training and change management
Shared documentation and collaboration tools create the conditions for consistency. But sustaining that consistency over time, especially as teams grow and turn over, requires deliberate investment in training.
High-quality documentation can double as a teaching tool. Digital twins from well-executed claims can serve as:
Training materials: New adjusters can walk through real properties virtually, studying what good capture looks like before they ever visit a loss site.
Performance benchmarks: QA managers can compare a trainee's first scans against exemplar models, identifying specific gaps rather than offering abstract guidance.
Using documentation as a training tool reduces reliance on tribal knowledge—the unwritten "how we do things here" that varies by office and region. Instead, the standard lives inside a model that anyone can access, navigate, and reference.
Matterport's platform makes this practical at scale. Notes embedded in a training model can link to additional resources like company SOPs, measurement guidelines, or tagging protocols, all placed in the spatial context where they apply. Instead of just reading about what to document in a hallway transition, a new adjuster can see it tagged and annotated inside the 3D model.
Get started with consistent field capture
No organization standardizes everything at once, and the most practical starting point is to pick the step where your team has the most visible inconsistency. For many carriers, that begins with how losses are captured in the field. Consistent, complete spatial capture creates a uniform foundation for every claim. Once that layer is working, the others become easier to implement because the documentation infrastructure is already in place.
When every adjuster captures a loss the same way, variability decreases and downstream processes—estimating, QA review, and collaboration—become more predictable and efficient.
To explore how digital twins support standardized field documentation across your claims operation, explore Matterport for insurance or watch our webinar to learn more.
