Techniques to make operational excellence a reality
You can ensure a competitive edge for your organization by focusing on process improvement. Our process improvement consultants know the insurance industry and can help you:
- Identify opportunities for cost reduction
- Improve overall effectiveness of key business processes
- Accommodate increased business without increasing support
- Improve services for your constituents
Decrease claims processing time
Our process improvement specialists are often able to help insurers decrease their claims processing cycle time by 60 percent by implementing a touch-a-claim-once system. They can help you look at your claims process from eligibility through billing and accounts receivable. By following best practices and simplifying your claims process, you will be able to enhance customer service while at the same time handle significant volume increases without increasing the demand for resources. The combination of cutting costs and increasing capacity can equal more than a 75 percent reduction in the cost of the underwriting process.
Improve your purchasing process
Your purchasing process is another place where we can help you look for savings opportunities. Historically we’ve been able to help insurance companies dramatically improve the efficiency of their purchasing process. The purchase process includes process cycle time and process cost. By following the suggestions of our operations improvement specialists, our clients have been able to reduce both by 50 percent, resulting in a 25 percent reduction in the cost of purchased goods and services.
How long does it take our specialists to find these opportunities for cost savings and process improvement? Identifying your company’s core processes and assessing them takes between one and two months. Developing a process improvement evaluation and redesign takes from two to four months depending on the complexity of the process/processes under study.
What about implementing the improvements?
Implementing the improvements will be done largely by your staff. Throughout the process, our process improvement specialists will involve employees at all levels of your company in the design and planning of the process improvement initiatives. Therefore they will be well prepared to implement the improvements.
For one insurer, our process improvement specialists were able to find a recurring annual savings of $25 million while promoting increased employee empowerment. They can put their experience and skills to work for your organization and help you prosper in this very competitive market.