Covid-19: Supporting Your Staff and Customers with Tactical Automation
The insurance sector together with the rest of the country is going through difficult, unprecedented times. Clearly the first priority is supporting the health and wellbeing of your staff and enabling delivery of critical services to your customers. In this blog we look at how tactical automation – implemented remotely – in as little as 4 weeks could help you.
Managers and senior leaders in the sector have undertaken an impressive, herculean effort in a short period to enable staff to work from home and make other changes to ensure staff safety and compliance with government policy. Laptops have been sourced and shipped, basic IT systems sorted and new ways of working implemented for tens of thousands of staff.
Looking after your staff
This is potentially a very stressful time for managers at all levels and for your staff. Outside of work many are worried about their own health and that of family members while also having to look after children normally in school. Staff working from home may be experiencing both loneliness and some acute stress. The challenge of dealing with manual processes, use of paper and a multitude of spreadsheets is magnified many times over while people are working remotely.
So, what can you do? Once you have people safely working from home, this may be the time to consider tactical automation to alleviate unnecessary stress and build future resilience – consider:
- Free staff from repetitive and mindless jobs such as data entry, re-keying, moving data from one system to another
- Eliminate paper, use AI to read forms and introduce digital signatures
- Enable safer and easier access to legacy systems, including old green screen systems
Looking after your customers
Just like your staff, for many of your customers this is a time of unprecedented stress. In the insurance world, organisations are impacted differently. Brokers that normally engage with customers face to face will need to find new ways of engaging with customers while insurers will be thinking about how to go direct to new segments of the market. Claims departments (unless you are dealing with queries regarding business interruption or travel insurance) may be running below capacity for the time being.
Brokers may consider:
- How to mange renewals and new business processes when everyone is working from home? Do you need to standardise sales processes and implement better reporting?
- How do you engage with customers effectively without physical meetings? Using video conferencing, other?
- How will your product mix change? How will you implement new products? Can you work towards achieving MGA status?
Insurers may consider:
- A few departments that are very busy (and have less staff) may need support with repetitive processes and line managers’ reports can be automated?
- Claims departments may experience a lull – is this the time to look at quick-win automation? Maybe implement automatic reading of incoming forms using AI?
- As end-customers purchase more and more online, how can you improve your digital presence and capture a larger direct market? Which processes break down due to manual intervention?
Current uncertainty may become the new certainty
The current challenges and the risk of further potential waves of this virus is likely to be with us for the foreseeable future. So, in addition to looking after your staff and customers immediate needs, what should you consider in the medium term?
- Convert large transformation projects into quick wins – either for staff or customers. Your board is unlikely to accept anything that does not pay back in 6 to 12 months.
- Build resilience quickly by gluing existing systems together (ripping our large legacy systems was always expensive and risky…even more so now).
- Consider how new purchasing patters and new ways of working will change the way your work and the products you sell in the next year or two. C-19 will have a lasting impact on most aspects of our lives.
Please contact tim.hatzis@pskinetic.com if you would like to discuss how we can help you implement quick-win automation – remotely – in as little as 4 weeks.