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Solutions Overview
Scenario
Anthem's large business customers represented a significant portion
of their revenue stream. But they were unable to provide them with
the customized service they required because their IT systems were
cumbersome and inflexible.
Company Profile
Anthem BlueCross BlueShield is the leading health care management company in Connecticut,
providing health care benefits and health care management programs for almost one million
members.
Situation
The system used to calculate health insurance renewals for large business customers was
inflexible. Whenever they needed to modify the system for a particular business customer,
they needed to call in the IT department for programming changes. We changed all that by
creating a flexible, Excel based system which combined central database information with
Microsoft Office to create a powerful yet flexible system.
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- Processing large group renewals was a tedious and time consuming
task which involved calculating what-if scenarios for large amounts
of data. Since the system was mainframe based, changes to the system
required program modifications by the IT department.
- Using a combination of Excel, Access and Word, we created a hybrid
system integrating the Microsoft Office suite of products with their
existing centralized database. It would address their need for flexibility
and improved reportage.
Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield of Connecticut had a problem. They had a large, non-millennium
compliant application used to calculate health insurance renewals for large business customers.
It was slow, unwieldy, written in an age-old language and relatively inflexible to current
needs. They had the system for years, adding bits and bytes as needed, but requiring significant
code writing by programmers whenever they wanted to change anything -- changing a line of
text in a canned report was as difficult as changing the entire calculation formula. Millennium
compliance forced them to look at the application and as they looked, they saw more and
more things desperately needing change. The insurance business was changing and they needed
more flexibility to better respond to the marketplace.
The old system relied upon Information Technology people to rewrite
any desired change in C. If the actuarial department came up with a new formula to
calculate risk, IT was called in to code it. If government regulations changed and
the underwriters needed to change a line in the renewal contract proposal, IT was
called in to code it. Plus, IT was responsible for maintaining the huge databases
that are the basis for the renewals and the data on what was offered to a client.
The IT people were working hard, but they were a bottleneck in the system ... they
had to effect every change and they weren't keeping up.
We proposed a hybrid system, integrating the Microsoft Office suite
of products (Access, Excel and Word) with their existing, centralized database using
client-server technology. It would address their need for flexibility and improved
reportage, using Excel charting facilities, Word letter templates and Open Database
Compliant protocols in Access. The idea was to let each department involved do the
job that they were best at doing -- Actuarial would construct calculation formulas,
Underwriting would maintain the contract templates and IT would make sure all the
data was flowing to the right place at the right time.
Now, underwriters and actuarials are not programmers ... but they
don't need to be to take advantage of the tremendous built-in tools and functions
in Excel and Word. No more waiting for IT to code the changes in C. It was truly a
mouse click away. To maximize their productivity, we added functionality and flexibility
for the front-line by creating a set of "wizards" to streamline everyday tasks. A
wizard is a set of dialog boxes that accomplishes a task by asking the user a set
of questions. It's very useful for new users, plus experienced users appreciate smart
defaults and reminders of more advanced options that are available but not used on
a daily basis.
The bottom line: renewal turnaround went from 3 days to less than
one day, a tremendous marketing advantage. Salespeople could be back to their prospects
quickly with accurate proposals that the company could confidently stand behind.
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