Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) is increasingly used by businesses in the insurance industry to improve turnaround time, reduce backlogs, improve quality and to solve the revolving door problem of administrative resources coming and going.
However, process efficiency isn’t the only way that an outsourcing program can benefit a company. BPO offers a number of benefits to P&C insurers, both direct and indirect - everything from lower costs, improved scalability, and better customer service.
In light of these benefits, some companies still hesitate to partner with a BPO provider, citing concerns about a perceived loss of control and transparency into processes that are critical to their operations. The team at Solartis realized this was a problem, and created a people + technology solution, pairing Solartis Administer with a proprietary workflow engine, OptimX.
OptimX; a welcome addition to BPO:
With OptimX, companies accelerate the benefits of BPO by having total transparency and control into all BPO tasks and activities. OptimX was created by Solartis to work alongside Solartis Administer resources, to provide a granular, real-time view of the tasks being completed as well as those in the pipeline. With OptimX, insurers can monitor the progress of each individual task with reporting and analytics to identify potential errors before they become problems and to gain valuable business insight.
Companies that outsource using Solartis Administer with OptimX find that their level of process and operational control is actually improved over keeping tasks in-house. Most policy administration workflow and tracking processes are manual, data-entry and spreadsheet-based, with little reporting or analytics capabilities.
Solartis Administer with OptimX, on the other hand, was purpose-built to provide real-time, total transparency into processes at the task level, with reporting and analytics to provide valuable insight and support data-driven decision making.
Direct benefits of BPO:
Improved process efficiency
One of the primary benefits of BPO, and the main driver of adoption for many companies, is the fact that outsourcing business processes improve the efficiency of the primary operation. Instead of insurance administration being managed by a limited internal staff, BPO puts a large group of skilled administrators at your disposal. Processes can be significantly improved, without the need for large-scale investment in new technology or disruption in business operations.
Reduced delivery time
As processes become more efficient, and resources are dedicated to solving the administrative backlog, turnaround time is significantly reduced. Increased efficiency means that insurance administration tasks can be completed quickly – improving the services that are delivered, and customer satisfaction.
Lower costs
BPO helps companies to control costs, by providing a dedicated, skilled group of administrators that can get the job done faster – and saving time means saving money. Moreover, with a company like Solartis, that calculates charges using a transaction-based pricing model rather than a full-time equivalent (FTE) model, you only pay for the work that is actually performed. Companies that calculate on an FTE basis will charge you for a person’s time, whether that resource is producing or not.
Finally, BPO services have lower error rates – and higher accuracy – than in-house processing. This means that less time and resources are spent tracking down and correcting errors, resulting in cost savings. This benefit is actually increased when paired with OptimX as OptimX tracks down the source of a process issue and addresses it directly - treating the cause, rather than the symptom, and creating real improvements that last.
Scalability
With BPO, resources can be scaled up or down as necessary, without the investment of time and money needed to hire regular full-time employees, with salary, benefits, and training. Businesses can balance predictable, and unexpected, fluctuations on-demand with no additional effort required.
Moreover, with BPO a P&C insurer can be prepared for growth – into new markets, new audiences, offering new products and services – with the knowledge that a reliable, accurate team of administrative professionals is available to help manage that growth.
Indirect benefits of BPO:
Customer satisfaction
As the administrative backlog is reduced, and processing times improved, customers will get the products and services they need more quickly. This improves the overall customer experience, as does the fact that without the administrative burden, employees are better able to focus on responding to customer issues and concerns more quickly.
Employee satisfaction
Sometimes companies hesitate to engage BPO out of concern for their existing employees – as if moving administrative processes off-site is taking something away from the employees at the primary company. However, improving the satisfaction of employees is one of the indirect benefits of BPO. As employees are relieved of manual, administrative processes, they are able to channel their time and efforts to higher-level, strategic objectives. For most people, this type of work is more intrinsically rewarding than manual, repetitive tasks associated with traditional P&C policy administration.
Transparency
Another common concern that companies have with BPO is the loss of control: the worry that if administrative tasks are completed elsewhere, the company will have less influence over how they are completed. However, this is where a people + technology solution, like OptimX, can make a significant difference to BPO. OptimX provides clients with a granular, real-time view of the tasks being completed, as well as those in the pipeline. It can be implemented to track only the outsourced tasks, or integrated into the insurer’s system for a comprehensive picture of workflows, both outsourced and in-house. Real-time monitoring and fully transparent process management become easy to achieve.
Business Process Outsourcing is becoming a viable solution for many of the challenges facing P&C insurers: extended turnaround times, poor quality, a growing administrative backlog as well as overextended resources to name a few. However, in addition to solving these problems, BPO can provide a number of direct benefits for P&C insurers – improving efficiency and scalability, as well as indirect benefits - improving customer and employee satisfaction and process transparency.
"They are fast, simple, and cost-effective. Their team is an extremely reasonable group of people who care, really care, about your success. Every launch has some bumps - they worked above and beyond to make sure those bumps didn't disrupt our launch or our ability to write new business. Without Solartis, I wouldn't be projecting a 30% increase in topline growth."
said Cameron Linder, CEO, Western Bowling Proprietors Insurance (WBPI), Rednil Insurance Brokers, Inc.
Solartis Administer is a leading BPO solution provider for P&C insurers and is the only provider that includes a state-of-the-art workflow tool, OptimX. Leverage Solartis’ years of experience in P&C insurance administration solutions, with its transaction-based pricing to help you reduce costs while accelerating the benefits of efficiency and scale.
Contact Solartis today to schedule your BPO Consultation, or to learn more about how Solartis Administer combines people and technology to take BPO to the next level.
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