One Company, One Platform, One System

As I have mentioned in my previous blogs, my company currently uses several different computer systems to process claims. This is hard from a training standpoint, especially when you are a specialist in systems training. It has been hard for me to learn all of the systems at an expert level. It is also hard for the students and we have tried to introduce them to systems one at a time, but depending on the position they hold, they may need to know all of the systems. Let’s just take a look at what someone in our call center needs to learn about:
For the largest company, there is one processing system, one system for imaged documents and notes and Lotus Notes is used as our e-mail platform.
For the next largest company there are two versions of the processing system, and another system for imaged documents.
For the smallest company there are two versions of the processing system and yet another system for viewing imaged documents.
THAT IS NINE SYSTEMS THAT A CALL CENTER PERSON HAS TO LEARN TO DO THEIR JOB! Consider also, that the user can use more than one session of a system. For example, many call center people open one session of one system for inquiry purposes and another session for entry purposes. That is a lot of windows to have opened on their desktop. Luckily, we do work with dual monitors, even though some people would like to have three.
Now that we have been acquired by another large company, a new project started recently that will bring us to our new goal: One company, one platform, one system! It is a five year project with an estimated cost of $58 million dollars. I am very excited to be the lead training person on this project and much of my time already has been dedicated to the project. It will be a huge training project and the plan is to bring one subsidiary at a time onto the new system with the first one to go live in August 2010. It is a very aggressive project schedule and will be exciting and exhausting at the same time.
Last week the lead claims business analyst and I had to present the project and an overview of the claims system to the Claims Business Team. My colleague in Arizona e-mailed me after the presentation to talk about how we can get our front line adjusters interested in the project and mentioned social networking. Many of our adjusters are young people maybe five years out of college and are very much into the social networking scene. We are considering having a blog on our intranet to help introduce the new system and at the same time asking the adjusters for their ideas about what they need in the new system and how they can become involved in the rollout.
I’ll admit I never thought when I started this blog that it would be for anything other than the course I am taking at Drexel. Now I see the opportunities to blog are endless and I plan on keeping the blog going during the life of this project.