By Art Krozser, vice president global solutions and enterprise support, CyberShift

The global insurance industry, which has seen several years of pricing increases and profitability, has entered what can best be described as a soft market. In addition, U.S. federal legislation resulted in heightened merger and acquisition activity that has created a new environment for insurance companies that are now contending with banks and financial services firms for customers. Competing in the global insurance market was no easy task before these recent consolidations and today's diverse organizations face unique challenges and opportunities that require aggressive and effective cost control practices to boost financial performance.

Insurance companies face unrelenting pressure to attract new customers and maximize value from existing relationships. Buyers have come to view insurance and related products and services as commoditized products, compelling insurance companies to go to great lengths to create exceptional customer service experiences to differentiate themselves. Reduced profit margins and corporate objectives exert even stronger emphasis on improving employee productivity. Best-inclass organizations turn to technology to advance business objectives and improve financial performance. The enhanced staffing and cost control measures provided by workforce optimization solutions are keys to profitability and quality customer experiences. As competition intensifies, fully optimizing all aspects of the workforce to achieve operational efficiencies and maximizing productivity is essential.

Insurance companies can strengthen business performance through optimization of workforce assets by addressing the complex business operations demands of time and attendance, employee scheduling and absence management. These initiatives can help:

• Mitigate risk by meeting increasing regulatory and compliance requirements
• Manage a diverse, distributed and often multi-lingual workforce
• Support mobile workforce requirements
• Provide superior service for every customer experience
• Address complex pay, work and accrual rules
• Eliminate payroll inaccuracies
• Ensure and simplify compliance with internal policies and procedures
• Extend new product and service offerings to attract and retain customers
• Automate manual and paper intensive FMLA and other employee leave status

This paper examines the impact of workforce optimization through technology and automation initiatives on insurance companies along with the opportunities and benefits they deliver to drive more efficient management throughout the insurance supply chain.

Surviving in the New Market Environment

Insurance organizations are contending with unstable markets and myriad challenges that range from increased competition and heightened customer demands to adhering to constantly changing regulations. Reliance on older, less agile legacy systems has hampered efforts for upgrading technology solutions due to the cost and time of adopting new solutions; however, that is starting to change. In addition, as baby boomer generation employees reach retirement age, insurance organizations need to address succession planning. Attracting, engaging and developing high potential talent ensures optimal workforce deployment.

The ability to have quick and effective reactions to market changes is accomplished when organizations have the ability to act on information 24/7 to optimize and streamline workforce operations, customer service demands and administrative processes. One of the largest investments that a company makes is in its people. Proper management of the workforce is a cornerstone of success. Automated workforce staffing processes and practices support proactive measures that address market opportunities while aligning the workforce with corporate goals.

Today's global landscape brings new market opportunities. Supporting strategic workforce operations helps to balance diverse demands to capitalize on these opportunities and helps firms:

• Provide real-time workforce analytics and metrics
• Meet complex federal and state regulatory and compliance requirements
• Enhance the overall customer experience
• Control labor costs
• Support an increasingly global and mobile workforce
• Attract and retain valuable employees

A significant challenge is to reduce overall expenses through workforce cost control measures. Automated workforce solutions ensure that workforces meet business objectives at the lowest possible cost without compromising performance or customer service.

Immediate gains provided by automated workforce management solutions include:

• Reducing payroll preparation time
• Improving payroll accuracy by 1-6% of gross payroll
• Improving organizational performance, productivity and profitability

Organizations can achieve higher levels of productivity and customer service by utilizing workforce scheduling and optimization analytics to identify where service improvements are needed; such as reviewing customer service representative staffing levels to determine gaps in customer call coverage during peak periods to improve response time.

Take Control Where It Matters Most

The value of managing workforce processes on one platform to control costs and efficiently deploy a large, diverse workforce can be seen in several operational areas.

1. Reduce Operating Expenses through Labor Cost Control

In most cases, labor is the largest part of an insurance company's operating budget. Automated workforce management solutions can be used to:

• Track and report on labor costs at the geographic, customer, project/task, product, cost center, position, department and business unit level
• Address rate progressions, position step-ups/downs, departmental cross charging of labor
• Provide labor distribution support for accurate cost accounting
• Manage mobile and other "untethered" workers within corporate guidelines
• Optimize workforce deployment

2. Regulatory Demands Require Automated Solutions

The insurance industry has always been one of the most closely regulated. Today's rapidly changing regulatory environment continues to pose demands and challenges on insurance companies. The majority of insurance regulation comes from individual states, forcing insurance companies to deal with countless state agencies and comply with diverse and unique sets of widely varying state regulations. Timely and accurate data speak directly to the many issues of regulatory compliance facing insurance firms that can benefit from automating workforce processes to increase data accuracy and availability.

Accurate recordkeeping requirements are a critical component of day-to-day operations for any business, and are even more applicable for the insurance industry. Insurance firms are already under pressure to comply with legislation including Sarbanes-Oxley, Solvency II and Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA), to name a few. The price of non-compliance is high and can have dramatic financial, business, legal and public relations consequences. Organizations can best meet regulatory demands through automation of:

• Statutory, federal and international regulatory compliance
• Consistent workforce processes across departments, locations or operating entities
• Visibility into operations through data capture, reporting, validation, analytics and documentation

3. Attract, Retain and Empower Employees

With large numbers of the workforce approaching retirement age, insurance companies need to actively recruit and train the "right-fit" employees on an ongoing basis to avoid critical workforce shortages. Historically, insurers have invested in recruiting top talent along with ensuring that the workforce is properly trained in all aspects of the organization's operation. Insurance companies recognize that higher levels of employee satisfaction lead to lower turnover rates and lower recruiting costs. Better workforce deployment also improves employee productivity and satisfaction, which positively impact the quality of the customer experience. Employees who have been properly trained, have relevant experience and credentials and enjoy their job are more likely to deliver exceptional customer service. Insurance firms seek workforce solutions that provide:

• Intuitive access to schedules, timesheets, leave requests and other self-service functions in a variety of platforms [e.g. web, clocks, smartphones]
• Improved information accuracy and a positive employee experience
• Multi-lingual support for local and global operations
• Easy user interaction to encourage rapid and total adoption
• More face time with customers by reducing time spent on administrative tasks
• Consistent schedules that are better aligned with employees' work/life preferences
• Optimum employee deployment improving employee satisfaction

4. Improve Customer Service and Increase Customer Retention

Enabling the workforce to meet and exceed customer expectations is a strategic differentiator for insurance organizations. Companies must efficiently deploy large, highly skilled workforces across multiple locations to cost effectively deliver superior products and services at the customers' convenience.

Efficient sourcing along with deploying and managing the workforce to provide superior service to all customers can be achieved by:

• Supporting and rewarding a culture that offers superior service
• Freeing employees to focus on activities that keep the customer first
• Increasing customer face time
• Proper staffing mix to provide the highest level of customer service

5. Workforce Forecasting, Scheduling and Deployment

Proper workforce deployment is a critical element of customer satisfaction, cost control and business success. Manual or semi-automated systems do not provide real-time responsiveness or accurate forecasting and can cause lost income and diminished customer service. Insurers can stay on top of forecasting and meet staffing requirements by utilizing fully automated systems to:

• Streamline operations through automated scheduling
• Deploy the right mix of people to cost effectively meet customer demands
• Utilize real-time information for better management decisions, 24/7
• Control department, location, customer business unit or position-specific scheduling variations by providing best practice templates that reflect the most efficient staffing models
• Increase employee productivity with incremental gains in scheduling efficiencies across departments or business units

Maximizing Service and Productivity

The right workforce solution offers continuous payback and return on investment by reducing the time and costs of administrative tasks and creating more productive and cost effective workforce operations. Look for a solution that will deliver a rapid investment benefit by working with the provider to develop realistic estimates for return on investment (ROI) and total cost of ownership (TCO) that meet business objectives. A system that requires extensive training or takes too long to deploy is not a 'best practice' solution. Successful solutions should maximize an organization's potential benefits by fostering rapid adoption through ease-of-use and a positive user experience.

Regardless of workforce size, number of departments, locations or business units involved, effective solutions for complex mid to large-tier insurance organizations should seek to accomplish the following:

• Streamline operations through automation of routine tasks
• Increase overall responsiveness to customer requests
• Provide flexibility to address market fluctuations
• Reduce processing time for payroll, forecasting and scheduling

The Challenges of Supporting a Mobile Workforce

In the U.S. there are more than 2.3 million people working in the insurance industry. Many of the industry's occupations require irregular work hours conducted outside the traditional office setting. These workforce segments include claims adjusters and examiners, appraisers, insurance investigators, sales representatives and agents as well as analysts and loss control specialists. Organizations face increased requirements to enable and empower their "untethered" workforce and need to go beyond delivering Internet connectivity or email access to mobile workers to provide critical business applications to this user community in a consistent, secure and robust manner. The goal is to bring the enterprise applications to mobile workers wherever they are rather than forcing the mobile workers to the enterprise applications.

Mobile workers have the same responsibilities as on-site employees to comply with existing corporate policies, approvals and business processes. These employees require secure, real-time access to enterprise-class applications to help them perform productively and effectively while adhering to corporate policies and standards. Whether it is an insurance investigator in the field looking into questionable claims or a supervisor attending a conference out of the office, best-in-class solutions offer support for time capture, employee self-service relative to sick, vacation and absence requirements, labor distribution and management approvals to address mobile workforce needs.

Workforce Optimization

Without an automated system in place the tasks of staffing, managing absence replacements and responding to fluctuating demands are laborious and inefficient. Lacking a dashboard view of the current, available workforce, insurance organizations are left guessing as to whether they are paying for unnecessary overtime or scheduling employees to work hours beyond what is considered safe or within contractual guidelines. Visibility provides real-time response for shifting schedules to meet demand and ensures better workforce alignment with corporate goals. Consistent labor practices are maintained and labor costs and work schedules are better monitored and optimized from a central location.

Existing platform solutions such as time clock systems can be incorporated and payroll inquiries are minimized through employee 'self-service' access to current and historical time and absence information. Workforce optimization solutions eliminate inefficiencies inherent in manual or outdated employee scheduling and time and attendance processes. With an automated workforce management system built on a rules-based platform with industry-specific knowledge repositories, insurance companies can track key performance indicators (KPIs) that provide real-time visibility into staffing and related expenses.

Organizations can optimize schedules based on demand, ensuring the right resources with the right skills and certifications are available when and where needed to deliver timely service to customers, especially in emergency situations. Scheduling software delivers real-time information that enables organizations to allocate staff according to actual need, such as staffing a claims center in the aftermath of a natural disaster. Claims center management needs to determine who is already scheduled to work as opposed to scheduling others where additional hours might result in time and a half or double time. With automated employee scheduling tools, organizations can gauge resource availability, consider the costs of qualified skill sets and ensure customer needs are met quickly and cost effectively.

Flexible Delivery Options

When choosing technology solutions, insurance companies need to consider systems that can demonstrate proven cost effectiveness. Organizations should also evaluate the advantages and flexibility of an in-house license fee model versus a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) On Demand delivery model relative to their business, information technology standards and cost requirements. True SaaS solutions that follow industry-recognized standards such as those for cloud computing and multi-tenancy have evolved to encompass a wide variety of workforce management and optimization functionality. They also provide the added benefit of a quicker implementation process, making them more affordable and agile. Robust workforce management solutions that provide best-in-class time and attendance, employee scheduling and optimization components that are 100% Web-based, fully integrated and scalable will deliver the best results for insurance organizations. The following are important considerations:

• Scalability - be sure that the system can easily scale to meet the organization's needs
• Integration - look for a solution that easily integrates with other business critical applications
• Deployment Flexibility - determine whether an in-house license fee model or a SaaS delivery model is better for your organization; look for vendors that can provide both deployment options
• Personalization - look for flexible configuration options to personalize the solution to business needs without the high cost and maintenance issues inherent in customization
• Data Acquisition - look for a solution that offers open and flexible data acquisition methods
• Maximize Productivity - the solution should be easy to use with no end user training
• Implementation - be sure the vendor understands your organization's needs and can tailor the implementation strategy to your firm's unique requirements and business objectives

By addressing the complex business operations demands of time and attendance, employee scheduling and absence management process automation, insurance companies can strengthen bottom line performance through the optimization of workforce assets. To remain competitive, organizations can be more responsive with flexible workforce management technologies that support both their day-to-day operations and strategic vision.

About CyberShift, Inc.

CyberShift specializes in providing leading organizations with best-in-class workforce and employee spend management solutions to reduce costs, mitigate compliance risk and increase productivity. Our solutions help organizations of all sizes address complex policies and increase the effectiveness of their workforce in delivering products or services to their customers every day. CyberShift's comprehensive product suite is unique in providing multi-national capabilities for employee scheduling, time-and-attendance, contingent labor management, absence management, expense management and solutions for the mobile workforce. CyberShift manages over 1.5 million transactions daily through our highly secure SaaS delivery model, and is also available as an On Premise license, putting the power of choice in the hands of the customer. For more information, please call +1 (877) 274-4381 or visit www.cybershift.com.