For too long, claims departments have been driving performance by looking in the rearview mirror, discerning important problems only after a claim has deteriorated. Managers continue to identify problems only after claims have been escalated or have entered litigation, and company management still evaluates the overall health of its claims operation only after claim files are closed. Limited functionality of claims technology doesn’t help matters.

The culture needs to be changed. Good claims departments anticipate problems and prevent them. The best ones take this a step further, optimizing their operations to reduce leakage, differentiate their claims service in the marketplace, and boost their bottom lines.

One of the impediments to achieving that high-caliber operational culture is the flood of information that yields only a trickle of knowledge. Solutions that have promised business intelligence and decision-support capabilities have instead produced stacks of reports that languish on managers’ desks or sit in binders and offer little in the way of useful, actionable business insight and intelligence. The information that could make a difference is hard to draw out and ends up being disseminated ever so slowly to adjusters and other line staff charged with the day-to-day handling of claims. It’s often too theoretical or too data-heavy and, when it finally gets to the end users, they are resistant to modifying their processes based on commentary and charts that have little perceived meaning to their daily tasks.

The trick is encapsulating research findings into meaningful, actionable and digestible reports that target practitioners.

Many claims operations are still grappling with the decision to replace their out-of-date claims legacy systems with new technologies. Others are in the throes of the replacement implementation effort. That said, there are a growing number of organizations that have successfully put these efforts behind them and are now enjoying the benefits of new technologies and all the flexibility, speed and rich functionality that comes with them. These new systems should offer more than just a way to get the claims house in order; they should also offer the opportunity for continuous improvement.

Management and claims professionals at high-performing organizations are always searching for tools that can provide them with more insight into the operation, the process and, ideally, even the individual claim. These forward-thinking professionals want to fully understand their claim quality and processing cycle time in order to continuously drive productivity and cost improvements. They want to dissect and analyze indemnity costs and loss-adjustment expenses, and they want to improve customer service by measuring, tracking and understanding the metrics that strongly influence the customer experience.