Background & Challenge
Over its 26 year history, RMG has investigated over 40,000 insurance claims, on behalf of some of the largest insurance companies in the world. Due to the legal and financial importance of these claims, RMG tracks investigations carefully and in great detail.

As the number and size of files have grown, managing claims using physical file folders became more and more cumbersome. Labor intensive internal procedures, such as filling out "diary slips" for support staff to pull daily files, reached the limit of their effectiveness.

Challenges
The above situation led to the following challenges:

• Expending tremendous energy to track the voluminous amount of information required for each claim.
• Waiting for a slow drawn-out process to pull basic claim information because investigators needed to wait for support staff to process diary slips.
• The daily movement of physical files in the office was cumbersome.
• Human error caused delay, misplaced files, and other problems.
• Sharing information internally among staff members and with clients was difficult.
• Field investigators, who work remotely, were experiencing an even tougher time getting access to claim information.

Solution
In 2002, RMG contacted CommonMind and explained the above challenge. After speaking with various stakeholders within the company, including RMG President Ron Goldstein, Trial Preparation Supervisor Marc Kahn, and members of RMG's support staff, CommonMind proposed a Web-based information management system.

In the first phase of the project, CommonMind used its wireframe methodology to develop a prototype of the application. The wireframe prototype:

• Provided a prototype version of the application with mock data.
• Demonstrated all planned screens, fields, field placement, and functionality.
• Was completed rapidly without any complicated or costly programming.
• Allowed all stakeholders at RMG to view a "functional" version of the application, provide feedback, suggest improvements, and approve a final iteration before actual database development commenced.

When the completed application was released in 2003, CommonMind coordinated a testing phase. However, very few adjustments were required. This isn't surprising since the complete application looked and felt just like the wireframe, which had everyone's buy-in prior to development.

The new application allows RMG staff members to:

• Securely access claim information from any computer in the world.
  • Access simply requires an Internet connection, a standard Web browser, and a username & password.
• Search claims by various criteria including:
  • client (insurance company)
  • file number
  • staff members working on the claim
  • insured parties
  • claimants
  • and numerous other options.
• Attach Word files, PDF files, and other types of computer files to claims.
  • Field investigators can take digital photos of a claim scene, and immediately attach those photos to a claim.
• Scan in supporting documents (including letters and other correspondence) and have those scans automatically attached to claims for easy access.
• Track billing information for claims and export billing data to RMG's legacy billing system (TABS).

As of this writing, RMG has entered over 13,000 claims into the system.

Results
Six months after going live with this system, here's what Trial Prep Supervisor Marc Kahn had to say about it:

"Our new system is the best thing that's ever happened to this company. In fact, I don't know how we survived this long without it."

1. Saving Time: Since inside examiners can now do their own billing, it saves time in that there are no more "paper" timesheets that have to be filled out and entered into the system by support staff.
2. Faster, easier access to critical claim information: An examiner can pull up a complete file in a matter of seconds, where it used to take minutes, hours, or sometimes days!
3. Clear & fast view of claim status: Staff can easily see current billing, current status of claim file, and scanned documents. There is no more need to find the actual physical file as all critical information is available on the network from the office or anywhere in the world. In addition, it provides a current status of investigations.
4. Growth without additional hiring: As to staff reduction, due to the fact that the RMG caseload has grown in the past year, there was no need to cut staff, however, there was no need to add support staff either. There is currently more work to process and the staff is managing. Had we maintained the caseload we had in the past, our staff would have been cut.
5. Freeing up support staff: Diary is now 1-2 pages and can be printed on a daily basis. This saves support staff time in that they do not have to "collect" diary books for each examiner. Field reps can access current info from the field.
6. Overall improvements with reduced costs: There are multiple improvements for RMG. Specifically, the ease of search-ability. An employee can search for a case using a variety of methods that were not previously available. This saves time for all employees. Now that we have moved into a file scanning sequence, the physical paper file is unnecessary. An employee can access the complete file from anywhere in the world and can review all work, notes, reports, bills or whatever other information they need. With this goes reduced space in our storage facility and in-house. We have reduced 40,000 files to an on-line database with scanned files. Storage costs have been dramatically reduced and our office space, which once was cramped, is now opening up.

Read a testimonial from RMG's Trial Prep Supervisor, Marc Kahn.