Workers' Compensation Board of Nova Scotia Enables Lean Processes and Swift Access to Actionable Intelligence with Kofax
Government Agency Pioneers New Best Practices in Capturing Information into its Back Office Processes by Adopting Kofax Technology
The Situation
In order to standardize and streamline document capture and routing, the Workers’ Compensation Board (WCB) implemented Kofax Capture in 1999 as part of a custom document-management application. Mike White, Service Delivery Manager and Senior Consultant, said: "While this served us well in terms of document capture and routing, we originally stopped short of capturing faxed documents, since the business processes associated with our complex and varied form types presented significant barriers."
The Challenge
Over the next several years, the organization’s leadership teams identified a need to "Work Smarter," which became the theme of an organizational service model redesign project initiated in 2009. A key focus of the service model redesign was fax capture; another was the enhancement of business processes.
White noted: "We had full time staff literally dedicated to moving piles of paper, when they were capable of so much more. We had so many different job designations, with three to four at the front end that were various flavors of team support. Some people would sort the pages, some would print, some would scan, some would index and some would register the claims."
Multiple fax machines in each business unit would receive faxes, which would be printed and routed to case workers for action before being sent to WCB’s scanning team for capture after the fact. White explained: "We also had 500 faxes per day coming into our processing center. They moved in paper form from quality control to data entry to scanning. It would take approximately four days to receive a form, open a claim, scan the document, route to the claim file and file the original."
WCB sought a solution that could be quickly implemented, prove cost effective, increase the quality of service to its customers and create significant process efficiencies that would free intake center staff to progress to more interesting, valuable and diverse types of work.
The Solution
WCB turned to the technology integration consultants at INTEGRIM to evaluate potential technological and logistics improvements. Following a brief audit, INTEGRIM recommended that WCB take a closer look at the potential of Kofax Transformation Modules to automate the classification and indexing of incoming documents.
White said:"As we worked through the design and implementation, we became aware of how much value could be derived from going beyond our original aims. We discovered we could also use Kofax Transformation Modules to perform classification and content extraction to feed the front end of the process." INTEGRIM’s proof-of-concept on sample fax images convinced the team at WCB of the soundness of the Kofax solution, and this technology addition was approved within a multi-phase deployment initiative.
Because Kofax Capture continued to successfully meet the original needs of WCB, the leadership team readily agreed to build on that initial investment when designing and evaluating the components of the service model redesign solution. "Clearly the most efficient and effective path was to extend our investment in the Kofax infrastructure," White said.
The Results
WCB implemented Kofax Capture Network Server and Kofax Transformation Modules in 2009. In the new environment, all faxes are captured electronically on a central fax line, where they’re brought into Kofax software and delivered to a team of cross-trained individuals. These team members are able to process, register and route 600,000 pages per year with a one day turnaround on average.
WCB was able to streamline its dedicated scanning and indexing workstations, as all the work can be done anytime, anywhere, by any staff member with minimal setup and training time. White reported: "After implementing Kofax Transformation Modules and Kofax Capture Network Server, we reduced our claims intake and routing time by 75 percent. The impact to our customers in terms of service improvement has been profound."
The Kofax enabled environment is also delivering significant value to the organization through new intelligence and analytics capabilities. For example, WCB has partnerships with healthcare providers that invoice the organization directly. Invoicing was previously a paper dependent process, and invoice processing volumes were measured in feet, as in the height of a stack of paper. With the Kofax solution, White noted: "Fax capture helped us put a finger on the invoice processes. The system recognizes the vendors and sends the invoices to the right queues, extracting certain information such as when the document was created. It also lets us measure turnaround time on invoices. Now we can slice and dice the information and look at queues to find out how many invoices are coming in from different providers, and how much business we’re doing with them."
In a new phase of process improvements, WCB began customizing Kofax Transformation Modules to classify and route forms. The company has greatly reduced the volume of forms that needed intervention by a staff member, which in turn reduces turnaround times for certain types of high volume invoices. "These efficiencies have allowed us to implement a blended, cross-trained team in our service center who spend time addressing phone, web and walk-in inquires as well as reviewing and validating documents," White said. "This is a huge step forward from a few short years ago, when dedicated sub-teams were needed to move, scan, index and register claims. WCB is serving both internal and external customers in a more timely fashion and jobs have been enriched."
