INNOVATION PROFILE Cunningham Lindsey:A MAJOR project aimed at delivering operational efficiencies through the creation of a paperless office and the consolidation of equipment has brought the Irish operation of international insurance adjusters Cunningham Lindsey to a position of technological leadership within the group.
The company is the country’s largest firm of chartered loss adjusters and claims managers operating from 10 branches around the country including two service locations in Dublin. In addition to assignments undertaken for insurers, it handles programmes for self-insured enterprises, external insurers and reinsurers, from single cases to complete portfolios.
“The business can be quite volatile and you have to be very, very flexible,” says chief financial officer Gillian Cregan. “For example, after the major frozen pipe events in 2010 and 2011 we found we had to be much more mobile. Our loss adjustors had to come into the office to get physical files between claims inspections and this wasn’t an efficient service for either our clients or their customers – particularly with the difficult road conditions at the time. We needed to change and rethink the process.”
This resulted in the company setting up a project known internally as Smile – shared service, mobility, innovation, learning, and e-office. “We knew this wasn’t going to be a short term project,” says Cregan. “It’s difficult to move from paper-based processes to an e-environment. People get very attached to the paper files. We are still in transition.”
While the company had always been quite technologically advanced it was still largely paper bound up until the Smile project. “We had been using digital pens and paper for quite some time but the site pack which a loss adjustor would take with them would include a paper file, a camera, a GPS device, a mobile phone, an electronic measuring device and so on. They were fairly weighed down with all this equipment and we even got them special bags to carry it at one stage.”
This led to the decision to move over to a tablet PC-based site pack. “We made this decision about 12 months ago and we looked at developing an app to carry out the various functions,” Cregan explains. “But we are not an IT company and we didn’t want to go down that route. We have been dealing with Vodafone for as long as anyone can remember in here – ever since we had our first mobile phones. We consider them to be a part of our team when it comes to looking at technology-driven business innovation and we have regular meetings with them. We just happened to mention that we were thinking of moving in this direction and they suggested some of their solutions.”
These solutions were Vodafone’s Topaz Software Business to Business Application, High Speed Data Sim (Performance Pro), Vodafone Office Access, and Vodafone Secure Device Manager.
“Vodafone suggested that we us these products to look at a custom-designed end-to-end solution as a way of fully automating the process,” says Cregan. “We met with the Vodafone team and explained to them what we needed and they came up with a solution which met all our expectations – it was crisp, clean and easy to use. Also, if we needed to change a form on it we could do it internally. That gave us the control we needed.”
The Topaz application is the database which runs on the Samsung Galaxy Tab. “Our claims system sends the claim to the device using Call Collect software. This means that our loss adjustors can get up in the morning and have all their claims for the day already on their tablet PC. They can update it on site and by simply pressing the sync button on the tablet the claim is sent back to the office using Vodafone Office Access and Secure Device Manager using a completely secure connection.”
And the device contains all of the hardware required to complete a visit – e-forms, calculator, camera, notebook, email, Dictaphone, maps and so on.
The speed of development was particularly impressive. “We expected the project to have a long lead in time, but we were piloting it in less than two months. Mobility is the key issue and this solution makes the most of the mobile network and the technology available. It has revolutionised our business processes. Quality control is also hugely important to us. We work in a highly regulated industry and have stringent service level agreements with our clients. The mobile solution has enabled us to re-think our business processes to increase the quantity of claims we can process each day without compromising the quality of service we deliver to our customers.”
Security and data protection are also critical. “Vodafone’s cloud VPN service – Vodafone Office Access – allows for the secure transfer of customer data from our field staff back to Cunningham Lindsey headquarters. Vodafone Secure Device Manager not only allows us to remotely manage our mobile estate, but if a tablet is mislaid, it means we can wipe off any sensitive information.”
The initial trial ran over a period of two months and had somewhat of a baptism of fire. “The major weather event last October was in the middle of the trial and that really tested the new solution,” says Cregan. “Having the trial running actually helped us deal with
that. We rolled out the solution to 43 loss adjustors in January in what was the fastest and most seamless project ever seen in the company from a technology point of view.”
Another welcome aspect has been the alacrity with which the team has adopted the new technology. “Some of our guys didn’t even have smartphones before this,” she points out. “Some of our loss adjustors have been in the business for nearly 40 years and they picked up on the new solution straight away.”
The success of the project also has an international dimension. “We made a presentation on the project to the group management team and Ireland has become the leader in the group for mobile field technology as a result. This is a fantastic story for Ireland. We might be in the middle of a recession but we can still be innovative. We are now helping other countries in the group to set up mobile technology projects. We have a presence in 60 countries across the world and this solution can be tailored to their particular requirements.”
It’s also delivering significant benefits on the home front.
“It has helped make us hugely more efficient and it is still opening doors for us,” Cregan adds. “We rolled it out in our property division first and we are now rolling it out in our commercial division. This is going to make us even more efficient. This allows us to make our service even better for our customers.
“We would never have thought of Vodafone for something like this. Twelve months ago they were a mobile phone service provider as far as we were concerned but now we see them as a technology partner and an extension of our own project team. If we have an idea on any IT area now we run it by Vodafone first.
“Our overall experience is demonstrating that technological innovations from Vodafone deliver practical benefits which not only help us improve the quality of the service we deliver to our customers, but also deliver operational efficiencies critical to gaining competitive advantage.”
