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T hree major general insurance companies have recently deployed the FAST LEAN SMART software solution, FLS VISITOUR, for workforce optimisation, appointment booking, workforce scheduling and routing of their claims assessors, including motor engineers and property surveyors, in total more than 500 field based employees.

FLS - FAST LEAN SMART a leading provider of resource planning software and mobile workforce management solutions with UK offices in Reading and Warrington, announces that three major general insurance companies have recently deployed for workforce optimisation, appointment booking, workforce scheduling and routing of their claims assessors, including motor engineers and property surveyors, in total more than 500 field based employees.

Insurers each operate a criteria upon which they determine when an insurance claim needs to be assessed by an insurance claims surveyor , either a review of photographs at their desk or a field visit. Some perform these assessments using employed resources, others outsource this to third-party service providers, often there is a combination of these to best cover the country and cope with ‘surge’ events, for example a flood in Devon can result in an extraordinary number of claims to be managed in that area. The insurers objective is to detect fraud whilst also resolving genuine claims quickly and so build a reputation for good service. Insurers use key performance indicators to monitor each stage of the process from first contact to closure but in parallel to this is the continuous need to control and reduce costs so they can offer competitive insurance policy premiums.

For each of these FLS customers the requirement was to speed up the appointment booking process to visit and assess claims and to gain efficiencies for office and field based staff. FLS VISITOUR achieves this by enabling a central claims liaison team to instantly offer a flexible choice of timeslots which are also the most cost efficient to achieve with the available field based resources (and in some cases desk based resources using images) and whilst ensuring previous appointment commitments must be kept.

Each insurance claims surveyor took advantage of the FLS offer for a Software-as-a-Service ‘try before you buy’ pilot. FLS VISITOUR was configured and used live for a region of the country to prove the suitability of the solution and return on investment, before the choice was made to continue from pilot to rollout. Within the first two weeks of pilot, one insurer determined as much as 50% reduction in average mileage and 2 hours a day driving time could be saved, however, for rollout the most important business objective was to give the best possible customer experience to their customer by attending appointments and closing claims sooner, therefore the settings were adjusted in FLS VISITOUR to achieve these priorities.

Two of these insurers have also deployed FLS MOBILE which enables paper-free provision of case information, capture of assessment reports, and real-time appointment status updates. This field information also makes it possible to track that progress is on-time, to automatically message customers with estimated arrival times, and to book new ‘same day’ appointments based on this progress – further advantages to offering market leading customer service. FLS UK Managing Director, Jeremy Squire, comments “We are very proud of the success and benefits achieved using VISITOUR by our customers. In partnership with these insurance market leaders, FLS will continue to develop the unique capabilities of VISITOUR to their advantage”.