The Situation
Our customer, Eastern Alliance (“Eastern”), a commercial carrier based in the US, specializing in Workers Compensation, identified a strategic need to modernize operations using various technologies, including AI. Claims document processing was a critical use case, so it was selected as the first area to deploy an AI Agent digital coworker.
The Challenge
Streamlining Claims Processing with Roots Automation: Overcoming Manual Document Handling Challenges
Eastern’s claims department was dealing with a heavy volume of highly variable (unstructured) incoming documents that needed to be analyzed, indexed and routed to the correct recipient in a timely manner to support Eastern’s claim-handling processes.
Its mailroom team, the first team to interact with these documents, was handling all documents manually, placing pressure on the team’s capacity and impacting claims handling efficiency:
“We had an SLA and a turnaround time of three business days to do our claims mail. We worked hard to stay at three … but it was tough.”
Jen Zimmerman
Manager, Business Systems, Eastern Alliance
Eastern had tried alternative technologies and vendors but was not achieving its desired results. They often exceeded their document turnaround, taking five days (instead of three). And so, Eastern turned to Roots to support their program.
The Solution
Working together, Eastern and Roots teams evaluated use cases across the claims organization and identified document intake and indexing as a priority area.
Through a series of highly interactive workshops, Eastern and Roots teams:
- Reviewed documents needed to be indexed
- Created a taxonomy of document types and outlined the data points needed to identify each document accurately
- Unpacked the capabilities of a Digital Coworker with the team and defined a new to-be process
- Built and implemented the solution alongside the team, ensuring adoption was high – which included naming the new AI Agent
- Eastern welcomed their new AI Agent and now digital coworker – “Phyllis” – with a Pizza Party.
Critically, Phyllis leverages Root’s proprietary Generative AI solution (InsurGPTTM) to accurately and efficiently receive, analyze, process and index priority five mail (the highest-volume mail) within 1 hour (down from 5 days).
A 100x improvement in processing speed.
“We began our relationship with Roots in 2022 as part of a larger corporate strategy to use technology to be more efficient and to better serve our customers. With Roots, they're only focused on the insurance industry. They could talk our language and lead us through different workflow options; they knew the challenges we would face and we made quick decisions in a short timeframe. It was very rewarding, in the end, to have deployed the first Digital Coworker at Eastern. I'm very proud. We solved the core use case problem and accomplished our goal of implementing AI into Eastern Alliance”
Harry Talbert
Senior Vice President of Information Systems
Eastern Alliance
Phyllis, Eastern’s Generative AI-powered AI Agent, significantly improved processing speed, saving more than 2,700 total human hours since Q1 2023!
Phyllis also enhanced accuracy by minimizing the likelihood of human error, ensuring that documents were correctly indexed and easily retrievable.
Additionally, the mailroom team's productivity and capacity were substantially boosted. With Phyllis handling the bulk of the document indexing tasks, Eastern’s claims team was freed to focus on more strategic/higher-value activities without leaving team members overworked or stressed.
The overall efficiency of the document indexing workflow was greatly improved, enabling the Customer to streamline operations and focus on improvements to other business areas.
By integrating Phyllis into its operations, Eastern significantly enhanced the speed and accuracy of document processing, ultimately transforming its claims management and mailroom functions.
After experiencing how Phyllis supercharged claims document indexing, Eastern is looking to add additional AI Agents to their underwriting and claims teams.