Catherine’s role when initially engaged was to manage the tri-partite relationship between the Client (Insurer), print & fulfilment partner and third party administrator of the policies. As confidence grew in her ability, she was asked to design a working model on how a document management solution would work between these companies.
Catherine mapped out all of the processes across post, records, archive material on Kodak and microfiche. The volumes of material were significant. There was 40 miles of filing and up to one billion pages of material. The motivation for the Outsource deal was cost reduction, but all the savings could have been lost if a proposal from the third party administrator had been implemented. It centred around the scanning of vast quantities of documents to avoid storage costs. Although the idea seemed strong in principle, it was Catherine who dug beneath the surface and costed the model properly. What she found was alarming – the scanning option would have actually increased costs by as much as 1000%.
Outsource deals of this size are complex and risky and what Catherine did was understand the needs of her client and shape a solution that would work for it cost effectively. She then engaged with all the various partners and persuaded them to flex their models to suit that need. Sounds easy, but anyone who’s outsourced in this area knows the challenges.
