Utica National Insurance Group has been using Claims Workstation through four different iterations of the product and three different corporate names for the vendor–beginning with Freedom Group, then Fiserv Insurance Solutions, and now StoneRiver.

“We started with version three,” says John Nobles, vice president and director of claims operations for Utica. “This particular project with the migration to the browser version, which turned out to be version six, was designed to get us to the full functionality of the system.”

The issue that triggered the upgrade for Utica was whether to continue on with the existing client/server version, explains Nobles, or move to the Web version of Claims Workstation. “We saw some things we liked, so we decided to move to the browser version,” he says. “It was designed to get us to the point where we could build out the full functionality of the system, line of business by line of business.”

Utica took a calculated risk when it made the change late in 2008, notes Nobles. No other carriers were using a browser-based version of the software, so Utica would be the first.

“When we signed up for this migration, we actually wanted to be the first carrier to move across the divide,” says Nobles. “We knew StoneRiver had to get the rest of its customers [to a browser-based system]. We felt it would have a vested interest in our success, and we would get a lot of attention to what we needed. [StoneRiver] stepped up and ultimately delivered. It was good for both companies.”

Not that the decision to stay with Claims Workstation was a foregone conclusion. Nobles indicates Utica spent the better part of 2007 performing a due diligence study.

“We did look at a couple of products along the way, but the due diligence was primarily designed to ascertain whether Claims Workstation was the system of the future for Utica,” he says. “Would it support all of our needs? Did it have the functionality we needed?”

Utica also learned more information about the company the carrier had been dealing with. Before the name change to StoneRiver, Fiserv had acquired a company that had a workers' compensation product, and Nobles felt that piece previously had been the weakness in the Claims Workstation system.

Utica envisioned a system that was user friendly, recalls Nobles. Earlier versions required a lot of external intervention from coders and IT workers with specific knowledge beyond what Utica's claims technicians knew.

“We wanted to be able to launch real-time letters and forms and get rid of some reinsurance information we stored on our old system,” says Nobles. “We wanted to move away from storing a bunch of statistical information in the claims system. Functionality, access to claims and real-time coverage notification, and remote access to the system were key things.”

Utica's business users were demanding the product as soon as it was delivered, reports Nobles, thanks in part to the plan the carrier developed to get users involved with the project from the outset. Utica had one resident expert or more in each office trained to assist others in the offices. The carrier also conducted a series of required Webinars to show users the difference in functionality and how the system looked.

Still, the carrier had a series of functionality issues that had to be worked through with StoneRiver. “Being so document-management focused, we exposed a lot of the functionality gaps early on and created a series of issues StoneRiver worked with us to correct,” says Nobles. “We kept these issues in front of everyone. We couldn't deliver a squeaky-clean system, but we wanted to deliver [a system] with the fewest workarounds and improve it as we went along.”

Like all insurers, Utica wants to be as easy as any other carrier to do business with for their customers/agents.

“The biggest thing that made it special is we finally got to a platform where we can see our way clear to where we can build it out into a full system–everyone on the same platform,” says Nobles. “The ability to access it remotely became much easier with the move to the browser-based system. Our long-term goal is to give everyone access not only in the office but in the home via Citrix, which would be part of a potential disaster recovery situation for us, as well.”

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