Intelligent Automation Elevates Staff Productivity and Customer Care
Serving more than two million customers, a leading U.S. healthcare equipment and service provider sought to maximize operational efficiency, boost productivity and improve patient satisfaction.
NTT DATA implemented a suite of Intelligent Automation solutions to transform the organization’s operational workflows, resulting in more quick and effective claim and order processing—and expedited new patient onboarding. The NTT DATA Nucleus Intelligent Enterprise Platform, Nucleus Command Centre and Nucleus Virtual Resource Manager were key solution components.
Business Needs
With the vital task of providing medical equipment and services for respiratory therapy, obstructive sleep apnea treatment and negative pressure wound therapy, this leading U.S. home healthcare company knew interactions with its two million patients must be timely and accurate. But manually processing 14,000 equipment and service orders and 10,000 claims submissions each week hindered service excellence and business growth.
The company partnered with NTT DATA to improve process workflows, reduce operation costs and boost patient experiences using an innovative combination of automation products and services. When unified in a comprehensive platform—the NTT DATA Nucleus Intelligent Enterprise Platform —automation helps create operational and business advantage.
Intelligent automation, including robotic process automation (RPA) and robotic desktop automation (RDA), relies on software bots—robotic assistants—to emulate human activities based on identified tasks in workflows. The bots perform repeatable, rule-based tasks to automate business processes and free employees to focus on higher-value work.
Outcomes
- 75+ hours saved per week
- 75+ FTEs freed from repetitive manual claim/order processing tasks
- 50 screens consolidated to one for greater call centre productivity
- Intelligent automation Centre of Excellence launched
Intelligent automation increases productivity and efficiency for employees and provides an overall better experience for patients.
Solution
Power up the bots
With Automation 360, a cloud-based RPA platform from Automation Anywhere, software bots automated over 50 business processes controlling order processing and claims authorizations. The bots have helped free up over 75 employees, allowing them to focus on innovation projects.
Command Centre keeps a watchful eye
Those bots are controlled by over 100 production bot runner applications installed on a single control room server. Nucleus Command Centre for Applications oversees and optimizes bot productivity. A dashboard measures bot performance with proactive monitoring, real-time analytics and key performance indicators. It also keeps a fully auditable record to ensure HIPAA compliance.
Automation opens the door for rapid growth
Beyond automating business processes, the company’s RPA transformation gives it the power to rapidly scale business growth. For example, after acquiring a durable medical equipment company in 2021, RPA systems helped onboard and integrate 30,000 patients into existing customer databases in a single day—a task that would have been impossible to accomplish manually.
A better call centre and improved data management
Pegasystems RDA tools increased call-centre productivity and service quality. 50 information screens were consolidated into a single customer-information screen, helping agents more efficiently manage calls for sales, order fulfillment, product information, equipment services and billing.
Customer-information screen data passes into legacy applications, giving 290 service locations visibility into new orders, supporting tools and billing status. The result is an estimated labour savings of 20 seconds per order—a significant saving of 75 hours weekly with 2,000 orders processed each day.
Simplified user tools streamline business processes
Pegasystems Healthcare Industry Framework (HCIF) and PegaRules Process Commander (PRPC) streamlined customer-order intake. Devised specifically for healthcare, HCIF and PRPC help develop automations faster and with minimal coding. A new responsive user interface and dashboard tools, and an order processing integration with external payer and provider systems, created further efficiencies.
Unified management of third-party products
A product-agnostic platform, Nucleus delivered the ability to unify third-party automation products with NTT DATA automation products. Nucleus Virtual Resource Manager integrated management of Automation Anywhere and Pegasystems RPA tools.
Application modernization for the customer-service win
The company leveraged NTT DATA Application Development & Modernization Services to develop a mobile app for delivery drivers that improves customer service. First, the mobile app informs a driver of products to deliver and enables digital capture of a customer’s signature. Then, the app completes the order via automation to eliminate keystroking and manual errors.
Improving the order lifecycle—from intake to delivery
The organization streamlined the entire lifecycle of an order, from intake through delivery, with the suite of automations and set the foundation for a more agile, efficient response to new requirements.
An intelligent automation Centre of Excellence
Intelligent automation has delivered significant improvements in productivity, operational efficiency, and business agility for the company. That success is the organization’s first step towards creating an intelligent automation Centre of Excellence, allowing the company to focus on delivering an exceptional experience for its patients, employees, and the business.
About This Case Study
A leading medical supply company worked with NTT DATA to implement intelligent automation, RPA, RDA and application development, to transform employee processes and the patient experience.