Westfield Health
6 min
Westfield Health has been dedicated to making a difference to the lives of their customers and communities for over 100 years. They deliver evidence-based wellness solutions to develop healthier communities, workplaces, and individuals. The company believes that healthy people are happier and more productive, so they aim to inspire businesses and individuals to make healthy choices.
In addition to offering access to valuable health and wellbeing services, Westfield Health also provides health cash plans that allow individuals to claim money back on the cost of essential healthcare.
What our client needed
Westfield Health needed a partner to manage their mail and claims form processing capabilities. They receive mail either by post or digitally in many varied forms, including claim forms, cheques, invoices and emails, which were all manually classified to the correct department. Classifying data from digital documents by hand was particularly time-consuming and often resulted in errors during data extraction.
The level of manual intervention in their previous process was unsustainable for their business, affecting operations, potential opportunities and risk management. This adversely affected the customer experience and visibility across the journey.
With the help of advanced automation capabilities, the client was hoping to save time, avoid processing errors and improve the process by using a local supplier with excellent logistics capabilities.
What we gave them
We provided dedicated PO boxes with secure access at a major Royal Mail sorting office, enabling daily mail collections at the earliest opportunity. On receipt, all mail was processed through our secure post rooms before being transferred to our data capture function, where information was extracted from paper documents using established optical character recognition (OCR) and intelligent character recognition (ICR) technologies. Our digital mailroom processes applied automated classification algorithms at each stage, significantly reducing the need for manual intervention.
We also implemented a dedicated case management portal, providing full 24/7 visibility of all images and associated data. Documents were digitised at 300dpi and organised by correspondence type to streamline processing and avoid duplication. Through our secure online image repository branded for Westfield Health, users were able to search, view, annotate, print, email and share documents, with role-based access ensuring appropriate permissions across multiple users and locations.
All items were scheduled for secure destruction following an agreed three-year retention period. Any errors or exceptions were flagged within the portal for review, with a manual triage process in place to support resolution. We also established clear email and escalation rules with Westfield Health to ensure exceptions could be quickly routed for further investigation and manual handling where required.
What was the impact
- Reduced processing requirements by two FTEs
- Increased online claims processing from 87% to 100%
- Reduced client carbon footprint by shifting the majority of claims processing online
- Implemented a flexible AI and OCR-driven document classification and routing system, with the ability to reclassify documents within a mailbox
- Introduced automated mail routing to relevant teams where required
- Enabled same-day notification of incoming post
- Supported customer SMS notifications sent immediately upon mail receipt, providing real-time reassurance that claims are being processed
- Enabled document rescanning via a customised web portal, allowing low-quality images to be replaced with improved versions
- Established three bespoke workstreams to categorise documents: claim forms, other mail items, and confidential mail items
- Delivered full digital image search capability to improve customer service and reduce processing timeframes
- Implemented system locking within the web portal to prevent duplication when items are selected for review