“In a corporation, it’s all about the value you bring back into the company. Earley & Associates helped us understand how we could explain it from a dollars and cents perspective and that was critical. Without them, it would have been very challenging – we had not done this before."
“Earley & Associates has been doing this long enough and for a variety of companies and industries so they have the experience that we needed. That was really an important part of our success.”
Until 5 years ago, Aetna was a regionally focused company. Over a dozen service centers across the United States managed calls and claims for their geography. Content had been accumulated in an alphabetical list in a random sequence of categories, which were not meaningful to the end users
Insurance is a complex business with dozens of constituents and influences including physicians, patients, labs, anesthesiologists, outpatient facilities (such as labs, x-ray, physical therapy and behavioral therapy) plus state and federal legislation. It is crucial to an insurance company’s core business that claims are processed and benefits administered following specific policies accurately. It was clear they needed a single structure to provide consistency, to search easily and provide access to content quickly
Corporate management also understood that a centralized way of handling business (and their content) was necessary to increase profitability. As efforts began to simply workflows and business processes they began looking for an expert to guide them in the world of taxonomies, content management and search
Glenn Bair, the Project Manager, said: “We needed someone who could say to us: ‘This is how you have to look at the information that you are managing on a regular basis for the customer services reps and the people who have to administer claims.’”
Glenn attended one of Seth Earley’s conference speeches where Seth demonstrated a card sorting exercise used in his taxonomy methodology. Designed to make people think about the decisions about where they put something, Seth showed how the tool could give people a sense of the value of organizing information within taxonomy and applying a structure to that content.
Imagine you were going to classify food products in a grocery store according to the food pyramid. It would be a valid way of organizing data but it would not make sense to a lot of people who shop there. For example, they are used to finding eggs in the dairy dept, not in the poultry area with other proteins.
From that conference session, it became clear to Glenn that the perspective brought by the users and was critical and that a centrally administered taxonomy or characterization would not work without field input.
“You really have to analyze who is going to be touching the content and what’s the most important thing for them to get to quickly” reports Glenn “And that is what Seth Earley brought to the project immediately – a very realistic, clear direction. He helped us put structure on the content to essentially what was cacophony.”
“We can really say that our solution was built by the users.” Glenn reports.
Seth’s work led to an understanding of each region’s status, challenges and the impact of not being able to find the content they needed most quickly. Earley and Associates customized the card sort exercise for Aetna and also implemented focus groups and surveys in the Regional Service Centers.
A detailed analysis was developed. Earley & Associates worked collaboratively to build the taxonomy based on the relevant content groupings and categories. A detailed ‘blueprint’ to the users’ needs, perspectives and priorities was the result. “It helped us understand the content, what users wanted to see from a search perspective and what content should be accessed fastest,” says Glenn. From that blueprint, Seth developed their taxonomy structure.
Once the taxonomy was developed, Aetna took it back to the users and conducted a similar sorting exercise now structured by the taxonomy.
The Project team experienced great success with users finding the right content categories to locate or place their data. Based on those positive results, the Team extended their testing into the claims processing area. Again, the response was terrific. “From a PR perspective, this was a great way to introduce the project to people. It showed them the progress we were making and we got more direct on how we could make it better.” Glenn offers.
Earley & Associates helped Aetna organize a series of metrics to measure success once the taxonomy was fully implemented. It is expected that response time to complete a workflow for a variety of claim scenarios will be a key statistic and significant improvements are anticipated.
The team also expects to see significant improvements in other important measurements including improved accuracy, reduced rework and fewer overpayments. They will also track comparative searches with the new system and make sure that the users are actually looking at the content. After the system is fully implemented, plans are already in place for improvements to the search function based on employees’ uses of keywords, acronyms and synonyms.
Initially, the Aetna Project Team had decided to save money by using a content management technology already in-house. At Aetna’s request, Seth helped them analyze their needs and select a better solution. Seth helped them understand that it can be difficult as a business user, project manager or even an IT director to get a sense of how the various components fit together and what the ideal combination of taxonomy, technology and people would be for Aetna. Glenn was grateful for the analysis: “We really would have restricted our progress for future use of the system.”
Glenn Bair sums up the project this way: “What taxonomy becomes is another business asset which leverages the content and gets it to people quickly. When you think about it that way, it is truly part of the core business at both the customer and employee levels. And now we have a platform we’ll be deploying in the next 3-6 months.”
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