Society Insurance Chooses the Right Firms to Get the Best Results

Over 70 percent of respondents to a 2011 survey by Strategy Meets Action (SMA) said a key business driver of technology change was the need to manage claims efficiently. Companies have achieved efficiency gains by leveraging technologies in
use elsewhere in the enterprise, such as document management and workflow, and by focusing on pain point
processes unique to claims, such as fraud detection and litigation management.

"I'm amazed at how many insurers do not have litigation management capabilities and instead manage
litigation manually through collections of spreadsheets and documents," says Karen Furtado, partner
at SMA.

"Our pending litigation continued to grow, but we didn't have a system to manage it, perform analytics
around it, or share what's on my desk with other people," says Gabriel Deer, senior claims representative at
Society Insurance. With half of the insurer's claims staff based out of their homes, remote and mobile access
was also a key objective.

Society Insurance implemented the Legal Solutions Suite litigation management platform from CSC in
March 2011. SaaS-based, the solution automates core processes around the handling of legal matters.
Immediately after the system went live, Society no longer accepted paper bills from its law firms. All
electronic bills are submitted by firms into the CSC system, where they are then automatically analyzed to
ensure they comply with Society's negotiated rates and terms.

"Our legal spend is down slightly after going live, but we didn't put the system in place to save a lot of money
by auditing invoices," Deer says. Instead, Society sought workflow automation capabilities, which the
platform has delivered.

"Everything in the workflow is electronic — no more pencil marks on the bill, scanning, and faxing," says
Deer. "It has reduced the time it takes me to review and process an invoice. The savings have already paid for
the cost of the system."

Additionally, Society has capitalized on analytics capabilities that allow it to better manage its case
outcomes.

"We can now compare law firm to law firm and venue to venue, which we couldn't do before," says Deer.
"If firm A is getting better results than firm B, we can now run a report to provide evidence of that rather
than just sharing information through the grapevine," he adds. "As a result, we can steer cases to the right
firm, down to the particular attorney that gets the best results."

This article was excerpted from the June 2012 issue of Property and Casualty 360. Read the full article.