With the recent shift in the insurance landscape and healthcare laws, many consumers are feeling overwhelmed, if not discouraged, when trying to figure out which plan is best suited for them. In response, insurance carriers are seeking out ways to simplify the consumer purchasing experience and become more effective and efficient.
One such company, Humana, has begun a mission to design a new consumer experience across the Employer Group Segment. In collaboration with consumers, they are aiming to simplify, standardize and automate processes that will enable them to close the gap on health and wellness and drive efficiencies to manage costs.
Situation: How to Master IBM Business Process Management (BPM) Software Quickly
Once financial goals and targets were identified, Humana was ready to move forward with implementing their plan. They chose an IBM BPM software suite that included IBM Business Process Manager Advanced V8.5 and Operational Decision Manager. Humana then established a Process Innovation team — a hybrid group of individuals who demonstrated exemplary skills in creative thinking and programming from both business and IT perspectives. This would be the core team that would eventually master the new IBM tools that would enable them to effectively and efficiently create new processes. Before they could move forward any further, however, Humana recognized they needed two essential things:
- Training expertise to accomplish their goals and maximize the value of their investment
- An agile training provider that could ensure a fast turnaround, provide guidance on curriculum structure and accommodate on-site and remote learners, including providing self-paced training for some foundational topics
Solution: Tailored Training Solution by Global Knowledge
Humana chose Global Knowledge for several reasons, among them being:
- We understood what they needed
- We offered expert guidance on how to sequence the courses as they built upon each other
- We had the agility to deliver it within their required timeframe of only four weeks
According to John Davenport, Director, Innovation & Integration at Humana, “Global Knowledge understood what we needed to accomplish. They weren’t trying to give us a cookie-cutter approach. They didn’t try to give me a solution that someone else had used and they thought would work for us. The Global Knowledge team was very responsive and flexible, and they took our requirements and came back with a workable solution.”
Our training solution was designed to take the Humana Process Innovation team through a series of courses that would enable all members to master process modeling and the playback development strategy and would build BPM role-specific skills as appropriate for each individual. Because the Process Innovation group’s launch coincided with the start of the BPM training program, Global Knowledge tailored the foundational course to include concepts on BPM as well as to provide insight into Humana’s organizational paradigm shift to BPM. Most of the training was delivered on-site at Humana headquarters, with some students in the classroom, while other off-site students logged in to attend the training virtually.
Results & Insight: Team Members Ready to Bring New Humana Customer Journey to Life
Through this tailored training approach, Humana reached their initial training goals of having all Project Innovation team members master process modeling and the playback development strategy and of having individuals on the team gain BPM skills specific to their role. While the Process Innovation team was being trained, Humana performed an exhaustive consumer experience analysis to understand their customer’s needs. With initial Process Innovation team training complete and training goals met, team members will now begin putting the training into practice to build and bring to life the improved journey for Humana customers.
Using the BPM framework has enabled Humana to more flexibly craft processes and rules for more rapid deployment. Davenport explained, “It has also changed the way we look at a process. With BPM, the process now is becoming an asset of the company, and how well we design it will define how valuable those assets are.”
From needs assessment to training delivery, Humana and Global Knowledge worked together to enable the new Process Innovation group to help change the culture within Humana. This was no small effort by the group or Humana as a whole. It was a huge undertaking that required a deep level of commitment from Humana stakeholders and a keen understanding of the undertaking by Global Knowledge.