Remote and Hybrid Work Environments Call for Enhanced Collaborative Capabilities

Spear Technologies Responds with Seamless Integration with Microsoft Teams

Due to COVID-19, many insurance and claims professionals now work remotely. As a result, many insurance organizations have had to find new and innovative ways to maintain prior levels of connection, communication, and collaboration, which once existed when everyone was onsite.

To further complicate the situation, some organizations are now having employees return to the office, at least a few days a week, creating a hybrid work environment that can cause further interruptions as people toggle between working from home and the office.

To support the business needs of these new work conditions, insurance organizations have started to rely on collaborative tools, such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams, or Google Meet, which help to minimize process inefficiency and delays.

Today’s Work Challenges

In today’s distributed work world, the need for collaboration has actually increased. This includes an increase in emails, instant messaging, as well as phone and video calls. But these types of tasks can also create delays. For example, team members who’ve had to follow up on a request several times by email and phone before they receive the information they need – this wastes time and saps productivity.

In addition, inefficiency mounts when employees have to switch between tasks or must deal with other interruptions. Gloria Mark, professor of informatics at the University of California at Irvine, said that it can take as much as 23 minutes to fully get back to a task after a slightly longer distraction. Team members who deal with frequent interruptions may end up experiencing higher workloads, more stress, and higher levels of frustration – as well as having to exert more effort to get things done.

The Need for Collaborative Capabilities

Due to these challenges, companies are trying to pair knowledge on how to achieve efficiency and productivity – with appropriate technology enablement. These two factors can help to empower employees to collaborate more effectively – increasing their work performance and enhancing their well-being.

IDC predicts that, by 2024, enterprises with intelligent and collaborative work environments will see 30% lower staff turnover, 30% higher productivity, and 30% higher revenue per employee than their peers. These are worthy reasons for organizations to invest in tools that optimize collaboration. To assist in this endeavor, solution providers are striving to incorporate a greater ability for teams to collaborate within their applications.

What Spear Technologies Offers: Seamless Integration with Microsoft Teams

Since our solutions are built on the Microsoft Power Platform, they have the benefit of seamless integration with Microsoft tools, such as Microsoft Teams.

We’ve already begun to leverage Microsoft Teams to further streamline insurance processes. For example, if clients wish, we can now embed the entire SpearClaims solution into Teams.

As we mentioned, switching tasks can hinder productivity – this includes logging into different applications and switching between them to perform various tasks. But this is exactly what claims managers must do, as they don’t spend their entire workday in a claims system. Now they can simply access SpearClaims from Teams, the platform from which they already perform a significant portion of their managerial responsibilities.

Our product’s integration with Teams further streamlines the claims process as it helps eliminate bottlenecks – common ones include payment approvals and sharing files. Here’s how these processes can be made more efficient at different organizations:

An insurance company wants to inform a customer when it’s about to make a payment that exceeds a certain amount – per this customer’s requested guidelines, that amount is $20,000. Perhaps an insured party hurt his back during a slip-and-fall accident at a grocery store. The general liability carrier alerts the store to the fact that it has arrived at a settlement of $20,000. The grocer doesn’t have access to the insurer’s claims system, but it can still receive a notice via Teams to expedite the review and approval process.

A third-party administrator (TPA) handling a workers’ comp claim may want to send a claims file to nurse case management to have a nurse perform medical management over the case. The TPA can easily share the file through its Teams integration.

With these collaborative capabilities, insurance or claims organizations can remain agile and responsive to customer needs. In addition, they can reap the following benefits from our Teams integration:

Effective teamwork – adjusters and other stakeholders stay connected, organized, and participate in ongoing digital conversations.

Complete meeting management, including the ability to schedule and host meetings, as well as oversee meetings for the day, week, or month. Also synchronize various calendars, so nothing falls through the cracks.

Improved communication. Make calls – from Teams – even if the other party is not using this platform. Teams’ “channels” also enables members to hold impromptu meetings and conversations, as well as share files.

A central command box, from which to search for items or people, as well as take quick actions and launch apps, including SpearClaims.

The Future of Collaboration

Remote work remains a fixture in the future, and as such, insurance and claims professionals will continue to struggle with the collaborative demands of a distributed work world.

Solution providers have pivoted to provide much needed support. But in this regard, Spear Technologies is ahead of the game. Our low-code / no-code solutions are built on the Microsoft Power Platform, so they seamlessly integrate with Microsoft tools – such as Teams. And in an upcoming blog, we’ll cover how our solutions also integrate with Outlook. These capabilities provide customers with extensive collaborative capabilities.

By using SpearClaims, your team can eliminate common bottlenecks in the claims process. Since this system facilitates agile business processes and meaningful collaboration, you can actually boost the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of your entire organization.

Subscribe and stay tuned – we plan to deliver further innovations to claims and other insurance processes via our Microsoft integration and our low-code / no-code platform.