ChallengeAustralian Health Management (ahm) provides a full range of health insurance products and customised health management programs. ahm is a top 10 Australian health services provider with 127,000 health insurance policies, providing its 250,000 members with comprehensive benefits, competitive prices and a range of free health management programs.

As its membership has grown, ahm has broadened its services outside of its core health insurance business. It has developed Dental and Eyecare Practices which saw 72,000 patient visits in 2006; its Total Health team focuses on preventative healthcare and education; and its Membership Promotions Team drives healthcare promotions to both existing members and new markets. Last year, its customer services teams managed over 600,000 inbound and outbound calls.

As staffing levels have increased, ahm recognised that rostering was being inefficiently managed by a decentralised legacy system of organically grown spreadsheets and scheduling practices. These were not only highly labour intensive to maintain, but often produced inaccurate workforce requirements for its four divisions. The six team leaders and two senior clinicians managing scheduling were each spending six hours per week managing the administration around complex staff rostering and scheduling practices, which meant less time was spent mentoring staff. It was unclear whether the increase in call volumes necessarily required more staff, or whether they merely needed to redeploy staff into other areas of the business.

SolutionThese inefficiencies were costing the business both financially and in terms of the level of customer service it could offer to members. ahm management was keen to introduce an integrated workforce management system that could better manage the technical and administrative components.

Bill Langston, Group Workforce Planner at Australian Health Management, explains, “We identified four business objectives. Firstly, we wanted to cost effectively co-ordinate the workforces of the four ahm business units: Health Insurance (contact centre and processing), Total Health, Dental and Eyecare Practices and Member Promotions team. We also wanted to enhance the operational management capability to enable management to make tactical decisions supported by facts. We wanted to ensure that we were matching workforce requirements with demand to more effectively manage resourcing. Finally, we were keen to improve our customer service statistics, and use these to reduce call abandonment levels and improve cross-skilling of staff.”

With these goals in mind, ahm went to market to review existing solutions. GMT Planet was the only workforce management solution that met ahm’s criteria.

GMT Planet’s ability to manage resourcing of the entire ahm workforce was a differentiator. The Dental and Eyecare Practice is staffed by optometrists, dentists and their clinical support staff. Workload creation in this environment is vastly different to workload within a contact centre. ahm needed a flexible workforce management solution that could manage complex rostering for staff across the business.

Improved services levels 11% Dwithin first six months of use

Reduced call abandonment rate by 34.5%, while Dmanaging an increased call volume

Increased staff schedule visibility with corresponding Dimprovement to schedule adherence

Reduced schedule generation time, resulting in Dincreased time spent mentoring staff

AHM Results

GMT Customer Case Study™

Bill Langston continues, “GMT stood out. It manages the technical aspects rostering and scheduling procedures, manages both inbound and outbound calls; delivers proven enterprise-wide resource management; collates individual rosters to provide centralised visibility to both supply and demand requirements; and predicts demand based on historical data.”

BenefitsGMT Planet offered key business benefits to all areas of ahm’s business:

Reduction in roster administration time »Reduction in the number of managers conducting »roster administration

Greater reporting capability »Reduction in labour costs »Improved customer service »Staff self servicing (roster change requests and »viewing rosters)

Centralised forecasting »ahm worked with GMT to collaborate with those involved in rostering administration and ensure that there was management buy in to the project from the start. Information sessions for both management and staff were carried out pre-implementation of GMT Planet to demonstrate the capabilities of the new system and the processes it employs. The system was implemented within the timelines set.

Bill Langston continues, “We were impressed with the support from GMT throughout the roll-out of GMT Planet and since the system has gone live. Contrary to concerns in the industry about the lack of support from workforce management providers, GMT’s commitment to us as a customer has been on-going; they’ve continued to work with us to respond and meet our needs, they delivered a smooth integration process and they share our outlook on customer service.” This collaborative approach was key in delivering change management to ahm and has served to drive the cultural change alongside new working patterns.

Automating the scheduling process has improved a more accurate workforce fit to demand. Resources can now be scheduled three months in advance, with scope for six months if required, allowing staff to better plan their working lives.

Staff have also embraced the new system, which has enhanced performance across the four business units, and supported a greater awareness of personal responsibility and accountability of agents’ time. The centralised system for scheduling and self-service capabilities gives staff

Facts at a Glance

Business Type: D Healthcare Mgmt & Insurance

Operation Type: D Contact Centres

No. of Employees: D 500

Region: D Australia

Company Website: D www.ahm.com.au

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visibility to their rosters and allows for changes online. It has supported the creation of specific rules within each of the teams for exceptions and adherence requirements and improved intra-day management of staff’s working day.

GMT Planet’s precision scheduling, comprehensive reporting and intraday management has supported the creation of Service Level Agreements with the ahm business units. A greater match of resources to demand has driven improved customer service statistics from which management can set SLAs. In the first six months of 2006, service levels within the Member Promotions Team improved by an average on 11% month on month. This has led to other improvements across the business, including reducing the average abandonment rate from 5.5% in 2005, to an average of 3.60%, even with an increase in call volume.

ahm was recently awarded the NSW Call Centre of the Year Award for 50 -120 seats at the recent Australian Teleservices Association Awards. Bill Langston sums up, “Workforce management has driven both a cultural change and improvements to working patterns at ahm. The cultural change that includes the empowerment of our staff has been as big as the technical changes we’ve implemented. In an increasingly competitive healthcare environment, GMT Planet is a platform for the future flexibility and growth of ahm’s business.”