Quality Fables Competition 2017

Khattackkkkkkkk!! A loud slap landed on my surprised back.

I shouted, “Maa, whats wrong with you? It hurts!”

With equal irritation she replied, “What is wrong with you? Why are you wasting so much food?”

She pointed at the leftover cabbage, chilies and some cardamoms I had kept at the side of my plate.

“Its waste” I said. “Who eats that”.

This time with a patient tone she replied, “Son, food is precious. The food you called waste is completely edible, you just need to change your taste to ensure that you complete your food in the plate.”

To drive her point she told me the story of her workplace Vedanta Limited in Goa.

“Earlier we used to reject high alumina ore for producing sinter because just like you said about stuff you left in your plate, no one was using it. It created problem in our process and affected quality of our product. But then, we decided to change ourselves. Iron ore is a natural resource and precious. We should use it in a sustainable quantity utilizing first fully the excavated ores. Therefore, we decided to adapt and innovate. We analysed our process, reviewed our customer quality requirements, we brainstormed, we changed the way we operate our machines process thus not only fully utilizing the high aluminia ore but also producing top quality product from something which was considered ‘bad’ till now.”

I was impressed. I decided to finish the food I had left.

Mom said, “ Son, remember, nothing given by nature is waste. It is for us to find the right process and means to fully utilize it”.

Claims is not only a service differentiator but a moment of truth and Raison d'être for a Life Insurance company.

To know key “outcome expectations” of our customers at claims, a customer insighting study was done by IMRB during FY 2015-16 which revealed, “Claims plays a critical role in selection of a life insurer” and “Claims processing should be faster”. Our Customer transaction surveys also highlighted that key driver for customer experience and in turn customer loyalty is “timelines of claim settlement’’.

Analyzing the above reports, our Vice Chairman & MD, Rajesh Sud, noted that although we were maintaining industry leadership in claims paid percentage, for past three years, there was an opportunity to improve upon on-time processing of claims.

During a fine Oct’15 evening, Ashok SN our SVP & Chief Underwriter, was presenting claims performance to Rajesh & V Viswanand our Senior Director & COO, which showed all key claim matrices in solid green, including performance of our claims service promise of delivering claim settlement in 10 days when, this interesting conversation happened;

Rajesh: what can happen in a day?

Ashok nonchalantly replied, “a lot”.

Rajesh: Can we do claim settlement in one day?

Ashok knew that claims process was already having a dream run and claim settlement in 10 days was already an industry benchmark, but he replied, “nothing is impossible”.

Later, with fair idea of task and challenges ahead, he dialed Head Quality, Vinit Sharma to seek this “Holy Grail”. They formed a cross-functional team of Claims, IT and Finance under leadership of Anil Sharma, Head Claims, to reengineer claims process under Project InstaClaim. Team was assigned a clear goal to improve on-time claims processing in one day to 95% levels by Dec’16.

Project team found that claim processing in one day met % was around 31% and average settlement TAT was seven days. The team followed Six Sigma DMAIC approach, made use of tools viz VSM, SIPOC & Ishikawa to identify improvement opportunities and then systemic changes made in three key levers People, Process and Technology to finally achieve claim processing in one day met % to 95% levels by Dec’16 and average settlement TAT fell to two days a whopping 71 % improvement in our TAT’s.

The project had the desired impact on customer satisfaction; more than 60 % respondents rated claims process as excellent for past seven months in CTA surveys conducted by an independent agency IMRB.

While project success can be attributed to cross functional team efforts with strong buy-in from leadership, we learnt through this journey that nothing is impossible provided we have intent and right quality tools (pun intended). We gathered important insights required for mindset shift and change management experience which broke existing TAT related paradigms to usher in these learnings across company in other key processes viz Policy issuance, payments and surrender payouts etc.

Now, Rajesh was fair bit satisfied that when some dreams and hopes are in jeopardy due to unfortunate event of death, Max Life is able to stand and deliver to keep its promises and keep a few dreams alive, in just one day.

"November 2016, ISIS militants shot dead 52 people in east of Mosul city, Iraq." – read the morning newspaper.

Depressed, I flipped over; Dear Zindagi had released a second trailer.Will the movie be a hit? Being King Khan’s movie, they will sell it and people will have the cash to buy it!

Talking of cash, I started pondering over how terror groups would be financing their missions? Unlike legitimate businesses, terror enterprises cannot rely on loans or issue stocks to fund their activities; it definitely must be any system’s loophole.

I, Shubham am associated with the Account Suspension team of eClerx and our client is a global multinational bank that deals with various investment products and financial services.

My team is responsible for closing accounts or relationships that have been inactive in the last 18 months to stop money laundering. The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), Anti Money Laundering (AML), and Know Your Client (KYC) regulations are considered while account deactivation. An inadequate suspension activity may lead to terrorist mishap.

Account Suspension is one of the oldest processes with us and has matured through continuous improvement.

Over a period of time, even biggest and best-equipped ships run into trouble and it's the same in the world of busi                ness. As the wind outside was so turbulent, we promised to do something new, provide even more secure and better option to the client. Now it was either "You are Hero!" or "You are Suspended!"

We were on a mission to redesign the entire process with Prerna, our Quality POC, senior management, and few other cross-functional teams. We designed a new process flow and shared it with the client. It was a lot like crossing the ocean in a freighter — survival was uncertain. There were days of smooth sailing, and of course, the rogue waves that hit without warning.

Unfortunately, Abhishek,our Client Operational Excellence manager wasn't happy with the solution. He suggested to quit the drive and move ahead with the current flow.

“We are already in middle of ocean. Going back to the original process flow would be safest route. But would that be best for you and team?” With eyebrows raised and a witty smile, asked Ajay, our program manager.

“Definitely Not!” I gave a loud whisper. I turned back to my team and mustered courage to give it another try. With the help of our top management we could now involve Abhishek’s team from the Client side in resolving the issue. Leaving no stones unturned, we gathered their suggestions, carried multiple iterations and studied response and implemented the solution.

At the end we were at the peak of happiness with a robust process design, pleased customers, a satisfied team, proud management, and maybe reduced number of sorrowful columns in the upcoming newspapers.