Blog and News Content

a red truck with a yellow stripe on the side is on a black background

A Tale of Two Trucks

We have a number of clients in the transportation industry. Given the number of claims to which trucks and truck drivers are susceptible, we’re always eager to help our clients manage, track, and settle their claims as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Two of our client companies — Long Haul Cowboys, Inc. and Big Rigs Amalgamated — recently had separate incidents at roughly the same time. Since each of those incidents produced multiple claims, we asked the CEOs of those companies — Tiny Littlestone of Long Haul Cowboys and Duke Waslewski from Big Rigs Amalgamated — if they would talk to us together. They said yes.

What follows is a cleaned-up transcript of our conversation, with all the bad truck-driver words taken out. Tiny is represented as TL. Duke is represented as DW. And we, as always, are represented as CE (Claims Expert):

CE: Thank you for joining us today, gentlemen.

Burt and his new rig.

TL: It’s good to be here.

DW: Speak for yourself, Tiny.

CE: Well, great start there, men. Let’s start with you, Duke. It seems you had a man who was refusing to drive. Is that right?

DW: Yeah. Burt Sniglitz said he just wanted to stand and admire his new truck.

CE: Did you file any insurance claims on Burt?

DW: No. But we did file claims against Burt for professional liability, property damage, and errors and omissions.

CE: Can you be more specific?

DW: Sure. The professional liability was because he was loitering on company property. The property damage was because he was kicking the tires. And the errors and omissions was because he omitted his job, which was supposed to be driving.

CE: And what was the incident to which you tied those claims?

DW: Burt was an accident waiting to happen. And he did.

CE: Okay, Duke. That’s quite the story, indeed. Tiny, I understand one of your drivers was involved in a crash caused by faulty equipment.

Ernie gets busted on the road.

TL: Yep. But it wasn’t exactly one of our drivers.

CE: Who was it?

TL: That was Ernie Bilge, our head mechanic.

CE: He got pinched for faulty equipment?

TL: He said he was taking it for a test drive to see if the tires were really flat and to determine if the engine was emitting excessive exhaust.

CE: And what were the charges?

TL: Driving with flat tires and emitting excessive exhaust.

CE: And what types of claims did you have to file for that incident?

TL: Well, we had two property damage claims — one for the flat tires and one for the blown engine.

CE: Uh huh. Anything else?

TL: We filed a negligence claim against Ernie.

CE: For what?

TL: Driving with a suspended license.

CE: Why was his license suspended?

TL: Because he had a prior arrest for driving with flat tires and emitting excessive exhaust.

CE: Thank you, gentlemen. We need a drink.

Claim Management For The Transportation Industry

Is that story made up? Well, yes. Is it deliberately absurd. Well, yes. But the fact of the matter is you can manage almost anything — and all of your liability-related incidents — if you have the right claim system. If you’re in the transportation business, you likely don’t have to deal with people like Burt and Ernie. Nevertheless, we’re here to show you how Cloud Claims can transform your claims operations, whenever you’re ready.

In the meantime, be careful out there.

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a man in a suit and tie is throwing money in the air

Cloudfunding

No. The title of this post isn’t a typo.

It occurred to us as we were thinking about crowdfunding, which Wikipedia defines like this:

Crowdfunding is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising money from a large number of people … typically via the Internet.

Then we thought about the time, the effort, and the money (not crowdfunded) we put into developing Cloud Claims. We wondered why no one had ever thought of calling the investment in developing software, the functionality of which is delivered from the cloud, as cloudfunding. We still don’t know. But we decided to use the term anyway.

The Value Of Cloudfunding

Aside from coining the term, cloudfunding, we decided to engage in it because we believed it was a better way to deliver value — more flexibly and less expensively — to the claims managers and risk managers who depend on our software to get their jobs done efficiently. We undertook the conversion of our old, on-premise claim product — IMS — for cloud delivery because we believed the cost savings, the increased productivity, the speed and efficiency, the performance, and the security would constitute valuable assets to our customers. We haven’t heard anything yet to suggest we were wrong.

We also think there’s value in playfulness, in having fun, in engaging in a little word play to come up with a term like cloudfunding, and in deliberately making life a little lighter. We take our work seriously. We take our commitment to our customers — their business and their loyalty — very seriously. But we like to believe we don’t have to take ourselves seriously all the time.

One More Thought On Cloudfunding

We’re a product company. We develop and sell software. But we’re also a service company. We provide the services that enable our customers to get the most out of the software they buy from us. And we’ve come to realize we derive at least as much satisfaction from supporting and interacting with our customers as we do from developing software. If we were inclined to coin another term, we might call that interaction cloudsourcing.

But we don’t want to get ahead of ourselves.

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A Happy Customer is a Repeat Customer

Regardless of the business you’re in — insurance, transportation, construction, hospitality, carwashes, municipal government, or any other — the last thing you want and the thing you can least afford is an unhappy customer. And if you’ve been in any kind of business for a while, you likely know it costs significantly more to acquire new customers than it does to retain existing ones.

To our way to thinking, that means keeping your customers happy will keep them coming back. In fact, research by Bain & Co., Invesp, and others has determined that increasing customer retention by just 5 percent can yield profit increases of 25 to 95 percent, since the probability of selling to an existing customer is 60 to 70 percent, while the probability of selling to a new customer is between five and 20 percent. Those are pretty good reasons to keep your customers happy.

Manage Claims More Efficiently With Cloud Claims

Since we do what we do, we have to point out that one of the ways in which you can keep customers happy is to resolve their challenges — especially the challenges that result from insurance claims — as smoothly and quickly as possible. Whether your organization is fully insured (in which case, we can help your insurer), self-insured, or works with a TPA, Cloud Claims can help.

By improving everything from tracking to reporting, from workflow to reminders, from trend analysis and auditability, Cloud Claims helps manage claims more efficiently and adjudicate them more quickly.

The last thing you want is a customer steaming like the guy at the top of this post.

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a red car is being washed in a car wash

Don’t Let Your Carwash Take a Bath

As much as anything else, the car care business is a customer-satisfaction business. No satisfaction, no customers.

As a result, car care business owners can incur liability claims for any number of reasons (premises liability, property damage, personal injury, the conduct of others acting on your behalf, and more) from any number of incidents. That’s why God invented insurance, of course. And insurance claims have to be managed.

Service With a Smile

The best thing you can do for your business and your customers is keep the lines moving and provide an exceptional customer experience. The last thing you need is a lengthy holdup if customers cite damage to their cars after going through the carwash — or if there’s an accident in the tunnel caused by the customer or your equipment. The fact of the matter is, given enough time, anything and everything that can go wrong likely will. That’s where we come in.

Whether your parent company is fully insured, self-insured, part of a self-insured group, or works with a TPA, if whomever is responsible for managing your claims is using Cloud Claims, your job gets easier. All you have to do is smile, tell the affected customers their claims will be handled promptly, minimize the interruptions of your traffic flow, and make the experience as positive as possible for your customer.

Claim Management For Car Care Businesses

And there’s another point to be made: Using a system that tracks your incidents and claims — and allows you and your parent company to analyze incidents, injuries, and claims to identify trends — will allow overall risk management to be dramatically improved.

We apologize for the bad pun. But if you don’t measure and manage your claims, you’re likely to get hosed.

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a man is walking on a tightrope with mountains in the background

We Have the Net

An article ran in the April edition of Best’s Review entitled, “Risk Managers Walk a Tightrope as COVID-19 Challenges Remain”. The summary under the title says this, “Risk managers say they’re seeing their roles evolve as the old work environment undergoes profound change.” And the article says this, in part:

In the age of COVID-19, the insurance industry and risk managers view the whole process of opening office doors—if that’s even possible—or even setting up remote laptops for millions of workers as a “tightrope” walk that’s very hard to balance.

That statement reminded up of one of our earlier blog posts: “It’s 2022. Do You Know Where Your Claims Managers Are?” In that post, we wrote this:

Many companies in industries as diverse as insurance, transportation, construction, local governments, TPAs, self-insured groups, and restaurants are wondering where their claims managers and risk managers are. They might be in the office. They might be working from home. They might be on the road. It doesn’t matter. Wherever they are, they need access to information. And they need to be able to find the information they need as efficiently as possible.

And the congruence of the Best’s Review article and our blog post reminded us of an old expression: “There’s nothing new under the sun.”

Common Problems Faced By Risk Managers

It really doesn’t matter what industry you’re in. If you’re managing risks or claims, you need to be able to get the information you need when you need it. You need to be able to generate the reports you need to be able to see incidents, the claims related to every incident, the types of accidents or injuries that caused the claims to be filed, the cost of those claims, and the trends suggested by all of that information. If risk and claims managers seem to be walking a tightrope over working from home or returning to an office, can you imagine how thin the high wire would be if they were walking it without all the information and access to it?

The problems of risk and claims managers are common to everyone who works any kind of job that requires work to be done online, regardless of industry.

For the industries in which we work, we have the challenges of risk and claims information solved.

We charge extra for solving the challenges of the rest of the world.

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a man is laying on the roof of a truck with three moose heads sticking out of the windows

A Tale of Two Cities

Since A Tale of Two Cities, the 1859 novel by Charles Dickens, is in the public domain, we borrowed the title for this post.

Unlike the novel, which takes place in London and Paris, our story takes place in Baked, Alaska. We called Albert Murfwhiffle, the municipal risk manager for the city of Baked, after hearing about a snow-plowing accident that resulted in multiple claims. We recorded the conversation, then sent the recoding out for transcription because we didn’t think anyone would believe what happened.

This version of the transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity. Al is represented as AM. We’re represented as CE (claims expert, of course):

CE: Good morning Mr. Murwhiffle. Do you have a few minutes to speak with us.

AM: Well, I guess I can spare a few. I gotta get over to the hospital to see Clem. He was in an accident with one o’ them snowplows, ya know.

CE: Yes. We heard about that. We weren’t able to get all the details. So, we thought we’d call and ask you about it.

AM: Yeah. Clem never seen that moose.

CE: Moose?!

AM: Yep. The durn thin’ jumped right up on the hood o’ Clem’s truck and did some kind of Merengue or somethin’.

CE: The moose was dancing on the hood?

AM: Right before he poked Clem in the eye with an antler, he was. Busted the windshield right out.

CE: Is Clem alright?

AM: He’s a little banged up, but he’ll be okay. His truck is totaled, though.

CE: Totaled?!

AM: Right you are. With only one good eye, he couldn’t see past the moose on the hood, and he drove off a bridge.

CE: And he’s only a little banged up?

AM: He was lucky. His airbag deployed, and he was wearing 10 pairs o’ long johns. Cushioned the impact pretty good.

CE: That sounds like a property damage claim, a personal injury claim, and a veterinary claim.

AM: ‘At’s about right.

CE: How are you managing all that?

AM: Mildred in my office has it all diagrammed out on a BOC.

CE: BOC?

AM: A big ol’ chart. Right there on the wall, ya know.

CE: Have you ever heard of Cloud Claims?

AM: Is that anything like weather insurance? We could sure use some ‘o that with all the snow up here.

CE: No. It’s an incident-based claims system that would let Mildred track and manage every claim related to Clem’s accident with her keyboard.

AM: No more BOC?

CE: No more BOC.

AM: Where do I sign?

Choose Cloud Claims For An Incident-Based Approach To Claims Management

We’re happy to report Baked, Alaska is now using Cloud Claims. Clem’s out of the hospital. The insurance company replaced his truck. The city got rid of Mildred’s BOC. And the moose has refused to come out of the house since the accident.

Albert Murfwhiffle is now living in Freemish, Alaska, working for Mildred.

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a blue pen sits on top of an insurance claim form

How High is High Tech?

In September of last year, McKinsey & Company published a report called, How top tech trends will transform insurance. This excerpt about claims technology caught our eye:

Technology trends have the potential to materially change some of the underlying inputs of insurance products and core functions … [allowing] carriers to more effectively manage risk and make use of complex customer data—a critical step in evolving to a “predict and prevent” model of insurance where data is shared more frequently between parties.

It’s actually quite amazing to think about how far we’ve come from paper applications and telephones as means of submitting claims and how quickly it happened. We’re not quite sure what McKinsey means by will transform, since software has been transforming insurance — particularly in claims — by helping companies of all sorts to submit claims, to manage risk, to analyze customer data, to identify risk trends, and to mitigate the risks posed by those trends.

But that’s okay. That’s not the part that really got us.

The Shifting Role Of Insurers

Later in the report, McKinsey wrote this:

The role of insurers may shift from claims to prevention, whereby they are best placed to identify and reduce risk by partnering with clients and using technology.

Whoa! It can be argued (as we did above) that software is already enabling insurers to play a more active role in mitigating risks. But actually shifting roles from claims indemnification to claims prevention? That’s a whole different kettle of fish.

McKinsey may prove to be correct. But for the moment, we’re not sure how software could predict the occurrence of risks well enough to preclude them. If we take into account the vagaries of human nature alone, it seems like a stretch. How, for example, in any given scenario, can we know Person A will do this, instead of that? Under what specific conditions is he likely to do one and not the other? How can we know?

We’re software developers. We believe in technology, of course. But we don’t want to get ahead of ourselves in predicting the omniscience of software, even the software we develop.

That doesn’t mean we sell ourselves short. But it does mean we wonder how high tech can go.

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a cartoon of a man with a smiley face on his shirt sitting in front of a computer

A Tale of Two Restaurants

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”

If you’re not familiar with the Charles Dickens novel, A Tale of Two Cities, you might not have recognized its opening line. But whether you’ve read the novel or not, there must have been times in your life, perhaps your working life, in which you’ve felt the seemingly contradictory truth in that line.

We were reminded of that contradiction in a conversation we had with a risk manager for a restaurant chain. To protect his identity, we’ve identified him as RM (risk manager) in the transcript that follows. We’ve identified ourselves (modestly, of course) as CE (claims expert).

Here’s the transcript:

CE: Hi. Thank you for looking at our website and contacting us. Please let us know how we can be of service to you.

RM: Thank you for taking the time for this call. The truth is I reached out because I thought Cloud Claims looked interesting.

CE: That’s a great place to start. Do you have a claims system at present?

RM: I do.

CE: Do you mind if we ask what system you’re using?

RM: Not at all. It’s called Claims Bomb.

CE: Okay … well … how do you like it?

RM: I love it. It’s automated so many of the process I was doing manually.

CE: Excellent. Can you tell us what kind of reports it gives you.

RM: What kind of who?

CE: Maybe that’s not the best place to start. Does Claims Bomb let you tie individual claims to the incidents that precipitated them?

RM: No. But it does number all my claims. So, all I have to do is go back to figure out what caused them in the first place.

CE: Is that a distraction?

RM: It depends on what else I have to do.

CE: Right. Of course. And does Claims Bomb let you attach files in various digital formats?

RM: Isn’t that why God invented paper?

CE: Are you experiencing any backlog in the claims you have to manage?

RM: Yes. But the only people who complain are the ones whose claims aren’t being paid.

CE: Alright, then. Just one more question: Overall, how do you feel about Claims Bomb?

RM: I hate it.

CE: But you said earlier you love it.

RM: Yeah. But that was before I realized all the stuff it doesn’t do.

CE: We’re here to help when you’re ready.

RM: Are you busy right now?

Chapter Two

The moral of the story is this: There are good reasons to have a headache. Claims management isn’t one of them.

Please let us know how we can help you feel better.

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a green chalkboard with various mathematical symbols drawn on it

International Pi Day

In case you’re not aware, today is International Pi (π) Day, March 14 or 3.14.

The day is named in honor of Arnaldo Pi, the inventor of mathematics, who realized if he calculated the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter, he’d come up with 3.14. He also realized its decimal representation never ends and never settles into a permanently repeating pattern. And he was astute enough to realize, therefore, that he could never sell pi as an end-to-end solution because it didn’t exactly have an end.

What Arnaldo did not realize, however, is that his formula for calculating the area of a circle — πr2 — would land him in hot water with the WAG (World’s Authoritarian Grammarians). According to the WAG, the formula, πr2, is grammatically incorrect. Rather, the WAG insisted, the formula should be πis2 because π is singular.

Arnaldo’s Defense

As a means of justifying his formula, Arnaldo wrote the following letter to the WAG in hopes that they might leave him and his formula alone or at least cut him some slack:

Esteemed Members of the WAG,

I appeal to you for some latitude in rendering my formula for calculating the area of a circle on the following grounds:

First, I’m the inventor of mathematics, for cryin’ out loud. Nobody ever did this before. Since I’m making it up as I go along, how can you say I’m wrong?

Second, what about Toys ‘R’ Us? You let a retail chain that sells junk to impressionable kids get away with that — and you want to bust my chops?! I have to say it feels like I’m being singled out unfairly.

Finally, I think you have to decide whether you’ll err on the side of mathematical accuracy or grammatical accuracy. After all, you can’t have your pi and eat it, too.

Yours sincerely in numbers,

Arnaldo Pi

The Verdict

Arnaldo, as we now know, prevailed. That’s why all of us are now able to calculate the areas of circles with mathematical precision, albeit with grammatical incorrectness. But who cares? Arnaldo’s victory gives us all the more reason to celebrate International Pi Day, regardless of whether we prefer apple, peach, blueberry, strawberry, rhubarb, chocolate, custard, banana cream, lemon meringue, key lime, or mince.

Eat responsibly.

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a person is holding a magnifying glass over a piece of paper

Who Knew: Part Two

In an earlier post, we wrote about the ways in which companies go about reporting the incidents that spawn claims. And we recounted a conversation we’d had with a prospect on the subject of that reporting.

We recalled that post and that conversation in a more recent exchanges with another prospect. That made us think about what kind of risk-management reporting some companies might be getting. More important, it made us think about the extent to which many companies settle for what they’re getting.

Here’s a transcript of the exchange:

Us: What kind of risk-management reports do you get from your TPA or from your claims system?

Them: You mean loss runs or summaries?

Us: No. Risk-management reports. You know, the kinds of reports that would let you identify loss trends and such.

Them: Oh, you mean like reports of accidents, injuries, and stuff like that?

Us: Uh … not exactly. We were thinking more along the lines of reports that break down losses by type, by individual, by activity, by geography, and a number of other factors that could help you mitigate your risks and costs.

Them: Gotcha. You’re talking about the kinds of report that would help us improve safety, reduce the probability of accidents, and minimize our exposures.

Us: Exactly!

Them: Whew. Now we’re on the same page.

Us: Precisely. So, now that we understand our terms, what kind of risk-management reports do you get from your TPA or from you claims system?

Them: We don’t get anything like that.

It Doesn’t Have to Be That Hard

If you find yourself in a situation in which you’re not getting the risk reports you need to manage your risks adequately, you can do one of three things:

  1. Ask your TPA for them.
  2. Ask your risk manager for them.
  3. Get a system that will generate them for you on demand.

We know what we’d do. But we’re biased because we know how easy it is to get the reports you need.

If you’re ready to find out just how easy, we’d love to talk with you.

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