Health Insurer Needed Information Security and Access to Documents During a Disaster

Exela helped the firm keep operations running smoothly during a pandemic.

CHALLENGE

A health insurance company had to quickly shift its staff to remote working in light of the worldwide COVID-19 outbreak. Even though employees no longer came to the office, the insurer had to find a way to keep distributing business-critical paper mail – approximately 550,000 mail units per month.

The company also needed to uphold rigorous information security standards related to handling protected health information. And it needed solutions to these problems fast.

The company detailed its security requirements in a 131-question Request for Information (RFI).

SOLUTION

Exela’s Rapid Response Team respond to the RFI within 24 hours. The team’s answer: Exela’s Digital Mailroom (DMR) and web-based DMR portal, which distribute physical mail to remote workers electronically.

First Exela’s Rapid Response Team established a temporary mail processing site near the client’s headquarters in a matter of days so that processing work could begin. Ordinarily, the client would have to take time for a site inspection to ensure that mail processing would be safe and secure – but the strict physical security standards and data security protections in place at Exela’s permanent mail processing sites let the client skip that step, which sped up the process of applying Exela’s solution.

Exela’s existing nationwide infrastructure and workforce absorbed the huge volume of mail with minimal lead time and significantly less human capital than the insurer would use at its own site. Mail processing and digitization for the client’s primary site was ready in just 10 days.

With processing volumes load-balanced through a hub-and-spoke operating model, Exela spread out the workload to ensure 100% coverage and remain flexible as conditions change. (If the workload surged, Exela could bring additional sites online in three to five days.) This approach enabled operations to be scaled up or down as needed. As DMR connected additional workflows and platforms, it strengthened the client’s business-continuity and disaster-recovery protections.

BENEFITS

• Time savings on setup due to DMR’s fast deployment

• Strong productivity as remote employees gained access to critical business mail

• Flexibility and agility as rapidly scalable operations could adjust to changing conditions

• Lower costs due to a 20-30% reduction in mailroom staff

• Time savings on training due to DMR’s easy-to-use platform

• Secure disaster recovery protection thanks to Exela’s hub-and-spoke operational model

• Scalability and potential to add more operations using Exela or third-party workflow solutions

• Easier remote work due to DMR’s cloud-hosted anytime, anywhere access to mail

• Control of mail and data due to full audit trails, chain of custody tracking, and reporting

• Efficiency and productivity from DMR making mail searchable and shareable