PAINS

   Low enrollment
   Broker management issues
   Low customer retention
   Inaccurate reporting
   Quoting and underwriting delays
   Marketing campaign issues
   Competitor tracking
   Low productivity
   Increasing claims costs
   Increased expenses
   Billing issues
   Profit losses
   Merger difficulties
   Multiple offices and branches
   Internal communications
   Excessive paperwork
   Decrease in service quality
   Other

PAIN DESCRIPTION:

Broken Telephone. Perhaps we all remember this game from childhood birthday parties or boring Sunday afternoons: one person whispers a message into the ear of the next, who passes it on and so on and so on, until finally it arrives back at the source, and it is never the same message, no matter how hard all try. Child's play, but it says a lot about communication and misunderstanding.

In our predominantly "white-collar" society, managed healthcare workers need to spend a lot of time communicating with each other. At least some part of such communication (reporting the state of a task to a lot of people) is considered as boring, and it is, usually, kept to the bare minimum. On the other side, not having enough internal communication may lead to undesirable consequences, like things "falling through the cracks", reinvention of solutions multiple times, member disenrollment and dissatisfaction, and having some reps overloaded, while others are underloaded.

Is it possible to ensure proper internal communication without putting an extra burden on the Sales and Marketing reps?

PAIN ANALYSIS:

Lack of internal communication can lead to disastrous situations in an organization.

Communication disasters are not uncommon in MCOs, whether intra-departmental or inter-departmental. Such failures in communication result in enrollment/renewal delays, blunders, quality deterioration, activity hold-ups, and indecision. Such problems have so far been overlooked and no structural remedy was found.

In an era when mergers and acquisitions are the order of the day, merging two diverse work cultures is a gigantic task. Needless to say, the reason for failure of mergers was never considered due to lack of proper and tactful communication.

Now many corporate houses have started understanding the significance of streamlining their internal communication set-up.

When there is no harmony within an organization, efficiency suffers, and very often it is the head of the organization who is blamed. But very few realize that disharmony is a consequence of lack of communication within the company. A sort of distrust or unwillingness to achieve the organizational goal is prevalent.

Motivation

All work done by a Sales and Marketing rep in a Managed Care Organization could be roughly divided into two groups:

• Doing some actual work (which might include communication with the external world, customers, prospects, etc.).
• Communicating with colleagues and management (internal communication).

The latter includes:

• Reporting on the work that has been done to managers or colleagues who should know the results (e.g., underwriting or accounting department).
• Getting new assignments from managers (formal) or colleagues (informal).
• Giving assignments to others.
• Searching/giving information on experience that could help in completing current tasks.

While doing the job is considered important, the reps tend to pay less attention to the internal communication and try to keep it to bare minimum, e.g., informing only managers. Insufficient internal communication may lead to the following undesirable effects:

• The information on the status of the task is known only to a person who completes the task, or maybe his/her direct manager. Any questions about this status (e.g., from a customer) cannot be answered if the person (and his manager) is away.
• Information on a completed task or a new assignment does not reach the next in the chain on time (or does not reach them at all), i.e., the things "fall through the cracks".
• It takes too much time to find information on past experience (e.g., the person who had it is out of reach when needed). A solution is reinvented repeatedly (and possibly not in an optimal way).
• Managers do not know how much work is on the table of each rep. As a result, the overloaded reps may get more assignments, while underloaded reps have nothing to do.

Is it possible to make internal communication work without increasing the time each person spends conducting it?

How to make internal communication effective

It may seem that the obvious solution to make the internal communication more effective in the electronic epoch is to use electronic means instead of papers, email being the most straightforward alternative for this end. However, business practice shows that switching from paper to electronic channels does not necessarily solve all internal communication problems. For example, mailboxes can be easily clogged due to mixing external and internal communication, etc.

HMOZ solution

HMOZ, based on its own research, has developed a special state-oriented approach to business process orientation that can help solve the problems of internal communication. In cooperation with our partners and customers, we have developed a system that provides:

• Friendly, pleasant, and efficient means for internal communication for everyone.
• In addition, for middle management, it provides information on the state of sales process, history, and all activities, as well as on distribution of resources between these activities (who is overloaded, and who has nothing to do). The information can be used for faster planning, resource redistribution, conflict resolution, etc.
• Moreover, for higher management, it provides reliable reports for statistical analysis, which can help in strategic planning and decision making.

ADVICE:

Ten reasons why HMOZ improves your Internal Communications

1. Efficient productivity tracking.
2. Sales processes to guide your Sales and Marketing reps.
3. Maximum reach — you communicate with every employee; teams can share view of their accounts; you have a centralized database for your data.
4. Information travels from one department to another instantly.
5. Facilitates better working relations, communications, and understanding.
6. Makes enrollment/renewal processes faster; faster quote returns.
7. Fewer misunderstandings and lost or corrupted data.
8. Conflict resolution — you can define precedence of updates (who has the last word).
9. Schedule meetings, activities for the whole team or an individual.
10. Reports — improved communication with management.

One Demo is better than a thousand words, and one Solution Audit is better than a thousand demos. We encourage you to follow our CRM proverb and take advantage of this opportunity.

Click on one of the three links below to continue your HMOZ research.