AIA had engaged CBS to deliver a similar mail digitisation solution for its newly acquired insurance business, CMLA. The solution incorporated our cognitive capture techniques to intelligently process any document type received. 

Effectively, all of AIA’s physical mail is now routed via CBS for processing, digitisation, and data capture, then routed directly into AIA’s workflow for AIA staff to action within 2 hours.

AIA’s Comminsure acquisition meant integrating an entirely new business’ technology, people, and process into its existing mail-house, expanding a single mailbox to 23, covering 190 different products and adding over a thousand different insurance forms to AIA’s workflow.

“We were still learning about the systems and processes we’d inherited from Comminsure and often didn’t even have access to the information or service we were trying to replace. CBS really had to adapt and develop a mail digitisation solution on the fly,” says Matt. “We engaged the CBS team in July 2020 and required a solution to test by January 4, 2021, and roll out by April 2021, so they had to translate an extremely complex project into an elegant design solution fast.” 

“The CBS team essentially blended into the project, taking the time constraints in their stride with a flexible, accommodating approach that just made everything easier,” Matt says. “And that was a standout for us—the project was difficult enough but having CBS on board meant we never had to worry. We had confidence that CBS would deliver.

CBS underwent an extensive discovery process, ensuring we invested the time to understand the project mandate, the processes to integrate, and applied quality project governance to manage expectations so we could deliver a great outcome for AIA.

We used our expertise in mail digitisation solutions and experience providing a similar service to AIA to make sure the transition was seamless for Comminsure’s existing clients.

“Despite time pressures, missing project parameters, and access issues, CBS’ flexible, can-do approach really came to the fore,” says Matt. “It was a relief knowing we could drop information on them at the last minute that would change the aspects of the solution, and they’d find a workaround.”

CBS spent time in discovery and managed the whole transition process. We designed an iterative solution to allow AIA to adjust elements in the testing phase as new information comes to light.

CBS delivers digital mail, outbound print, and fulfillment services from our Melbourne Technology Centre. This includes: 

1. Clearing GPO box mail of incoming AIA Australia correspondence 
2. Preparing forms for scanning
3. Creating a digital image via high-speed track scanners
4. Capturing required metadata
5. Validating forms in accordance with AIA requirements for processing
6. Validation is supported by predefined business rules aided by the ingestion of policy data supplied by AIA 
7. Exceptions are identified as a hosted via a web application for resolution

1. Receives, opens, sorts, and prepares physical mail for scanning. We register cheques and registered post for tracking while non-scannable mail is returned to AIA. 
2. Manages the ‘Return to Sender’ process
3. Scans and digitises prepared items 
4. Indexes documents according to AIA requirements 
5. Exports images and metadata as per AIA’s schema
6. Archives physical mail
7. Manages and resolves exception processes e.g., re-scan requests
8. Back-scans documents sent by AIA 
9. Actions Helpdesk requests
10. Regular BAU Reporting.
    

CBS final mail-house solution has flexibility built in so the AIA team can make changes as new process information comes to light in practice.

“With so many products and forms, we knew our initial document mapping would need updating as we tested the solution. CBS’ challenge was how to build a solution that was flexible enough to allow AIA to make rapid changes during the first month of going live,” Matt explains. “We were really fortunate CBS’ solution meant we didn’t have to worry—they said, ‘we’re going to build a solution that gives you control to fix it on the fly.’ I like it when people can admit they won’t know everything. The solution is never going to be perfect. But it can be close to perfect if you allow for it to be iterative.” 

AIA has successfully taken over Comminsure’s mail-house operations, with CBS taking care of data capture, digitisation and rerouting to AIA’s workflows for action within 2 hours. The solution works seamlessly in the background, allowing AIA to focus on driving growth.