ABOUT
As a leading provider of government services worldwide, MAXIMUS uses its decades of experience to design, develop and deliver innovative and impactful health and human services programs. With offices in six countries, employees answer more than seven million calls at contact centers monthly.
INDUSTRY
Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), Public Sector
THE CHALLENGE
MAXIMUS wanted to drive positive change through digital transformation and the adoption of emerging technologies, so the company created a robotic process automaton team headed by the Chief Digital Officer. One of the team’s first initiatives was to create a playbook for systematically assessing hundreds of MAXIMUS operations across the globe. Automation opportunities were then catalogued and analyzed to identify benefits to customers and shareholders.
THE SOLUTION
MAXIMUS implemented a highly available global delivery network of people, processes and tools to manage all automation opportunities through a rapid implementation process based on design thinking principles. This included automating processes in customer-facing contact centers and back office operations such as premium processing, eligibility determination and health plan enrollment. Bots were also used for shared services and corporate teams, to complete tasks like automating cell phone expense reporting and provisioning new employees. RPA is also used to trigger messages to new employees to ensure they complete mandatory onboard training; a process that will soon be enhanced to include text message alerts.
PROCESSES AUTOMATED
• Customer facing and back office processes
• Workforce management
• Premiums processing
• Data entry
• Employee provisioning and de-provisioning
• Customer intake
• Document management
BENEFITS
• $2.5M Saved annually through RPA
• 39 Bots in production
• 100 Bots in production within the next year
STORY DETAILS
One program that benefitted from RPA was the MAXIMUS health plan enrollment broker for the state of Michigan where MAXIMUS is responsible for processing tens of thousands of monthly premium payments. Customers request refunds of previous payments. Prior to automation, thousands of premium refund requests had to be manually evaluated, requiring a dedicated team of financial specialists weeks to complete each month. Post-automation, Automation Anywhere bots complete the review and produce the required audit trail in under two days, which enables our highly skilled finance specialists to focus their time on the steps in the process that actually require their critical thinking skills.
“We want people working to the top level of their training and certification, so the processes we’re automating are the ones that are dragging them down.” — David Cowles, Chief Digital Officer
Another example of RPA success occurred in the company’s call centers. Prior to automation, supervisors had to manually approve up to 2,000 daily employee requests for work scheduling changes using email and spreadsheets. With the implementation of automation, they could shift their focus back on managing performance instead of doing the housekeeping work. Automation Anywhere bots review the scheduling requests, approve or deny them based on a set of configurable business rules, complete the actual schedule modification in the workforce management system, and provide an output report to call center leadership detailing the results of each record.
“The quality impact from automating a process is a huge win for us.” — Michael Sampson, Director, Digital Solutions
“When it comes to opportunities to introduce automation into our business, we’ve barely scratched the surface and we are already seeing positive results.” — Dan Biernacki, Vice President, Digital Solutions
Currently, the company has 39 bots in production and estimates RPA has helped saved more than $2.5 million annually. MAXIMUS expects RPA benefits to double in 2020.
THE FUTURE
MAXIMUS continues to systematically review business processes to identify automation candidates. This includes implementing attended bots to do things like assist CSRs with completing calls and helping quality-control staff monitor work products. MAXIMUS is also implementing IQ Bot to increase data entry automation. There are more than 60 bots in the delivery cycle, and MAXIMUS expects to have more than 100 bots in production within the next year.