What are Action Items?
ClaimWizard created Action Items as a way to create a cohesive group of tasks (called a “workflow”) related to processing a public adjuster insurance claim. The use of automated Action Items and Workflows is unique in the public adjusting industry and pioneered by ClaimWizard.
Why are Action Items Important to Your Business?
Having an easy-to-follow, documented, repeatable, and automated business process in place to adjust claims from origination to settlement (and beyond) is critical to keeping your public adjusting business compliant, efficient, and profitable.
How to Design an Action Item Workflow for Your Company
First thing first — you need to document how your company currently adjust claims. Using a whiteboard, flowchart software, or even good ol’ sticky notes or index cards, walk through the process of working a claim. Be sure to document:
- What the task is
- Who is responsible for the task
- What part of the claim lifecycle this task belongs in
- What is this task dependent on
- How long this task should take to complete
- What happens when this task is completed
- What happens when this task is overdue
Arrange your tasks in the rough order they should be executed. Some tasks can be worked on simultaneously with other tasks, and some have hard dependancies. Document it all. Note that an Action Item is not giving the nitty-gritty details of how to actually perform a task (such as explicitly explaining how to perform a contents inventory…) but rather frame-working the task and the parameters in which it is considered complete.
Next, think about any ‘exception phases’ a claim may encounter. Pre/Litigation, Mediation, Re-Inspection, Appraisal, etc. are possible unexpected turns in a claim. Document your preferred business process of dealing with each of these exemption claim phases. In ClaimWizard, these sets of Action Items stay dormant until there is a specific need to invoke them within the lifecycle of a claim. This approach helps keep your entire team stick to a pre-approved path when working with situations that may not be ‘top of mind.’
For ClaimWizard Clients
If you are a client of ClaimWizard, you can easily enter in your Action Items directly from your worksheet or flowchart – or simply forward it to the ClaimWizard Staff and we will implement it into your account (for free.) If you would like, we will even audit your workflow for inconsistencies and suggest improvements based on our 25+ years of public adjusting business building experience across all of North America (yes, for free.)
For NON-ClaimWizard Clients
If you are not using ClaimWizard for a claim management solution, you can document your workflow on a spreadsheet or flowchart and distribute to your team. Many benefits of using the ClaimWizard platform will not be available, such as automatic documentation, accountability, escalation, reminders, deadline tracking, and next steps. You will also not be able to export the entire workflow progress of a claim with the click of a button (yes, ClaimWizard is THAT EASY to export claim information to turn over to your legal team, vendor, client or carrier.)
No matter if you are a single public adjuster doing everything in your company — all the way to a multi-national public adjusting company, ClaimWizard Action Item Workflows will make your claim adjusting process more time efficient, thus, more profitable.
Sample ClaimWizard Action Item Workflow
Below is a sample ClaimWizard Action Item Workflow. We have included only the first few items to give you an idea of what Action Items look like.
