Claims Process

Summary

As a Product Manager intern on the Plan Qulliq Innovation team for the Royal Canadian Air Force, I lead the discovery and development of a digitalized claims process to improve the efficiency and experience of the current paper-reliant manual process. Through interviews and in-person usability testing, I uncovered the pain points due to tracking signatures and human errors. This led to the design of a digitalized claims process that utilizes automation and notifications to reduce friction and cycle time.

Note: Due to confidentiality, I cannot show most of my work. If you want more details about this project, reach out to me!

Background

Plan Qulliq is the innovation team in the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) responsible for creating new software to improve processes and administration within the RCAF. One of the products that Plan Qulliq manages is Dispatch, which hosts logistics and administrative information and processes for the RCAF, used daily by aircrew, administrators, dispatchers, and other Air Force personnel.

Although many processes have been moved from paper into Dispatch, the claims process was still done manually by paper at many air bases across Canada, also known as Wings. At 8 Wing Trenton, Dispatch has some functionality to support claims, but it is inefficient and not fully utilized. At 14 Wing Greenwood, the claims process is done entirely by paper, and they have no support at all through Dispatch.

Problem

The main problem with the claims process being performed manually by paper is it greatly leaves room for user error, leading to a long cycle time from when a claim was initiated to when it was finalized and paid out. Most users that submit claims are aircrew, who are unfamiliar with what the finance team requires to submit a claim successfully. As a result, there are often important sections left blank.

Project Goals

Design a solution that would integrate this claims process into Dispatch, to address these issues to minimize or remove the chance of human errors and speed up the process that was:

1

Easy for both aircrew and financial administrators to locate and access

2

Non-disruptive and will not limit the workflow of existing core capabilities

2

Standard and customizable enough to support financial operations across all Wings

Methodology

From the objectives, I decided to do three small-scale research initiatives:

Customer Support Analysis: to understand pain points from support tickets from users

User Interviews: to uncover the current claims process and existing challenges

Usability testing: to ensure both aircrew and financial administrators can use the tool in their daily route

Conducting Research

Remote Research

I first interviewed two financial administrators and two aircrew members to understand their respective pain points and goals. From this, I mapped out their current user workflow, highlighting areas of friction and what could be improved.

In Person Research

I travelled to the Greenwood Airbase with my team for a week and meet with users in person, as well as observe how they use Dispatch as part of their daily routine flying planes. Each day, the designer and developers would add a new feature, and then I would conduct usability and concept tests with the RCAF members to ensure the designs were meeting all their needs. I asked the following questions:

Can you walk me through how you would submit a claim?
Can you show me how you would find which claims need to be signed?
What do you like about the paper process that is missing from this version in Dispatch?

My team and I at the Greenwood air base!

Outcome

To validate the decisions that were made during the design, the development team created an internal dashboard of KPIs including claim cycle time, the number of claims finalized, and the claim-to-flight ratio. After about three weeks, over 70 total claims were finalized from 14 Wing Greenwood, with the cycle time from initialization to finalization being about 10 days. Insights from the interviews told me that the paper process would typically take 1-2 months, so this was an improvement.

This project also uncovered the need for additional research into other Wings around Canada. From the interviews, I discovered that 8 Wing supports different types of squadrons than 14 Wing, meaning they require different claims that the MVP can’t support.

Reflection and Learnings

Building for user experience, rather than revenue or engagement: Since I was building an internal tool for the Canadian Air Force, typical KPI's like revenue and user engagement were not a factor due to the hierarchical nature of the military. This allowed me to really focus on the experience of our solution, and really ensure it meets all of the users' needs rather than try to convince users to use something to increase a business's own revenue.

Working in an industry with heavy regulations and processes: Getting used to the processes of the air force was definitely a learning curve, and trying to introduce new technology and processes was an added challenged that I took head on. I learned a lot about managing stakeholders that have limited technical experience and proving to them that "just because something works, doesn't mean it's the best solution". Many of the regulations and processes in place in the air force were outdated, causing some limitations, but also let me uniquely problem solve how to meet these standards through a digital application.

Adapting to a niche user base: Having no relations to the air force or military, there were a lot of things I had to learn to speak the language of the users, from acronyms to terminology to ranks. This helped a lot very speaking with stakeholders and especially when doing in-person interviews to really understand their pain points and their experience. Learning about the rank order and the hierarchy of the air force was very eye-opening, since it directly impacts how users interact with products and each other. Getting a squadron commander on board means the entire squadron below them will follow orders to use the product.

Digitalizing a Paper Claims Process