Reliant General Improves Efficiency and Profitability with Visual Process Management

SOURCE: Reliant General

Reliant General, one of Southern California’s premier insurance wholesalers, distributes its products around the state through an increasing network of more than 1,800 independent brokers. With many daily transactions, the company’s success relies on well-documented processes.

The Need for Documentation

The “key employee” problem is a common challenge faced by organizations of every size. A key employee is one who has exclusive knowledge over a vital area of the normal businesses operations. Because this employee has exclusive knowledge, no one can easily fill in to perform the position’s processes if the key employee is unavailable.

The key employee problem arose for Reliant General when themanager of the accounting department went on an extended vacation. Before leaving, she outlined and documented her processes for her assistant. However, the directions were not complete and thorough enough to follow, leading to a swarm of accounting issues.

To ensure an issue like that wouldn’t arise again, Reliant decided to do a complete inventory of its company’s processes and update the documentation in a consistent way.

The Visual Process Management Solution

Reliant chose to implement SmartDraw Software’s Visual Process Management (VPM) solution, rather than traditional process documentation. VPM is an entirely new way of capturing and storing information, using visuals instead of text.

A VPM collection is a hyperlinked network of flowcharts, org charts, and “job maps” that organizes process information hierarchically. Using SmartDraw, users can browse the complete VPM collection like a website. Traditional documentation usually consists of binders and folders, but a VPM collection is completely digital. It’s stored on a server that everyone in the company can easily access and view, and users with sufficient rights can instantly make changes as needed.

One of the greatest benefits of VPM is its live capture of information—an improvement and advancement from traditional methods. VPM facilitators are able to interview each employee and document processes in real time in a single pass using SmartDraw, which makes for an easy and fast documentation process. Reliant’s processes took only six weeks to capture, which included more than 450 flowcharts. In fact, the VPM interview process was described as “fun” by members of Reliant’s management.

After documenting their processes, Reliant was able to use the VPM collection to show auditors their underwriting and claims procedures. The VPM made auditing a simple operation, instead of having to reference and update their old documentation like before.

“With the SmartDraw VPM collection, I can simply categorize what areas they’re auditing, whether it’s the Accounting or Underwriting Departments, and I’m able to give that to them in electronic format and they can easily click the links that are provided and that makes it really easy,” said Rebecca Abello, Underwriting Manager. “The feedback I got from the auditor was that this is probably one of the easiest audits they’ve ever had to do and probably the quickest because of the fact that we had the processes documented visually.”

Because visuals are so effective at communicating information, Reliant’s auditing process was seamless and simple. “I was able to see a process in one page or two pages” said Abello. “In the past it would be six to eight documents . . . it would just take me forever to go through a procedure when now I can just look in one to two sheets and I know exactly what I need to do.”

Since their documentation is visual and stored digitally, Reliant is able to easily train members of its team in the case that a key employee is out of the office.

The Advantages of Live Documentation

A variety of benefits are seen daily from the electronic nature of the VPM collection, where it is accessible to all Reliant employees.

Visibility and Proactive Process Improvement

The greatest benefit of the VPM collection is complete process visibility. Processes are easily viewable and actually used by employees due to the way the documentation is organized. In fact, the VPM collection initiated a change in company culture in regards to process. Rather than updating documentation to train a new employee or for auditing purposes, Reliant developed a proactive attitude towards process documentation.

“With a proactive tool like SmartDraw, people are much more aggressive in pursuing process improvement,” said Dana Dodds, Reliant’s CEO. “Because they document the procedure in SmartDraw they can show the process improvement and we can measure that. So as a result, it’s becoming less of a default activity and more of a proactive activity to show how well they’re completing the task they’re assigned to do.”

Providing Process Context and the ‘Big Picture’

The easily-accessible and comprehensive documentation provides context for Reliant’s numerous processes. Because of this, Reliant employees gained a greater understanding of their roles and responsibilities, know how their job fits into the company’s overall operations, and dramatically sped up the training process. As a result, Reliant employees became more process-focused and more engaged in their work.

“If employees were wondering what happens after they finish a process and it goes to the next department and what happens with that document, they’re able to visually see exactly where it goes and why it went where it went and get a bigger picture of our overall organization and how it works,” Abello said.

Eighty Percent Reduction in Training Time

Reliant has been able to train new employees faster and more effectively with the VPM collection. The VPM collection assigns each process to a position in the company that manages the process and a position that executes it. All the processes are listed in a special index file called a “job map,” which contains a link to each of the processes associated with that position. This decreases training time because job responsibilities and tasks are easily located, and the processes for a specific position can be viewed and contextualized.

“It’s challenging to get new people up to speed quickly,” said David Sarnowski, Vice President of Marketing and Operations. “To be able to show people visually how processes work and how they fit together makes an amazing difference and has really shortened our training curve.”

“Normally, it would take anywhere from three days to at least a week to get them up and running,” added Abello. “With VPM we were able to literally show them within a day everything that they would see within our organization and how what they do affects the other departments.”

SmartDraw’s VPM solution not only reduced training time for Reliant, but also satisfied audit requirements and exceeded auditor expectations. It has also impressed prospective clients and solved Reliant’s “key employee” problem. Perhaps the greatest benefit of the VPM solution is that it has empowered all employees to proactively improve their processes so they can continue to refine and optimize their business.

“I would tell anybody interested in improving their business processes, written procedures, and ensuring that they have adequate backup for areas that they may not do regularly, that they need this product because for me this product has made my job as a manager easier,” said Abello.