Global Health Services Company Modernises Data and Applications with Microsoft

Manual processes and lack of integration were causing operational inefficiencies 

Looking closely at their processes, the company identified inefficiencies in its two-part process for managing rebates. The first part of the process consisted of the accruals team capturing and tracking the precise dollar amounts involved. The second part of the process involved the disbursement team approving and sending out the correct payments to the right recipients. 

In the two-part process for managing rebates, there were several challenges uncovered, which included

• Manual and disjointed processes that required a significant time investment from human resources on both the accrual and disbursement teams to get each rebate payment processed.
• Lack of integration forced team members to spend a lot of time manually pulling data from various disparate systems. These disparate tools such as Excel, Access and Netezza were used to manipulate the data, which required numerous manual steps and lacked integration and potentially created holes in the flow of information.
• Delayed approval processes with reports being circulated via email threads to get needed approvals. A process which introduced back-and-forth email communication, often causing delays and making it easy for conversations, feedback or file attachments to get lost in inboxes.
• Operational inefficiencies were causing employees to be bogged down with manual processes, email chains and manually manipulating Excel spreadsheets and relying complex formulas.

Organisational shift toward the cloud

As the company looked to modernise their operations, it became clear that a company-wide transformation effort was needed. Ultimately, the goal was to move its data into the cloud and transition to centralised processes. During the planning and discovery process, it was evident that some of the data the accrual and disbursement teams used would need to be migrated to Azure-based sources, spurring the need for changes in their process.

That observation manifested into an opportunity to modernise the highly manual rebate process as part of the organisational shift toward the cloud. The company expected that moving to the cloud would give them more processing speed and reliability than they could achieve on-premises.

The company opted to partner with Protiviti to implement Microsoft solutions to modernise their end-to-end rebate process to make it more efficient, streamlined, and timely for both their employees, prescription drug manufacturers and insurance plan clients.

Modernising the data and environment with Azure Synapse, Azure, Power Apps:

The accrual and disbursement teams met with Protiviti to document the current processes in use. Defining those processes relied on querying individual employees gathering information that became the foundation to design a solution to remove the bulk of the manual work from both teams.

Working closely with the client, Protiviti was able to build a custom Microsoft solution that would meet the needs of both the accrual and disbursement teams. Leveraging Microsoft Power BI, Azure Synapse, Azure Data Lake, Azure Data Factory and the Power Platform, this solution automated and modernised their data and reporting processes while also allowing teams to provide comments and feedback on their reports as a part of the newly automated approval process.

Now, this global health services organisation has a modernised, end-to-end process, from accrual to disbursement, streamlined into a singular cloud solution. This reduces the human hours required for data gathering, manipulating, and reporting. It also automates the workflow, reducing the risk of files being lost, delays in the timeline and communication breakdowns.

Modernisation leads to processing patient rebates smoothly and efficiently

The organisation has achieved operational efficiency on both sides of the rebate equation using the modernised applications built on Microsoft Azure. The benefits include:

• Improved the reliability and consistency of data used for accruals and tracking finances
• Automated the workflow for accruals and disbursement, freeing up the time of roughly 50 team members to spend on more impactful aspects of their roles
• Decreased the processing time for disbursing payments
• Elevated the internal employee user experience
• Better data governance processes as data does not need to leave the systems and be scattered on manual email threaded processes

The global health services organisation knows that to act as a reliable source of guidance for their patients and foster a seamless experience, they must continue to hold their internal processes to the same standard of convenience, efficiency, and reliability. Thanks to the power of these modernised Microsoft applications, the company’s patients can depend on this business adhering to their promise to help them get the services they need when they need it.