Examples of Our Results
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Project Management – Case Study #1
- A federal agency required massive amounts of accounting data to perform its mission on behalf of the citizens it serves. The agency worked with multiple contractors, all of whom had their own general ledger systems. Complicating matters was that the overall system had been designed to accommodate only a certain amount of transaction numbers, all of which were expected to be exhausted within the next several years.
Our customer decided that deploying a single general ledger system would achieve economies through standardization, create sufficient headroom, and provide more insight into all aspects of operations. They mandated that all the contractors migrate to the new system on a very tight timetable.
Beyond the time and scope pressures, the project involved extraordinary complexity. In addition to all the internal staff and subcontractors located throughout the U.S., it required the cooperation of the company that was maintaining the legacy system, as well as two massive IT vendors. After preliminary efforts for one of the major contractors stumbled due in large part to poor communication, we were brought in to turn that part of the project around and manage its completion. Contract issues between the contractor and one of the IT vendors consumed six weeks of the original timetable, compounding the inherent risk.
- A federal agency required massive amounts of accounting data to perform its mission on behalf of the citizens it serves. The agency worked with multiple contractors, all of whom had their own general ledger systems. Complicating matters was that the overall system had been designed to accommodate only a certain amount of transaction numbers, all of which were expected to be exhausted within the next several years.
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Project Turnaround – Case Study #2
- The Client Need: Integrating the infrastructure for separate health insurance companies into a single entity.
Divisions of five companies that had been handling processing for a federal government contractor were merged to form a single entity. Each of those divisions had its own infrastructure for processing, as well as its own applications that were integrated with those of the legacy parent companies, making it impossible to share the data and operations that would allow the merger to attain the desired economies.
An internal team was given the assignment to decouple all five divisions’ systems from the legacy parent companies and integrate them into a single, consistent environment. Those systems included hardware and other technology, applications, extensive data, security components, and all of the associated infrastructure. Understandably, the effort was a top-three strategic project for the company, and success was critical to continued operation.
After nearly six months, management recognized that the project was not progressing at a rate that would allow for completion in the desired time frame. They brought is in to restructure, reorganize, and restart the effort, with a goal of completion in 15 months. Almost immediately, changing priorities within the company trimmed 90 days from that timeline.
- The Client Need: Integrating the infrastructure for separate health insurance companies into a single entity.
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Project Management – Case Study #3
- The Client Need: Establish an internal environment and process where successful project management can occur.
Insurance companies have a reputation for being so methodical and well-organized that we tend to think of them as staid. But life in the IT department of this carrier was a helter-skelter of conflicting demands, limited resources, and projects that failed to fulfill objectives, deadlines, budgets, or all three. High-priority strategic initiatives for management fell into the chaos and fought with less-critical needs for attention and resources. Staff members struggled to communicate with one another, and rarely had ready answers for executive questions.
At management’s request, we studied the department to identify the flaws and develop practical strategies for improvement. It was clear that the project management and software development processes were unstructured and inadequate, which was compounded by a lack of project management experience on the part of the staff. Without a sound framework, there were significant inconsistencies between projects. Additionally, projects were pursued independently, without much thought given to their interrelationship with other projects that were underway.
- The Client Need: Establish an internal environment and process where successful project management can occur.
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Project Turnaround – Case Study #4
- The Client Need: Restart a failing health insurance carrier’s high-priority project.
To centralize, protect, and streamline data on its policyholders, a health insurance company decided to develop a state-of-the-art data center from the ground up. The multi-million-dollar project was critical to the company’s operations and integral to minimizing liability exposures. Multiple call centers would rely upon information stored in the data center to handle customer questions and issues quickly and accurately.
Management determined delivery dates and began to plan around the expectation that the center would be in operation by those dates. However, the project lacked real schedule dates and a clearly understood scope. In addition, while the executive team recognized the importance of the call center, there was not a real sponsor within the company.
The project began in an ad hoc manner, and started stumbling almost immediately. Communication was poor, and leadership was not well-defined. As management watched the project team struggle, they realized it was likely that the delivery dates would be missed.
We were brought in to get the project back on track, and our first step was to apply a proprietary assessment model that helped us determine the current state of the project, what would be required to get it moving forward efficiently, and realistic expectations for delivery. After presenting a summary of our assessment, we developed an aggressive plan for completing the project, and presented it to the insurer’s CIO to ensure that we had executive-level support.
With that support, we created new baselines for the project and developed realistic schedules for each step. We placed an emphasis on improved communication, and established a structure to facilitate sharing of information across the team and to executives. We tracked the plan through every step, right to completion and closure.
In the end, the project was completed on time and under budget. The data center went into use immediately, operated as designed through testing and rollout, and continued to serve as the company’s backbone years later.
- The Client Need: Restart a failing health insurance carrier’s high-priority project.
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Project Management – Case Study #5
- The Client Need: Improve their CMMI level to allow bidding on more government projects.
As potential government clients become more selective about who should handle major IT projects, a contractor recognized that it was missing out on opportunities. Specifically, prospective clients were expecting contractors to attain at least a CMMI Level 2 rating before they would even consider doing business with them.
Well aware of its own lack of expertise with the CMMI process, the unrated contractor turned to an outside consulting firm to help it reach the desired level. But as they stumbled through the process, the contractor realized that the consultant lacked the experience and understanding to drive the effort to a successful completion. “It seemed like the firm was only a chapter ahead of us in the manual,” the contractor’s lead recalled.
- The Client Need: Improve their CMMI level to allow bidding on more government projects.
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Project Assurance – Case Study #6
- The Client Need: Develop and implement the contractor’s first system for EVM compliance.
A popular view holds that large federal government contracts are black holes of waste and inefficiency into which huge sums of money are poured with little accountability. Anyone who has ever managed a large federal contract knows better – and recognizes that the level of accountability increases with the size of the contract. Once a contract reaches a $25 million per year threshold, government rules call for an Earned Value Management (EVM) process to track scope, schedule and cost, allowing the government to determine how much value has been earned through the work at a particular time.
This technology project involved a contractor whose roughly 3,000 employees had extensive experience with federal projects. However, it was their first project that required earned value. They knew they needed to implement EVM across the organization, but weren’t sure how to do it. The approach was also new to the federal agency.
- The Client Need: Develop and implement the contractor’s first system for EVM compliance.
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Contact Center – Case Study #7
- A national not-for-profit entity had been doing business the same way since its inception in the 1950′s. The mission of the organization is to provide books and classroom materials for customers located throughout the world.Unfortunately, the not-for-profit struggled with selling their materials to a customer base that had moved beyond ordering books through catalogs. Sales orders, and customers were significantly declining and the not-for-profit was near to closing its doors.
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Contact Center Optimization & Training – Case Study #8
- HighPoint currently supports the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) call centers for Medicare beneficiaries and other consumers needing assistance with their federally sponsored health care. Through consistent quality monitoring, effective learning programs, dynamic scripting, and strict adherence to key project management principles, HighPoint vastly improved their call centers’ performance, resulting in customer satisfaction scores at or above 95%.
HighPoint achieved this peak performance and exceeded client expectations by establishing a common framework to support both the Affordable Care Act and Medicare. This common framework has led to improved and developed training and processes to reduce silos and improve efficiency and customer satisfaction.
HighPoint used performance-based data and analysis to drive results for CMS. We optimized the 20,000-person contact centers with quality-assurance practices that have improved training, script development, and related processes. We enhance these results using ongoing quality assurance analysis.
To contact Medicare, please go here for more specific contact information. For information about the availability of auxiliary aids and services pertaining to products produced by HighPoint Global, LLC in support of Medicare, please visit: http://www.medicare.gov/about-us/nondiscrimination/nondiscrimination-notice.html.
- HighPoint currently supports the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) call centers for Medicare beneficiaries and other consumers needing assistance with their federally sponsored health care. Through consistent quality monitoring, effective learning programs, dynamic scripting, and strict adherence to key project management principles, HighPoint vastly improved their call centers’ performance, resulting in customer satisfaction scores at or above 95%.
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World-Class Learning Systems, Delivery and Management – Case Study #9
- A growing federal agency needed content and training developed for a launch of a significant new consumer-facing program and turned to HighPoint’s expertise to complete the task. Using our expertise in the design and development of adult learning programs, we created flexible instructor-led training and interactive eLearning products that fit into a larger performance improvement strategy. This modular, blended solution includes collaborative learning and knowledge management. We rapidly deployed and updated the training to meet the customer service representatives’ changing needs. Our curriculum aligned with the industry standards in the analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation (ADDIE) instructional design methodology for optimal learning.
Our training materials accommodate a diverse spectrum of learning types and skill levels. HighPoint’s wide variety of e-learning training programs include everything from traditional, instructor-led free standing programs to web based and interactive simulations that fit into a larger performance improvement strategy that includes collaborative learning and knowledge management.
Our focus on performance management style training has decreased training time by 50% through accelerated learning that has reduced cost by reducing new employee orientation from 10 days to 5 days. In addition, our robust quality assurance processes ensure continuous process improvement in the delivery of our training programs and helps to identify emerging call center trends. For this agency, our teams have developed over 1,200 training products in fewer than 15 months.
- A growing federal agency needed content and training developed for a launch of a significant new consumer-facing program and turned to HighPoint’s expertise to complete the task. Using our expertise in the design and development of adult learning programs, we created flexible instructor-led training and interactive eLearning products that fit into a larger performance improvement strategy. This modular, blended solution includes collaborative learning and knowledge management. We rapidly deployed and updated the training to meet the customer service representatives’ changing needs. Our curriculum aligned with the industry standards in the analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation (ADDIE) instructional design methodology for optimal learning.
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Quality Assurance Services – Case Study #10
- Following the adoption of the Affordable Care Act, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) selected HighPoint to support the consumer-facing contact center in assisting citizens in the health care enrollment process. When the ACA website began to experience issues, CMS turned to HighPoint to assist with enrollment through existing call center operations. With our proven quality assurance methodologies and analysis, we developed programs that facilitated the enrollment process, enabling millions of Americans to successfully enroll in healthcare through the call center.
Our quality assurance (QA) methodology includes recording all audio and electronic interactions between agents and clients and analyzing customer satisfaction, including both outcomes and behaviors. We use that information to assist with script and content developments, resulting in improved agent education to serve the customer. We verify success through stringent, innovative quality assurance services that study both outcomes and behaviors. We capture all audio and electronic contacts and use sophisticated contact monitoring and analytical tools to scrutinize interactions between agents and customers. For example, our speech-to-text analytics can track occurrences of words and topics to identify trends. We continually apply quality assurance methods to the center that have revamped processes, operating procedures and training to improve the customer experience and improved Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) scores by 11% in the first 7 months of operations.
- Following the adoption of the Affordable Care Act, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) selected HighPoint to support the consumer-facing contact center in assisting citizens in the health care enrollment process. When the ACA website began to experience issues, CMS turned to HighPoint to assist with enrollment through existing call center operations. With our proven quality assurance methodologies and analysis, we developed programs that facilitated the enrollment process, enabling millions of Americans to successfully enroll in healthcare through the call center.
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IT Infrastructure Support and Managed Services Integration – Case Study #11
- A high-profile federal client recently turned to HighPoint to help them transition their mission-critical business systems from an underperforming vendor. They needed to completely revise the business and IT processes that supported their program and required HighPoint start operations within 5 months. We successfully integrated the client into the new environment in fewer than 3 months; 2 months before the statement of work demanded.
Our services included commercial off-the-shelf software selection (including requirements analysis) and customization, operation and maintenance of IT equipment, server operations (installation, updates, and patches) of cloud solutions, and data center operations. The HighPoint team developed and implemented a full system development life cycle process that resulted in improved configuration management and change management within the environment.
Our data centers for government clients are federally accredited and FISMA audit-approved to ensure the highest level of security. Our call centers have successfully implemented our technology tools for learning management, call recording and monitoring, and social media monitoring.
- A high-profile federal client recently turned to HighPoint to help them transition their mission-critical business systems from an underperforming vendor. They needed to completely revise the business and IT processes that supported their program and required HighPoint start operations within 5 months. We successfully integrated the client into the new environment in fewer than 3 months; 2 months before the statement of work demanded.
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Social Media Monitoring – Case Study #12
- HighPoint has deployed a social media monitoring solution that identifies and analyzes online activity about consumer interactions with customer contact centers. The tool monitors and analyzes all conversations across multiple digital channels from social media to websites to traditional news media. Social media is a game changing phenomenon that has the potential to engage communities and drive public opinion.
The HighPoint solution provides our customers with an aggregated “listening” platform to monitor focused queries of their brand and services. The tool scans blog posts, viral videos, forum reviews, Facebook, photos, Twitter updates, issues and more. The challenge we face in today’s world is that biased/unbiased facts, passionate opinions and feelings are continuously posted on social media at the speed of light and often with immediate and viral impacts. Visibility into this river of information is critical to the analysis of trends and establishment of insight into what our client’s constituents want and need in real-time. This provides our clients with the information they need to evaluate public reaction to campaigns and understand what content is connecting with their constituency.
HighPoint’s solution measures consumer sentiment and assembles into a digestible format that facilitates quick determination of the actionable intelligence. This allows our clients to get ahead of issues and resolve them before they become problems and hit the front page of the newspaper – everybody wins. Our proactive problem identification methods and insights lead to improvements in the client’s programs and processes. The benefits of monitoring and response includes improvements in crisis management and public relations and improved engagement of consumers with government services that results in improved public opinion. The most direct impact of engaging in social media monitoring is to immediately respond to trends that can improve customer satisfaction for the citizens served.
With one government client, we have successfully identified trends across social media, then brought the issues to our customer’s attention in near real time. We then partner on providing solutions to quickly resolve issues before they become problems on the high profile program that effects millions of citizens across the country. We have also been successful in providing insights that led to proactive improvements in training, content, process and agent skills to improve the customer experience for constituents.
- HighPoint has deployed a social media monitoring solution that identifies and analyzes online activity about consumer interactions with customer contact centers. The tool monitors and analyzes all conversations across multiple digital channels from social media to websites to traditional news media. Social media is a game changing phenomenon that has the potential to engage communities and drive public opinion.
