Not long ago, I spoke with Keith Higdon, a Senior Operations Executive who specializes in optimizing top and bottom line margins, about one of his biggest challenges.
Keith said, “Recently, I worked with a company in business for 65+ years whose pricing was stagnant. The division I was asked to help had $400 M annual revenue and 1800 employees. Their competitors acknowledged that the company was a solid claim-handling firm, but without otherwise distinguishing differences.”
I asked Keith how he approached the problem and he said, “I looked at the current revenue through existing clients and developing new clients. I first focused on existing clients by having the account management team review of all renewals for the upcoming year. The review consisted of all financial data [revenue, rate increases, margin, and payment terms], service levels [claim outcomes, client feedback, audit scores, and turnover levels] and client’s market conditions [company outlook]. I reviewed with the team the current “package” offering and developed a strategy for available opportunities. Viewing each client as its own portfolio brought to the surface specific challenges and insights needed to rethink the current package.
I asked Keith about his approach and he mentioned an interesting variation that he explained. “OSHA record keeping is all about accurate data. I targeted OSHA incident recording, Ohio State Fund oversight, and analytics. In support of OSHA efforts, part of our service offering was to provide software that facility the process for companies, but I knew there was another level of service to be offered. To ensure accurate data and further take the burden off a client, I developed and implemented an oversight product offering with an added oversite enhancement. This approach offered clients accurate logs and allows them to align the service to meet their resource needs/gaps. Our clients could choose an administrative approach that verified the accuracy of the data or an enhanced version that provided an expert review of the file to refine determination decisions. The second area I chose to target filled a hole in the current service offering. I found a partner that we could utilize for this service.
“The third area is a passion of mine… analytics. I spent approximately half of my career in the data warehousing, business intelligence and predictive modeling space. I have known for years that there is a void in analytics that needed to be filled. I also recognized that unlike my counterparts, I had a more conducive structure to supplement what others could offer. As part of our current predictive modeling program, I developed a parallel path for consulting offerings that focused on analytics. These offerings go beyond the claims data to include other sources of information such as HR, production, loss control, exposure, etc. to round out the view into the dependencies of claims across the event characteristics, claimant demographics and work environment.
“I created a set of interconnected initiatives that overhauled the sales team, created more market presence, refined our story, and changed our sales and marketing approach. Last, I started a program of simplification – response to proposals, pricing documentation, and presentations. This led to quicker and better responses to client requirements and our ability to address client needs. Finally, I introduced a new tag line… Design, Integrate and Achieve.”
Keith achieved a 12.5% boost in new opportunity closing percentages representing $30 Million in revenue.
If you would like Keith to share some of his creative solutions with you, he would be glad to speak to you.
Contact Keith via LinkedIn or his Career Webfolio.
Watch entire Video Interview below.
Fred Coon, CEO
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