User Persona Development
Created the persona of 'Jeff' to show how making invoices more efficient would save the company $4.6+ million
About this Project
When: August 2021 (Team of four)
* Some information withheld to comply with NDA
ACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE REPRESENTATIVE
Jeff Cho, User Persona
Daily Activities
Contacting customers
Creating invoices
Printing & sending invoices
Goals
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Create streamlined work process
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Have more opportunities to explore areas of innovation within his workplace
Jeff is still considered new to the company despite officially being employed there for three months. He's known for being extremely friendly and loves making new friends across departments.
Pain Points
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Tired of repeating the same daily activity
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Doesn't want to under/ over collect
Motivations
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Wants his coworker and his workload to be lighter
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Would like to make a good impression on his higher ups
A healthcare company's finance department wanted to avoid over/under collection from third-party payers and establish a pathway to resolve current accounts. The goals were to:
ELIMINATE OPEN CREDIT BALANCES
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Why do the balances take so long to resolve?
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What is the best way to resolve the balances?
UNCOVER ROOT CAUSES OF CREDIT BALANCES
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Why do the credit balances continue to come in?
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What is primarily responsible?
UNDERSTAND INFLUENCES OF CONTRACT JARGON
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How can we both serve the hospital and the insurance companies who work for them?
Initiation Phase
Discovering the baseline and the effecting factors
My team and I began by analyzing the 168,564 open credit balances the healthcare company was
working to resolve.
The goal was to pinpoint which insurance companies caused the most open balances. To accomplish this, we found the top insurance companies that both held the majority of open accounts and compared the amount to the total cash value the insurance company owed to the healthcare company.
Once the most frequent and expensive insurance companies were identified, next their contracts with the healthcare company were reviewed for possible solutions.
However, we found ourselves running into unclear 'contract jargon' that would lead us to calling the insurance companies directly for answers.
We needed the contract jargon to be precise and definable to create a baseline of how far off or on track the company was in resolving accounts in accordance to the standards of the contracts they signed.
We utilized a questionnaire each time we called a different insurance company to gather baseline information that we referred to as our contract matrix.
Using the answers from the questionnaires we concluded our data analysis and focused on which insurance companies would be best to resolve first and so on. To initiate the process of the accounts receivable team resolving these accounts, we created process maps of how the specific insurance companies they expected the account to be cleared.
After interviewing with some accounts receivable representatives, we were able to make our process maps more specific to their work routine and finalized the most optimal process to resolve accounts.
All that remained was sharing our data driven findings in a manner that would inspire the accounts receivable representatives to switch over to the new working method.
Inspiring Change
To inspire change in employee processes in a data centric company, I created Jeff, an employee of the company, to translate our story in a creative approach.
Jeff Cho's Journey
Who is Jeff? He is the new go getter within the team who wants to bring solutions.
Mindset: Jeff has a set amount of time in a day, and the increasing invoices are hard to manage. He wants to make a greater impact in less time during the workday. Jeff begins by analyzing at the data.
Jeff identifies the top 10 insurance companies that create balances and explains why this occurs.
He inquires about preferred resolution processes by calling each company directly to create a contract matrix for further
data analysis.
Jeff then shadows his fellow employees and maps out how they resolved their accounts to create a streamlined process.
Results
Jeff not only reduced the number of accounts currently held, but also coming in reducing the employee's workload by a total of 156,122 invoices with a value of $4.6 million.
PRESENTED FINDINGS IN AN ENGAGING MANNER
The success of the project did not ride only on how solid our analysis was, but also whether the accounts receivable team would accept the new process. Jeff's journey helped the employees relate to our project and they were excited by our creative approach.
STREAMLINED OPEN BALANCE RESOLUTION
The created contract matrix allows for easy identification of the accounts that will take the least amount of time and effort to resolve, quickly reducing the amount of open balances.
CREATED PROCESS MAPS
The process maps I designed were based on contract language, the insurance company, and the healthcare company's representatives current workflow which helped show the context of Jeff's journey.