Can Your Software Do The Work For You?

Work Management is a collection of tools and processes designed to extend the flexibility and efficiency of the Tropics systems beyond the well-known user configuration or table-driven controls. Through Work Management, many tasks which are traditionally completed by a user can be automated to be performed by the system.

As one of the most impressive and integral parts of Tropics, Work Management provides the following features:

• Dynamic team creation and assignment
• Automatic task (work item) assignment and scheduling based on a user-defined workflow logic
• Automatic completion of work items
• Automatic creation of documents, forms, and emails
• Evaluation (screening and scoring) of applications or renewals based on user-defined scoring guidelines
• Batch examination of applications, policies or claims based on user-defined rules.
• Automatic cancellation of work items based on user-defined rules

Work Management Team

The team definition and team management tool allows teams to be created by defining the team purpose, creating roles, and assigning users to the roles. Roles are defined by the clients to match their organizational structure and offer flexible assignment of users to those roles on teams.

Tropics is designed to use a "best match" methodology to assign applications, policies, or claims to teams by precisely matching the characteristics of those entities to the characteristics of each team. Clients create teams and attributes and then assign attributes to each team. Within teams, roles which are fulfilled by multiple users can also have their own attributes which allows for automated task assignment to the user best suited for the task.

Work Management Tree

The Work Management Tree is a user-defined road map consisting of a series of logically organized and cascaded actions and decisions. A robust user-interface allows a client to create and manage sophisticated workflow logic which enables the client to lead the system through a number of decisions ending with desired actions. An action can represent any number of activities such as creation of a work item (diary) for a team member, creation of a document or email, execution of a function, etc.

Each Work Management Tree starts with a "root" action (such as "claims has been updated") and cascades down to branches and sub-branches representing decision points and actions. The tree provides a simple visual of an intricate logic.

Work Management Items (Work Item or Diary)

A Work Management Action represents one of the following activities:

• Creating a work item for a team member (role) - Adding a work items in the workload of a team member based on the prevailing logic. Actions which are defined as "recurring" with a pre-determined cycle are re-scheduled automatically after completion.
• Executing a function - Executing a pre-defined process such as zeroing out the remaining reserves on a claim upon closing it or enrolling an application during nightly processing.
• Creating a document or Form - Interfacing and using the Tropics Document Management system. This type of action can automatically create a document or a form.
• Creating an email - Interfacing with The Tropics Email Notification system, an email with automatic data fill may be created.

High priority Work Management items may be set up to generate an immediate notice to the assigned user.

Application and Renewal Screening and Scoring

Another powerful feature of the Work Management system is the ability to set up application and renewal screening and scoring logic. By combining the Work Management tree logic and scoring capability on information such loss ratio, industry hazard, experience mod, etc. Tropics has created a very powerful tool for evaluating an application or renewal based on a series of client-defined rules that may include tiered scoring that allows for scoring based on numeric ranges.

Upon evaluation, the system creates and stores a score sheet with detailed scoring results. The system can also be set up to automatically classify an application/renewal as "Automatic Issue", "Reject", or "Requiring Further Review".

Through this flexible mechanism, applications or renewals which pass the screening step can automatically be processed for issuing and creating the policy forms.

Batch Examination

Through a work management "root action" named "Examine", clients can set up a logical path in the tree to examine claims, reinsurance, applications, or renewals in batch and create or complete the necessary Work Management tasks.

This powerful feature allows a company to run the examine function to identify any discrepancies or exceptions. It will also automatically generate alerts and work items for the designated staff.