Streamlined legal operations are non-negotiable at insurance carriers, especially in the current landscape where litigation is increasingly complex and costly. Many insurance companies have even experienced layoffs in the last year, which emphasizes the importance of controlling costs for both claims and legal departments in the insurance industry.
During times of increased financial pressure, it becomes particularly critical to carefully manage the billing from outside counsel firms. Fortunately, adopting a new and better approach to spend management using core e-billing tools along with technologies such as AI and machine learning (ML) can help insurance companies respond successfully to economic challenges and remain competitive.
Traditional spend management
Change can be hard. That helps explain why some companies are still wedded to older spend management technologies and policies—even if they’re no longer as effective as they need to be. For example, while traditional e-billing technology has many benefits, some solutions struggle to handle increasingly complex or non-standardized billing guidelines. The result: spend leakage that can adversely impact the bottom line.
In addition, some law firms continue to use paper invoices when billing. While paper invoices tend to represent a small portion of overall spend, they prevent claims and legal departments from gaining complete visibility into how much they are spending. Additionally, processing these invoices is highly inefficient and prevents staff from focusing on higher-value tasks.
Complete invoice data is also a precursor to the use of advanced analytics. To weather economic storms, companies must be able to crunch numbers quickly and easily to make determinations about their performance. Industry benchmarks and internal data must be accessible in an intuitive, secure manner to ensure all decisions around legal spend are data-driven.
The best technology for the job
To improve legal operations and, in turn, economic resilience, insurance companies should take a holistic and balanced approach that we call total spend management. Total spend management entails combining core e-billing tools with innovative technologies and services that utilize AI.
Some of the essential tenets of total spend management include:
- AI-driven bill review that can quickly flag violations of billing guidelines, maximizing cost control
- AI-powered conversion of paper invoices to the industry standard LEDES format, which supports complete spend transparency
- Advanced analytics that support benchmarking and data-driven decision-making
Altogether, these technologies offer a way to control costs that is far more sustainable than reactionary rate freezes. AI-powered bill review, for example, has been shown to improve billing compliance by 20% and increase cost savings by 10%. That’s a significant improvement, particularly in the current environment.
Get started today
To fully detail the challenges with traditional spend management and the benefits of a more holistic approach, we have published an eBook titled A better approach to spend management for the insurance industry.
This eBook provides:
- A deeper understanding of the challenges currently facing insurance companies
- A breakdown of the solutions that power total spend management
- Tips on how to determine which capabilities are right for you
Every penny counts. Insurance claims and legal departments simply cannot afford to leave money on the table. Powerful e-billing tools combined with AI and ML have the potential to significantly increase cost savings, improve economic efficiency, increase billing guideline compliance, and enhance overall resilience. They also offer a complete view into the entirety of the company’s legal expenditures, including the impact those expenditures have on legal outcomes and business objectives.
To learn more, download the eBook now.
