2021 was a year of learning, making adjustments and flexibility. While we saw many employers open up and allow us to serve them at the worksite (with many precautions), we were able to service our employer groups and their employees through in-person, virtual video, call center and online means. We were able to meet their needs with their level of comfort and direction.
Our digital marketing presence continued to be the preferred marketing means for pre-enrollment communication in 2021. Our organization went through a PRIME program, allowing us to further align our Customer touchpoints. Our contact center (calls, email, chat), claims area and business transformation team (software quality, technology project teams, business improvement team, data team) were integrated into our Customer Experience and Revenue Support (CERS) division to create a broader and unified division. This has allowed us to have greater overall control of our Customer experience, brand and collaboration efforts.
We also focused on succession planning in 2021. Our PRIME program challenged us to put next-level leaders in high-impact positions to prepare them for assuming larger roles over the next five to ten years. With all of this planning and change, we were also able to work on the following key projects and issues.
In IT, our mission is to provide technology to make it easy for our Customers to do business with us. This past year brought new challenges; however, our world-class IT team took it all in stride. We, along with the technology industry as a whole, faced increasing cyber threats, labor shortages, supply chain issues and so much more. Our committed IT teams rose to every challenge, as they always do, and accomplished numerous achievements to make improvements for our Customers and set the stage for further innovations.
2021 Accomplishments
In 2021, our technology and automations helped us launch new products, modernize our Hospital Indemnity and Cancer claims adjudication process and add physician expenses to our AFQuickClaims system. We rolled out additional self-service options both internally and externally to make it easier to get the information needed. This past year we continued making improvements to our policy administration and workflow system, as well as redesigned how policy documents are created, allowing us to retire older systems. IT hosted a Graph Database Summit with the business to increase understanding of new technology, what the benefits are and to develop a list of AF use cases for new technology.
2022 Goals
For 2022, we are focused on continuing to improve our Customer experience through technology. Our plans include additional automations to allow for even more self-service options for Customers and Colleagues, improving data quality and availability, strengthening our cyber security capabilities and streamlining the sales and buying experience.
