Case Study - Paperless Office Management

Background: Peter Vallas Associates, Inc. (PVA) is a multimillion-dollar, full service forensic investigative company specializing in investigative engineering analysis with offices in New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania. They render services to insurance companies, major corporations, law firms, and private individuals for origin and cause investigations, as well as for subrogation, and appear as expert witnesses for both plaintiff and defense testimonies.

Challenge(s): The nature of their business requires PVAs employees to be able to report their findings back to their clients quickly and efficiently so insurance companies can expedite claims. The process of dictating and transcribing their research and findings was lengthy, time consuming and expensive. Engineers would return from their field visits and dictate reports to support staff who would transcribe them. Then, the report would go to back to the engineer for review and once approved, would be sent back to an administrator who would physically paste photos into the report. The administrator would then make copies of the report, send a hard copy to the client, and place a copy in the customers file. Managing these documents and ensuring the correct documents were placed in the proper customer file was becoming a challenge. Additionally, PVA needed to be able to track a particular employees time against a specific client project for accurate billing.

Approach: Accounteks implemented a document management solution to simplify the claims dictation process and the storage of customer files. We found an outsourced dictation firm that enables engineers to dictate their reports and receive electronic copies of their reports on company letterhead. Photos are now uploaded to a server and easily added to the electronic file. A PDF of the dictation and supporting photos is generated and the final report is emailed to the client, while an electronic copy is placed in the paperless customer file. Accounteks also provided the hardware and software to install a Time and Billing system, enabling accurate tracking of employee time.

Result:

Employing an outside dictation service allowed PVA to reduce operating expenses by downsizing 5 full-time typists and eliminating hard costs such as cassette tapes, recorders, and photo processing. Time is better utilized since engineers do not have to return to the office for dictation and PVA was able to reduce its office size since their engineers do not need to physically be there.

Their document management system stores electronic version of dictations, photos, etc. and allows PVA to receive faxes and correspondence that can be automatically placed into a paperless customer file, increasing efficiency, and reducing costs associated with the purchase and storage of paper documents. More importantly, receiving electronic copies of reports in a shorter timeframe creates a better service experience for their clients.

The Time and Billing program allows for easy tracking of work performed and accountability for all experts on their time and expenses since employees can enter time from wherever they are, and billing can be done more quickly. The tracking system also made it possible set up an appropriate billing system monthly, provides detailed invoices to clients, and better equips PVA management to evaluate employee performance.

Their consultation and advice over their years has provided my firm with the reduction of expenses, management costs, and has improved our productivity far beyond what existed 30 years ago during the incipient stages of the corporation. Their management and servicing of our equipment, as well as their response to any particular issue that may arise with software or hardware, allows for little or no down time in our operation, PVA overwhelms.

Expected components:

• Mention five lessons one should learn from the above case study with justification.
• Explain each lesson with justification using 2 to 4 sentences.