Published on February 12, 2025
From Backup to Breakthrough: How AMI Transformed Operational Chaos into Success
Litigation Support Services5 min read
Centralized
Operations control
Improved
Productivity
8/10
Customer NPS
24/5
TAT maintained
Lower-cost
Operating model
Partner-led
Goal alignment
Overview
A 40-year-old, Texas-based company operates at the intersection of insurance carriers, law firms, and medical records providers. As the industry leader in records retrieval and medical canvassing, it specializes in claims analysis, medical and case chronology, worker's compensation, records subpoena, medical expert review, and service of process. With a nationwide reach, the company also provides critical information insights and claims and legal expertise, serving as a trusted insurance vendor partner. Backed by private equity (PE), it continues to excel in the insurance, claims, and claims litigation management sectors.
Challenges & Solutions
Before AMI’s involvement, the client was managing fragmented operations, multiple vendor workflows, inconsistent SOPs, delayed communication, and staffing challenges. AMI helped centralize the operating model, improve process control, strengthen turnaround consistency, and support the client’s broader business goals through structured teams, unified workflows, and scalable operational support.
Challenges | Solutions |
|---|---|
Backup Vendor Status - Initially onboarded as a backup vendor, one among seven, the company wasn’t given significant operational resources. Being a secondary vendor meant less focus on optimizing the workflow or aligning efforts with other primary vendors, causing inefficiencies and slower ramp-up times, leading to lack of operational streamlining and delays. Clients faced issues with turnaround times and infrequent status updates. Operational delays and poor tech integration led to late requests and inaccurate updates, causing client frustration and dissatisfaction. | Pilot Program with 8 FTEs - AMI introduced a pilot program with 8 Full-Time Employees (FTEs) to showcase their capabilities. This pilot quickly outperformed other vendors in terms of speed and quality. Success in the pilot led to a collaboration with the client to unify and centralize operations, with AMI handling the majority of outsourcing efforts and only one other vendor as a backup. This centralization streamlined workflows and reduced delays. |
Operational Diversification & Outsourcing - As the business grew and faced high volumes, operations became fragmented. Multiple outsourced teams were engaged, each using disparate technology stacks and workflows. This led to a lack of integration between teams, making it harder to maintain consistency in performance resulting in slower operations, duplicated efforts, and missed opportunities to optimize the workflow. | AMI carried out Transition to a Unified System - AMI transitioned from multiple legacy systems to a single, unified system used across all client offices. This integration improved system compatibility and data flow, facilitating better collaboration between teams and simplifying operations. It also eliminated bottlenecks caused by incompatible systems, and provided a single source of truth for all stakeholders, improving both speed and accuracy. |
Acquisitions & Varied Tech Stacks - The acquisitions of several record retrieval companies brought new technologies and processes into the mix. However, these companies operated on different tech stacks with little effort to harmonize systems across the board. This lack of coordination between the acquired teams and the core operation led to inefficiencies in record collection and retrieval processes, as systems were incompatible, data was fragmented across the board. | Process Excellence Team - To further improve efficiency, AMI deployed a dedicated process excellence team tasked with reviewing, optimizing, and refining internal workflows. This team identified pain points in the operation and worked to eliminate them, further enhancing operational speed, improving resource allocation, and ensuring that processes were constantly evolving to meet growing demands. |
Lack of SOPs & Process Irregularities - There was a clear lack of Standardized Operating Procedures (SOPs) across the teams. Without these, each team or vendor handled processes differently, leading to irregularities in how work was completed. This lack of uniformity affected production, making it difficult to predict timelines or ensure consistent quality of output, and resulting in frequent delays and errors. | Quality Monitoring & SOP Adherence - AMI introduced a quality monitoring layer to ensure that all team members strictly adhered to the newly drafted SOPs. This quality control layer helped maintain consistency across operations, ensuring that the high standards of work established by AMI were upheld, reducing errors, and increasing client satisfaction. |
Poor Communication - Each vendor worked in isolation with little to no communication between them, which created major bottlenecks. Since vendors were not sharing information or aligning processes, it led to duplicate work, delays in task handoffs, and lack of coordination. Poor communication practices, such as unclear messaging or slow follow-ups, happened with custodians as well resulting in low response rates. This significantly slowed down the record collection process, as vendors would wait longer for responses and often needed to follow up multiple times, further delaying workflows. | Unified Operations & Centralization - After demonstrating success in the pilot, AMI collaborated closely with the client to suggest unifying and centralizing operations. AMI took over the bulk of the outsourcing operations enables rapid execution and near-instantaneous responses, with only one other vendor handling a specific, smaller aspect. This centralization streamlined the workflow, reduced redundancies, and improved communication across departments, leading to greater operational efficiency and faster turnaround times. |
Challenges in Timely Payments to Custodians - Delays in making payments to custodians created friction in relationships, further contributing to slow response times. Custodians, who are often incentivized by timely payments, became less motivated to prioritize the requests from this company, leading to additional delays in record retrievals and strained working relationships. | Triage Teams & Payments Team - For complex scenarios, AMI created specialized triage teams to handle and expedite them. This ensured that difficult cases did not delay overall operations, allowing the bulk of the work to proceed without disruption. Additionally, AMI established a dedicated payments team to ensure that custodians were paid promptly. This addressed previous issues with delayed payments, improving custodian relationships and speeding up the response time for record retrievals. |
COVID-19 Pandemic Staffing Issues - The COVID-19 pandemic created a major strain on the workforce. Most vendors struggled with staffing and as a result, operations were hampered by delays, decreased productivity, and a lack of experienced staff to handle the high workload. | Trained Bench Resource Pool & Training Modules - To solve staffing shortages, AMI built and maintained a bench of trained resources who could step in as needed. This allowed them to respond quickly to sudden spikes in workload. AMI also developed comprehensive training modules for all client departments, ensuring that every new team member was adequately trained and could hit the ground running, reducing onboarding times and maintaining consistent productivity. |
Acquisition of Canvassing Firm & Increased Workload - With the acquisition of a canvassing firm, the company faced additional complexities. This expansion required managing higher volumes of requests and more staff to support the new operations. However, the company struggled to handle the increased workload, as the existing workforce and processes were already strained. | Call Center Support & Staffing - AMI assisted with call center support, providing staffing and resources to manage increased client interactions. This additional support helped the client manage their growing needs, ensuring that customer inquiries and issues were handled quickly and efficiently, and contributing to overall client satisfaction. |
Results
- Centralized operations improved process control and made client request handling more consistent.
- Higher productivity helped improve daily output while supporting better customer satisfaction.
- 8/10 customer NPS reflected stronger service experience and improved client-side outcomes.
- 24/5 operations helped maintain turnaround times and support continuous workflow coverage.
- Lower-cost operating model was achieved by running operations from AMI’s facility.
- Partner-led execution helped align operational support with the client’s broader organizational goals.
SCALABILITY
- Started with 8 FTEs, now operating at 450+ FTEs.
- A trained bench resource pool allows for monthly staff additions.
- Fully integrated with all businesslines, counting to grow with AMI's experties and leadership.