Some photos from the IFM 2010 show in Vegas

Managing state license information for vendor companies and their employees is a full-time job for some people at our Carrier clients.  To lighten these folk's workload and make their lives easier we've designed portals for vendors to upload license information themselves.  Information includes Investigation licenses for the company, each employee and in some cases our clients want to track driver's license, vehicle registration and insurance information and expiration dates.  This format has been a great help to our Carrier clients and we've tuned the application over the past year.

Recently, we've been talking to some large PI companies that have to manage company and hundreds of employee licenses in several states.  They to (may) employ one person who's full-time job is managing renewals, new investigators, and other compliance issues related to state licensing.  So we are taking components from our Vendor Management Platform and applying them to a "License Management" module for our new release.  I've included a mock-up below.

Feedback is encouraged.

We recieved this White Paper from our friends at Deloitte Financial Advisory Services about setting up Fraud Management Response protocols and systems.  A good quick read:

An organization that invests in a fraud response management assessment could see cost savings and return on investment in the form of:

• More efficient use of resources
• Lower investigative costs
• Loss recovery and prevention
• Increased detection of internal and external fraud
• Lower compliance risk
• Enhanced tracking metrics

The potential value of an effective fraud response management program can be realized in different ways and across various industries.

Full Report:

FRM Whitepaper June 2009.pdf (191.81 kb)

A lot of people ask us where we came from and how we got started so here's the abridged version of the story:

A website and web-based application design company - through various connections in the Special Investigations world we were commissioned to build and design a case management system from scratch for West Bend Mutual Insurance (WBMI) out of West Bend WI. We gained insight to how a Special Investigations Unit (SIU) is run by some of the most respected SIU personnel in the business.  We worked shoulder to shoulder and discussed how this application should work and what it means to the company as a whole. 

The SIU at WBMI uses vendors to conduct various aspects of investigations so we had to have internal staff and external companies collaborate on investigations using a common platform.  Of couse, we went with a browser-based application built in JAVA so users could log in from anywhere with secure accress to the internet.  After 12 months the first version was released to the company and it's vendors. 

As WBMI and it's vendors used the application requests for upgrades and additional features began rolling in.  Based on this feedback we prioritized feature development and released updated versions periodically over night without any disruption to service.  After some time, when we felt the system was robust enough and could be applied  to other SIU environments we went tested the waters in the market.

Soon, Swiss Re signed on and we began building a few custom features to better suit their SIU environment.  Shortly after this success we brought in a user interface expert to redesign the asthetics of of the application (then called SIU Manager) for better usability.  This is about the time I was hired in.  The team and rebranded the company and product and SCOUT was born.  New business cards, catalogs, trade show booth, everything.  Our coming out party was the International Association of Special Investigations Units (IASIU) 2008 in Atlanta.

Below a photo of our original trade show booth, a magazine ad from Risk and Insurance and the homepage of our first website.

Risk&Insurance_ad_wcrops.pdf (10.02 mb)

A few sunny Friday photos of our development and creative staff at work on the new release of SCOUT and customer requests.

I recently posted a question on IRB Exchange and in some LinkedIn group dicussions asking if investigators use a "Work Plan" or some type of checklist when conducting investigations.  The response was amazing. So many people are passionate about this subject and offered many opinions.  I copied an example below.  We get really excited by this type of response - not only are we implementing a "Work Plan" feature in our next release, but the scenario and tasks described in the 3rd paragraph are also all addressed in the next release of SCOUT.  Notes, photos, hours, assignments, expenses, case type, reports, video, etc. will all be available online and in real-time to the manager.  The last statement could be used on homepage!

"I don't now how a PI can ensure he or she has covered all the bases without having a checklist or standard game plan for each type of case. There are unique basic steps for each type of case. Doing this will help one resolve most cases quickly. If the basic steps have not produced results then it's time to go into advanced mode.

The facts discovered for each item on the checklist often produce other paths to investigate. To have this checklist written down is also helpful if the case is transferred to another investigator.

When working as Chief Investigator for a firm in Georgia I had 15 investigators across 2 states and only saw them maybe once a week. But I spoke to each one daily and by 9 AM I knew the status of each case, hours worked, hours remaining, expenses from the day before and where the PI was headed on the case. Each PI started their cases, regardless of type, with the basic checklist. All investigators had prepaid envelopes or a FedEx number to send in reports, video, and report tapes. Two office clerks typed reports, copied video, mailed reports to clients and billed for each case weekly if it was a corporate or insurance cases. This may sound like a lot of work to keep up with. But organization was the key. We did not run cases through just to get them done. And all cases were under constant review for quality and completeness.

Back to the basic checklist. This works whether it is a skip or death investigation. The investigators knew the checklist would be audited when they sent their first report in or when I spoke with them during the morning calls. And any time I had doubts I would verify the information myself that the investigator had presented.

Some people don't like thinking of an agency running like a well oiled machine. They think it is to restrictive or even obsessive. The opposite is true. Organized operations allowed my investigators to investigate because time saving methods were in place and time was not wasted on basic stuff."

We had another great demo today with a mid-sized Investigation company out of NY.  Dave and I personally went though the demo with the client in about 1/2 hr via WebEx.  We can't wait for the new release due out late Spring/Early Summer and to have demo videos available online and on demand.  It's not that we don't like talking to potential customers, it's just that we want to talk to MORE potential users.  Investigators are busy and keep odd hours and getting them to commit to a scheduled demo is very difficult.  So we'll do what we do best and make their lives easier and let them experience SCOUT at their convenience. 

COMING SOON to the SCOUT website:

1) Demo Videos on demand

2) Tiered pricing information

3) 15 day FREE TRIAL

4) Sign up and use capabilities