Hitachi Consulting UK Delivers Integrated Risk Management System for Co-operative Group, Harnessing Financial and Operational Efficiencies

Hitachi Consulting UK has announced that it has completed implementation of an integrated risk management and claims processing system on behalf of the Co-Operative Group Risk and Insurance Department. In addition to enabling faster risk mitigation, the Co-Operative Group is also reaping more than £800K per annum by removing duplication of effort and establishing improved methods for the collection, sharing, presentation and dissemination of information. The Group estimates it will gain a 15% reduction in loss adjuster fees, and 2.5% reduction in incidents and resultant claims, along with reduction in its third party costs, as well as the ability to amend its compliance with civil procedure rules for motor road traffic accidents.

The Microsoft SharePoint 2010 solution helps to identify higher risks faster, enabling the Co-operative Group to be much more proactive in its approach to risk management across all of its varying businesses. The company is now able to gain a risk profile and trend pattern of every branch within the Group, such as burglaries, as well as fire safety and compliance inspections. Once all systems are live, the Co-operative Group is also expected to be able to gain a risk profile of environmental compliance, thereby enabling greater efficiencies of the Group’s risk assessment teams in the field by dictating workloads, areas of priority, branch evaluation and better use of resources. As a result, it is expected that the Group will have the ability to implement bespoke training and learning requirements through its Learning Management System that are specifically tailored to risk for each individual branch.

"We wanted a consistent approach on how we managed risk findings, as well as addressing the lack of clarity, and duplication from multiple systems," said Phil Willsmer, Director of Operational Risk for the Co-operative Group. "Hitachi Consulting UK provided us with both onshore and offshore consultants to establish a framework upon which our business applications could be rapidly assembled. The framework was designed from the outset to be accessed by the wider community within the Co-Operative Group of over 100,000 people through self-service and departmental portals and mobile applications, which is regularly updated through enterprise-wide content management."

The solution was deployed in a series of phases. The initial phase went live at end of January 2011 and included case management functionality for the management of incidents, accidents and claims, as well as integration with the company’s Learning Management System (LMS). Subsequent phases around data protection also went live in January 2011, with business continuity to follow later in the year. By the end of 2011, it is expected that the system will be going live for every business across the Group.

"We’ve seen a very quick return on investment by identifying high risks sooner," concluded Willsmer. "We can identify something as it is occurring, flag it to the business and have influence on decisions being made by providing them with a true picture of risk. We can also look at the impact of certain decisions, and the cost and risks to factor into the equation, which is extremely powerful."

Hitachi Consulting UK is also expected to provide ongoing support for the solution as part of its Managed Services Division.