Case study portfolio:
4 blue sky ideas that yielded practical solutions
Crowe innovation and blue sky thinking
Blue sky thinking by the numbers
Blue sky thinking focuses on discovering and capturing new ideas, investing funds and talent, and using specialized knowledge and resources to develop concepts that can evolve and learn. It delivers lasting value through differentiated solutions that build upon Crowe’s industry expertise, data science, and technology.
6
phase innovation process
25
data scientists
30
percent increase on innovation funding FY17-FY18
90
days to proof of concept for Innovation Fast Track ideas
Banks and captive auto lenders need to monitor dealership financial performance for each of their floorplan loan customers. Multiple banks
and captives need better analysis processes, outputs, and automation. Because of the vast amount of data involved, personnel spend valuable
time hand-keying data rather than analyzing it.
The clients
An increase in automated throughput
Case study:
financial services lending organizations
The challenge
TM
In a time-intensive manual process, analysts at lenders hand-keyed monthly statement data received electronically or by mail into Microsoft Excel or a bankwide spreadsheet package. They then conducted a generic analysis of each borrower’s financial position. Because of the time required upfront, the process could take two months, delaying lenders’ understanding of a borrower’s financial performance.
Automates customer financial statement receipt
on secure lender-branded portals
Automatically uploads customer financial statement data, eliminating time-consuming and error-prone hand-keying
Employs industry-specific key ratios to monitor
and analyze dealer financial statements
Provides portfolio-wide views to quickly identify issues in floorplan loan portfolio
Enables each client to customize analytics
Aggregates dealer statement data for quarterly industry benchmarks reports
Solution
Learn more about the Crowe Portfolio Analyzer
Crowe works with approximately 80 percent of major U.S. floorplan lenders and 60 percent of major Canadian floorplan lenders. Built with this deep expertise, Crowe Portfolio Analyzer for automotive commercial lending divisions of banks and captives:
Crowe has multiple academic medical centers, regional health systems, and physician groups that use the Crowe Revenue Cycle Exceptions Resolution (ExR) solution.
The clients
Artificial intelligence for the revenue cycle
Case study:
healthcare organizations
The challenge
Preventing and resolving exceptions (such as credit balances and denials) in healthcare revenue cycles can be time-consuming and unproductive, which can challenge an organization’s net revenue performance. Typical account follow-up involves manual processes, often with disparate performance among similar collections staff. Outsourcing options might lower the cost per unit, but the loss of control and higher expense can be issues also. The question is, how can an organization take this incredible amount of account follow-up data and teach a machine to “learn” how to resolve exceptions in the most efficient manner – with minimal human intervention?
The ExR software uses this data to:
Automatically analyze patient account data in large batches and identify how to best resolve the account
Create supervised models to predict and correct exceptions for denials, credit balances, and patient statuses
Utilize patterns of resolved accounts across multiple clients to determine and automate the best resolution path (e.g., patient refund, move credit balance to secondary payer, or denial) on open accounts
Improve the accuracy of resolutions with standardized output to be integrated into existing workflow systems
Solution
The Crowe Revenue Cycle Analytics (Crowe RCA) platform gathers data from more than 850 national hospitals
and health systems to establish patterns of account resolution based on millions of daily transactions.
Results
The technology “learns” from tasks and actions from multiple organizations to continually improve its performance in resolving account exceptions. With this innovative software, healthcare organizations have reported:
Resolution on 70 percent of open credit balance accounts
Reduced volume of open denials by 20 percent
Open denials prioritization based on automated payment prediction
50 percent improvement in staff efficiency on credit balances alone
Improved risk management via standardized tasks delivered in an automated manner
Learn more about the Crowe Revenue
Cycle Exceptions Resolution
Haynes International is a specialty metals producer. Haynes leads the industry in high performance, innovative alloys used in corrosion and high-temperature applications in aerospace, power generation, and chemical processing industries.
The client
An integration of systems for global market intelligence
Case study:
Haynes International
The challenge
Haynes had implemented a proprietary legacy market intelligence system that did not enable scaling to accommodate multiple languages, a consolidated ledger, or features to meet local requirements in global markets. As a result, disintegrated systems were not able to deliver comprehensive intelligence to the CEO.
Crowe Metals Accelerator for the entire metals supply chain:
Unites critical business functions in a single enterprise
resource-planning business application
Works globally, recognizing multiple languages and country requirements
Helps organizations move forward through continual improvements and updates by Crowe and Microsoft
Supports Crowe specialists helping clients achieve success and lasting value
Solution
TM
Haynes International chose Microsoft Dynamics AX with the Crowe Metals Accelerator to overcome roadblocks to growth and reap the benefits of a single, global solution.
Results
Jeff Young
Vice President and CIO
Haynes International
“Crowe is very well positioned with Dynamics AX, with its relationship with Microsoft, [and has] excellent resources that know not only the Metals Accelerator but know the base AX product.”
A single, vertical-focused solution helps Haynes:
Collaborate with its customers while mitigating risk throughout the supply chain
Gather market intelligence for rapid action to advance patented products and proprietary alloys for use in North America, Europe, and Asia
Gain greater visibility into inventory management and planning
Deliver faster, more creative customer service
Streamline communication across the supply chain
Generate metals-specific reporting, data insights, and analytics to increase productivity and service
Learn more about Microsoft Dynamics AX
and Crowe Metals Accelerator
Conclusion
Crowe’s functional specialization and industry expertise empowers it to create innovative technology solutions based on decades of experience with client companies. The firm makes a tremendous investment in products that provide lasting value to clients. Crowe is where the industry is and where it is going. Innovation is recognized as a key lever by which Crowe continues to grow as an organization.
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for working capital
Enhanced transparency and capability to react and implement corrective actions via improved KPIs
Reduced slow-moving inventory and decreased obsolescence
Increased capacity for MTO orders by not allocating manufacturing time to slow-moving MTS SKUs
Created a formalized and sustainable framework for reviewing and
resetting the MTS program on a standardized iterative cadence
Reduced MTS SKUs by approximately 70 percent, thereby focusing resources on truly high-turning SKUs
“The Crowe team sliced and analyzed tremendous amounts of data in a very short period of time. We learned a ton about our business, including getting a better understanding of the complexity and variability of our business.”
Keith Kelble
Senior Vice President of Operations
Mold-Rite Plastics
Results
Over a nine-week implementation, Crowe used its proprietary software to improve Mold-Rite’s working capital performance, increase on-time delivery, and reduce customer lead times. The approach leveraged the Crowe team’s deep process expertise coupled with a dynamic technology-based solution to systematically and objectively address areas of erosion.
Solution
Implementation of a dynamic-threshold, multicriteria methodology for determining MTS program inclusion
Key actions included:
In pursuit of operational excellence, Mold-Rite management and the company’s private-equity investors wanted to optimize the legacy MTS program and its underlying replenishment and planning parameters. Crowe analysis uncovered that the criteria used to determine MTS program membership was too broad and did not consider volatility. Replenishment calculations were overly complex and not consistent with inventory management best practices. Further, the levers to adjust the parameters were not intuitive, and, as a result, program management and sustainability were challenging. Mold-Rite produced too many stock-keeping units (SKUs), adversely affecting inventory turn performance and the higher-profit-margin MTO production capacity.
The challenge
Case study:
Mold-Rite Plastics
A realignment of inventory working capital
The client
A leading provider of rigid plastic packaging components and containers, Mold-Rite prides itself on developing made-to-order (MTO) products with an in-house innovation team as well as maintaining
made-to-stock (MTS) items for fast fulfillment.
Identification of and recommendations for scrap factors by SKU, reflecting actual performance and reducing production shortages and excesses
Recalculation of inventory parameters (minimums, maximums, and reorder points) to reduce excess inventory and minimize stock-outs
An update of planning standards to reflect current-state weighted average performance for each SKU, which enhanced scheduling predictability
Design and implementation of robust key performance indicators (KPIs), and weekly and monthly reports to measure adherence to program parameters and track overall working capital performance
Increased flexibility by incorporating postponement strategy between molding and lining operations