America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), the national association representing approximately 1,300 health insurance plans providing coverage to more than 200 million Americans, is a leader in health insurance education. The AHIP’s Center for Insurance Education and Professional Development offered educational training that consisted of 35 self-study courses. Industry professionals paid to enroll in a course, purchased the text book which was sent to them by mail and followed a study period. Learners then, signed up for an online examination (administered through a third party provider) where grades were tracked and manually entered into AHIP’s system. The overall training process was cumbersome and not userfriendly for learners, courses were limited and errors occurred as a result of the manual input of grades.
AHIP needed to find an alternative way of providing a better education service for health insurance and healthcare professionals – one that provided additional educational content, the ability to produce and administer courses online, and gave AHIP the possibility to offer better customer service while reducing operating costs. They also wanted to boost course enrollments and customer satisfaction from this area of the business.
Solution
AHIP made a decision to expand their education service offering and introduce online learning. They needed a web based learning management system to power this initiative, using the LMS to manage, track and administer all course types (self study, online, and workshops) and to deliver online course content. They identified 12 LMS vendors and after rigorous evaluation selected WBT’s TopClass LMS. Selection was based on best fit for their needs and a flexible pricing model that offered good value for their money. In addition WBT was able to promise rapid deployment of the system to meet AHIP’s tight six month implementation deadline which coincided with the start of their upcoming semester.
TopClass was able to meet some important AHIP requirements including:
- The bundling of courses into designations that could be purchased online and completed by learners over multiple semesters
- Different prices that could be applied during online checkout process to accommodate members, non-members and sales promotions
- Tracking of certifications and re-certifications with the ability for learners to print their own certificates
- The ability for Educational Coordinators at member companies to have a dashboard view of employee training history with gap analysisThe ability to cross sell effectively using TopClass to link complementary products and then automatically recommend and suggest during and after the purchasing process
- Integration with other AHIP systems including iMIS AHIP’s member database, Tasco, their product fulfillment system, and Epicor, AHIP’s financial software package
Another important element of the e-Learning solution was the creation of the online version of the course material that had been developed by AHIP, which WBT partner, Fusion Productions was responsible for. Fusion provided consulting and developed online course content for AHIP, using the course material developed for the text book based courses offered by AHIP. They also trained AHIP on Articulate Presenter so they could become self-sufficient with e-Learning course development.
Results
AHIP is an excellent example of a rapid deployment of a Learning Management System. AHIP was up and running offering a selection of online courses for purchase in less than six months. The benefits that AHIP has already achieved from using the TopClass LMS are significant and include:
- Enhanced education & training offering – in a very short timeframe AHIP has expanded its education offering from 32 self study courses (pre TopClass) to a wide selection of courses and products, available in a variety of formats including online, self study, text books, and live workshops. All offerings can be purchased online. Today learners are offered higher quality educational resources via a more convenient channel that’s accessible 24/7.
- Better customer service – since implementing TopClass AHIP has registered a noticeable decline in inbound customer support queries through their 800 number and support email. For instance, in the month of January 2009 AHIP recorded 19.7% less calls than the same month of 2008.
- Improved operations at AHIP – TopClass automates many previously manual tasks and processes – such as managing and tracking of enrollments, grades, certifications. This has resulted in fewer errors, faster responses to queries, and speedier turn around times for orders.
The Future
The implementation of TopClass at AHIP has opened a number opportunities for further business growth and expansion. AHIP has plans to offer member companies a more tailored service with customized course content and a branded system user interface that matches corporate look and feel. It is anticipated that this will be a premium service offering.
In addition, AHIP has plans to expand its International operations. AHIP is already working with several clients overseas to license their courses to professionals outside the insurance industry such as IT consultants that need a level of insurance specific knowledge to enable them to perform their jobs. The goal is to reach out to a greater number of organizations, in different countries, that could not have been a viable resource before the implementation of TopClass.
These additional offerings will improve AHIP’s ability to increase enrollments from their education services, while containing operational costs, and would not have been possible without using TopClass to power the offering.
Quote
“WBT’s approach was different. They understand the association market and worked with us to put a flexible pricing model in place so that the upfront costs were not prohibitive. They also pulled out all the stops to meet our 6 month implementation timeline. ”
Raffaele Vitelli, Director of Operations, Center for Insurance Education & Professional Development, AHIP
1-877-WBT-7700
