Many of the Special Investigation Units and Investigation Firms we work with don’t particularly like it when we compare them to a gumball machine but the analogy is fair. Your customers, whoever they are, expect that they will get a timely investigation that will facilitate a better decision making process.

If you don’t they will stick an ‘Out of Order’ sign on you and find another gumball machine.

There is one exception that comes to mind and that is when they use you to justify a delay. You may be adding some value, but is it the lowest and most replaceable value you could aim for.

I know some readers are thinking ‘high quality investigations take time’. Yes, some do, but any time that is not directly attributable to actually investigating is simply a waste of time. There is often more benefit in delivering the majority of a case early and tidying up later. Face it, investigations are never really exhausted, they are an endless return on investment decision. If you show the value early, getting extra budget or an increase in staffing becomes a much easier position to support.

For any investigation organization faster product delivery will improve client relationships, reduce work in progress and free up resources from administration tasks proportionally.

For investigation firms there is another real reason to reduce their product delivery time and that is that delivering early will significantly reduce their working capital. See this prior blog re exactly that.

Lastly information is most valuable now and becomes less valuable in time.

How do you achieve that with Polonious Investigation Management Systems?

Lets start by breaking down the process into its three most basic phases;
1. Intake
2. Investigation
3. Delivery

The goals are;
* Shorten the time from intake to investigation.
* Identify investigation features that lead to an early close of the investigation, then close it.
* Shorten the time from the completion of the investigation to delivery.

1. Accelerate intake.
Spend the time to review your current process and what can be improved, how can you reduce the people invoiced, how can you make it more linear so there is less movement back and forth between involved parties prior to allocation and action.

If you are manually intaking cases then consider using a webform so your clients can enter some if not the majority of the case information and attach documents for you. Secondary benefits are the customer immediately gets a case number and knows action has started.

If you can consider the benefits of using web services to enable users to send referrals directly form their system to yours. There is an investment here depending on the third party systems but the gains are substantial and the ROI significant. Some of the largest investigation firms in the US have gained significant business by following this path.

If you receive your instructions in a consistent format consider importing it directly into Polonious so the data is auto populated. Again think investment and ROI.

Next break down all the processes that need to be completed prior to the investigation commencing.
Confirmation, additional information, searches, research, scheduling and allocation. If possible make it linear and group actions so that one particular person’s or division’s actions are completed together so they need to action the file as few times as possible. If it is not linear and there are several processes then consider splitting them into related processes so one does not delay the other.

2. Accelerate Investigation.
Identify the steps to be taken. Make it linear and reduce passing responsibility back and forth

Manage investigator workload, they are your little gumball machines and each can handle different case loads. Monitor your investigator quality reports and note variations based on case loads. In time you will find the correct case load not only for most investigators but individuals.

Identify case end points or events and when one occurs close the case out. One of our longest standing customers introduced systems to close out investigations of genuine claims in half the time they had previously which greatly improved the relationship with their claims department and lead to better customer service and more referrals.

Identify delays early and if possible report at this point. Deliver to your client everything you have that will assist them now and inform them of the delay and your plan to complete the investigation once that delay is over. If you are 80% done then invoice it, put it on hold and follow up later. Do not delay the delivery of 80% for a possible 20% that may never be available.

If you have identified a wealth of evidence that will help your case, deliver what you have now and continue on with a client that is excited to be involved.

Build reporting into the investigation process. If you collect what you need for your final report during the investigation process then reporting can be the press of a button away. No need to review it all again and collate the evidence. It’s done, proofed and ready to go. See this blog for ideas of how to do just that.

3. Accelerate Delivery.
This can be one of the most unnecessary delays in the investigation process. Identify the steps to be taken. Make it linear and reduce passing responsibility back and forth.

Collect the data you need to deliver during the process.

This should be the shortest phase of the process. If it isn’t review the first two phases.

Start again and work through it until delivery is right.

Run your milestone reports and identify where you are spending your time, where the bottlenecks are and focus on those areas until they are no longer a constraint.

Automation is a great ability that we bring to the table but if it is more people you need in a particular area then hire them.

Nothing will constrain you and your organization more than slow or late delivery.

If you are a Polonious user information on all these configuration abilities are available on our user group and if you are not a member please join us.

email: support @ poloniouslive . com

About the Author
Alastair has more than 29 years of experience in the law enforcement and the investigation industry and has guided the rollout of the Polonious Investigation Management System to over 50 organizations across the globe. Our customers have varied business processes and requirements from large insurance carriers with hundreds of investigators and adjusters to small forensic teams. Each now has a customized solution to meet their needs.

Alastair Steel, Dip.Crim. is the co-founder of Polonious.
Find Alastair on LinkedIn

Once they are back in range they can simply sync their case updates and documents with their Polonious Investigation Management System.

All data is fully encrypted and only accessible via the application.

If you are a Polonious user information on this feature is available on our user group.

If you are not a member please join us.

email: support @ poloniouslive . com

About the Author
Alastair has more than 29 years of experience in the law enforcement and the investigation industry and has guided the rollout of the Polonious Investigation Management System to over 50 organizations across the globe. Our customers have varied business processes and requirements from large insurance carriers with hundreds of investigators and adjusters to small forensic teams. Each now has a customized solution to meet their needs.

Alastair Steel, Dip.Crim. is the co-founder of Polonious.
Find Alastair on LinkedIn

This short blog is just to give you my opinion of what you can do with this device.

Lets start with some statistics that in themselves show some of the inherent strengths and weaknesses;
Screen Size 11.6 inches
Screen Resolution 1366_x_768
Max Screen Resolution 1366 x 768 pixels
Processor 1.7 GHz Exynos 5000 Series
RAM 2 GB DDR3L SDRAM
Memory Speed 1333.00
Hard Drive 16 GB eMMC
Graphics Coprocessor Integrated Graphics
Wireless Type 802.11 a/b/g/n

It is no power gaming machine. In fact it does not run most of the apps we are all used to such as any office application, image editing or video editing either.

It does run a great browser as you would expect so if your email is available online you are good to go there. If you need docs there is always google docs for all your basic needs for free. There are even online image and video editors these days so you can upload your content and edit in the cloud.

It has limited local storage, but when you do everything online you don’t need it. We can all live with less storage if we limit our device to ‘functional’ requirements. You can also add storage via the SD Memory slot or a USB Slot for very little outlay.

Google also include 100Gb of online storage for 2 years on purchase of the Chromebook so you can have all you need in the cloud.

General commentary over. It does run Polonious Investigation Management Offline and does it well. You can sync all your cases and key documents. It has fast WiFi and connects from a good range compared to tablets and phones.

Simply type in the URL of your offline app and sync away, create draft updates, attach documents, images, recordings etc. and upload them with your next sync. All stored in our fully encrypted database locally while the cases are open.

Can it be used in the field? Yes.

I’ve lived with the Chromebook for a month now and with some lifestyle adjustments it has worked well. I still have a desktop but this is a serious option as a piece of field equipment. It is reliable, fast to start up, secure and the keyboard is better than I expected it would be at this price point.

Is it better than a tablet with a good bluetooth keyboard? Yes currently it is as these can only use the app via their browsers and offline is easier for day to day interactions from the field.

I’ll comment more on that comparison once our mobile app is out of beta and in the field. Coming soon.

In short it gets the thumbs up from me.

If you are a Polonious user information on all these abilities are available on our user group and if you are not a member please join us.

email: support @ poloniouslive . com

About the Author
Alastair has more than 29 years of experience in the law enforcement and the investigation industry and has guided the rollout of the Polonious Investigation Management System to over 50 organizations across the globe. Our customers have varied business processes and requirements from large insurance carriers with hundreds of investigators and adjusters to small forensic teams. Each now has a customized solution to meet their needs.

Alastair Steel, Dip.Crim. is the co-founder of Polonious.
Find Alastair on LinkedIn

When first meeting with customers I am almost always taken aback by how many times the same information is re typed in different locations. I recently worked with a firm that recorded case intake data in more than five spreadsheets, at intake. They were somewhat ahead of the curve compared to other companies who had as many if not more but created them in an ad hoc manner during the course of the investigation.

I admired several things about this organization immediately;

* They knew they used and therefore needed five spreadsheets.
* They had the rigor to start the process immediately ensuring the best possible data in later reports.
* They had a process and methodology they followed rigorously.

Some organizations have no idea how many sub systems are in use to manage their processes and reporting requirements and complete their statistical reporting spreadsheets long after completion of the case. This takes hours of sifting through many data sources and leads to reporting errors.

The savings by replacing all these spreadsheets and other systems with one central data source are obvious and well covered on many blogs and posts, just search for ‘Herding Spreadsheets’. It does not end there.

With a little more thought you realise that we also retype this exact data in correspondence, emails and case reports. Reusing your data for all these tasks and avoiding retyping it again and again is the focus of this blog.

Polonious Investigation Management Systems makes your case data available for insertion directly into word documents, .pdfs, open office documents and emails.

If you are wondering is this worth the effort, let me give you a few reasons why it is;

1. With Polonious not only can you email directly from your cases but you can insert case data into those emails. If you just stick with good old email for all your correspondence you immediately have a disconnect between your case data and your correspondence. That means in the future if there is a need to review the file you need to trawl through all the email accounts that may have communicated in relation to the case. Yes you could CC your case directly form your email but you need to know your case number and that gets tricky when you have so many.

2. You’ll need to find and attach any documents etc. which will lead to storing documents on your desktop, sooner or later. Not easy for tracking who did what with them and I won’t comment on the security issues, you know them.

3. Once any data is outside the system it is outside the reach of third party intelligence tools you may be using.

4. The case references (case number, claim number etc), people, organizations and assets referred to are always correct and spelt correctly. Avoid cutting and pasting over old case reports and getting it wrong. Ever tried ‘Undo’ on a report you just received. It can be enlightening.

5. IT SAVES TIME. Really this is the big one. Take some time now and save yourself an ever increasing amount of time in the future. Take a simple ‘Instruction’ letter for example. If you insert text and case data there is really no need to type anything. Say 1 to 2 minutes saved. Simply multiply this by every case you do and you get your weekly, monthly and annual savings in minutes. Work out your payroll rate and see the $ that are on the table. Take a case report and it is much more.

If you save time, it means people can do more productive things than retype the same information again and again.

The first steps are to gather your reports and correspondence together and review how much of it is repetitive and what key elements can you automatically insert.

The biggest savings is in case reports. Almost every case requires a report to be generated. How much of this can be automated?

Well it depends, on you. Some people prefer that it is only the opening pages, and the rest of the report requires the investigator to comment in the word processor of your choice. For others, Polonious has fully automated the capture of all the data required for the generation of the case reports, so the report is generated with a single click.

I will use a typical surveillance report as an example of what can be automated and cover some secondary benefits realised along the way.

As you know we use the SAM method (Situation, Action, Metrics) approach at Polonious, if you need a better idea of what that is see my blog here.

For this discussion I am more concerned with the actions and metrics as this is where we collect the activities of the investigators and metrics of what they have done.

Lets say our generic surveillance report includes;
* An introduction with headers etc.
* A summary of video activity.
* A summary of daily activity.
* Details of daily activity.

To automate collection of data for that report we need to;

1. Collect the case data up front, via manual entry or perhaps automate this with direct web service interactions with claims systems or a web form your clients can complete.

2. Define some actions for the investigators that collect the narrative and metrics you need. In this case lets say we create;
a. An action for daily updates ‘Daily Surveillance Update’ and we include a second text area for ‘Video Activity’ and of course let’s also define the metrics we want for example; time, travel time, mileage, expenses, minutes of video. We want that action completed every day the file is worked so we are all in the loop with the investigations progress
b. An action for ‘Surveillance Details’ that chronicles in detail the actions with the usual time comments you expect in a surveillance report and this needs to be completed prior to reporting.

Okay that was simple enough, now lets look at how it works and where the benefits are.

At the top level the case data can be used in the introduction and headers area where you will address the report, repeat your instructions, details of days worked and investigators etc.

Next insert a section for ‘Video Obtained’ to tell the client what video we have. We can also insert video minutes here, days worked and other metrics we collect. As there may be several days of surveillance there will be several entries we need to display so we simply loop them chronologically.

Then insert the narrative of the update into the report under a section called ‘Summary of Activities’ or similar.

We may also consider showing any images that were attached to those updates below the updates or under first section ‘Video Obtained’.

Lastly we will insert the narrative of the ‘Surveillance Details’ updates and loop them so they appear in chronological order.

Voila! We have a completed surveillance report and there is no need to cut and past all those updates from emails etc. All the updates, metrics and images are all in one place.

Many of you now say ‘I can’t use investigators updates in reports, what about spelling and grammar etc.’

Easily solved. Lets add a proofing loop so that case managers proof the daily updates and correct any errors. At the same time they can confirm the metrics for invoicing and payroll and we have saved more time completing timesheets and payroll reports.

In addition once the updates are correct you can automatically insert them into emails you want to send to other interested parties and attach uploaded images in the emails. Saving time copying and pasting into emails. This also keeps the update, email communication and report contents consistent.

So the benefits are;

* Time saving on report writing.
* One correct consistent version of what occurred.
* Accuracy and time savings on invoicing.
* Accuracy and time saving on payroll.
* Time saving on sharing with interested parties.

I think the benefits are worth it.

Yes it does take effort to think about what you can do and some rigor to design, implement and train others to follow the methodology. These are short term costs for long term gains.

I have the pleasure of working with many investigation firms and insurance investigation units on a regular basis and consider this as the most rewarding part of what I do. In particular the initial meetings where we discuss the business process and investigation methodologies that they use to achieve their goals. This is often a journey of discovery not just for me but for our clients as well.

Please contact Polonious Investigation Management Systems if you would like us to help you streamline your investigation processes and methodologies.

If you are a Polonious user information on all these abilities are available on our user group and if you are not a member please join us.

email: support @ poloniouslive . com

About the Author
Alastair has more than 29 years of experience in the law enforcement and the investigation industry and has guided the rollout of the Polonious Investigation Management System to over 50 organizations across the globe. Our customers have varied business processes and requirements from large insurance carriers with hundreds of investigators and adjusters to small forensic teams. Each now has a customized solution to meet their needs.

Alastair Steel, Dip.Crim. is the co-founder of Polonious.
Find Alastair on LinkedIn

Imagine your cases were a garden of stones and you wanted to place all the stones of one color together. You could lay them all out in a line then another line of another color and so on. Or you could pile those stones together and then right next to them would be another pile of another color. In one small patch of the garden you can now see all the stones of matching color. Neatly organized. That is exactly what the dashboard does, except better as it only shows one stone with a count on if for every similar stone in the garden. Now on the first tile of my path I can see a representation of every stone in my garden.

When you are a small organization it is easy to keep track of all the cases in your head. In time as you grow you will no doubt resort to a spreadsheet and perhaps organized directories and mail inboxes.

These are all great tools but if you continue to grow you wonder if there is be a better way to see what is going on other than navigating endless lists of cases, sorting by color or priority or date.

Personally this has been a driving force for me since I was a detective in law enforcement. I watched as dedicated individuals went out day after day following up leads, putting in reports and then watched the diligent intel team review then allocate the new leads or re allocate the incomplete ones from the prior day.

Mountains of paper, thousands of leads and the most critical business process you could ever be involved in. It screamed for reorganization.

The piles of paper were eventually replaced by endless lists and screens requiring sorting, re-sorting, prioritizing and weighting. Better than what we had but far from being able to draw your attention instantly to what mattered. It was obvious to me that all these lists and methods of sorting and ordering information needed consolidating in some way.

From day one Polonious has been dashboard centric. Yes – we have lists and sorting and color coding and you can even choose that as your default view if you want. But no one does after they understand the dashboard.

Why a dashboard? It is the only single view the shows you every case and the current situation of all those cases.

A single view from which you can understand and control every case, lead or other process in your system.

Of course you may want your stones organized by size instead of color so it is necessary to make the view changeable depending on your needs.

By default a dashboard will show you the status of all your investigations, priority, complaints, actions due, management review due, due and overdue. All in one simple to understand view. To drill down to a list of cases displayed on the dashboard you simply click on those cases.
Our user dashboard is also definable down to the user level and you can name and save your favorite views. Cases by Status, Investigator, Organization, Priority, State, Type and so on.

As with all things there is rigor involved in organization. As Polonious is a highly configurable tool you must have a vision of how you want to see your organization. How it is divided, the business processes you want to represent. In short a visual goal that you want to achieve.

To that end when we first discuss process with our clients we do it with this exact framework in mind. We explain how the dashboard can reflect those processes and enable users to easily find and action the most appropriate cases.

We ask them to think about escalation, how can the system better inform them or what is, has, or should have happened. There are many abilities that can help users focus on the right cases at the right time.

The most common escalation is action based. That is an action by a user causes the case to move to a new status. A simple example of this is a new case is created and a decision to investigate or not is required. Based on the action of the user that case will either close out or move to the next status indicating that further investigation is required.

Another is escalation based on time. In other words this case has been at this status for a certain time so we will escalate it by changing the status. Users are made aware that it has been on that status for that amount of time. An example may be that new instructions were received and they need to be actioned within 24 hours. So you may create a status of ‘New Instructions’ and after 12 hours you may escalate that to ‘New Instructions +12′. This indicates to users that these new instructions are older than others and should be actioned first. Of course you could add further escalations at 18 hours or perhaps multiple excavations as is appropriate. At each escalation point users can be emailed or a text message forwarded to let them know that these instructions need action.

Sometimes it is not so linear and you need to escalate only on the lack of specific actions and if some actions are taken on a regular basis then the case is not escalated. For example if a file must be actioned every five days then you can configure the system to escalate the status based on the fact that there has been no action for five days. However if there is action it resets the timer to ensure compliance in the next five day period.

All of the above actions and inactions effect where the cases are placed on the dashboard and keep you informed about every case and its situation continuously.

You can also filter your dashboard and or organize it by people, organizations, assets, priority or lines of business which immediately reorganizes the dashboard by those filters. If you find that filter useful and want to use it in the future simply save it for future use.

5 Hot tips for your dashboard.

1 Set some time aside to action your dashboard. It may not be the first thing you do if you must respond to emails and or phone messages. If you are reading emails should you be forwarding them to the case and action them there. This keeps the whole team in the loop and ensured you do not lose that information and actions taken in the future. Now that your urgent communication is done you can start to work on your dashboard. Do not read emails and do not answer calls unless they are suitably important. Avoid the urge to get distracted.
2 The dashboard is most suitably read from the top left to the bottom right. Cases at the top are in the earliest phases of investigation and cases in the left hand columns are running late. Hence any count of cases in the top left is most young, late case and needs your attention.
3 Sort through your dashboard one cell at a time, click on the cases in that cell and you will be taken to a list of those cases. Action the first case in the list then return to the case browse view (use the breadcrumb) after you have actioned the file and it will be gone from your list.
4 Keep doing this until there is nothing in the ‘Overdue’ column. If there is nothing in that column then address the ‘Due Today’ column. If there is nothing there then the ‘Review’ column and if nothing there the ‘Action’ column. Now you can celebrate and admire what you have achieved.
5 If your dashboard is in a mess then tackle this one cell at a time and action cases in that cell on that day. Return to it tomorrow and there will be less in that cell, action those then move on to the next cell and so on. You will conquer your dashboard in a shorter time than you think.

If you are a Polonious user information on all these configuration abilities are available on our user group and if you are not a member please join us.

email: support @ poloniouslive . com

About the Author
Alastair has more than 29 years of experience in the law enforcement and the investigation industry and has guided the rollout of the Polonious Investigation Management System to over 50 organizations across the globe. Our customers have varied business processes and requirements from large insurance carriers with hundreds of investigators and adjusters to small forensic teams. Each now has a customized solution to meet their needs.

Alastair Steel, Dip.Crim. is the co-founder of Polonious.
Find Alastair on LinkedIn

I have spent the last year displaced from my home in Sydney Australia and living in both Florida and California. I have realised that there is a joy to having less. I have had to organize every facet of how I work and the habits below have been great companions along the way. Much of what follows in this blog was inspired by the Zen Habits blog, but what will follow in the ‘Zen and the Art of Investigation Management’ blogs is how to do this with Polonious Investigation Management System as your tool.

Some good habits:
1 Try creating a list of three main things a day you want to achieve. Do them and everything else is a bonus. These are your MITs, Most Important Tasks. At least one should be in relation to one of your major goals. The others can be tasks at hand. They MUST be the first things you do each day other than critical communications. For me three MITs have worked and has helped me over the past year.
2 Stop multitasking.
3 Evaluate how you work. What actions are moving you toward your goals and which are not. Evaluate your day and see where you actually spend your time. Redesign your day.
4 Do the essential tasks and eliminate the rest. We all have endless lists of todos that we will never complete.
5 Learn to say NO.
6 Limit communications. Spend time on email and social media for certain periods of time only. Avoid other time wasting media consumption, try taking a break from non essential RSS feeds, news, etc. If there is no impact and there is gain, consider what you can do without and cut it.
7 Stop shopping. We are all exposed to endless advertisements thanks to google, amazon and the like and our desire to have/consume everything. Don’t click on it, do something useful instead.
8 Streamline everything, what you do and how you do it. One thing at a time work your way through everything important.
9 Clear your desk.
10 Establish routines.
11 Empty your email inbox.
12 Plan your ideal day, week and year.

My experience has in fact helped me help our customers in refining their investigation management methodologies.

Firstly;
1 Identify your goal?
2 Identify what is important to reach that goal.
3 Remove the rest.

At each step of the process repeat the questions that I pose every day to myself and our customers;
1 Why do we do that?
2 Does it progress us toward the goal?
3 If not, can we stop doing that?

The first insight into ‘Zen and the Art of Investigation Management’ will focus on the dashboard.

Hope you follow along.

About the Author
Alastair has more than 29 years of experience in the law enforcement and the investigation industry and has guided the rollout of the Polonious Investigation Management System to over 50 organizations across the globe. Our customers have varied business processes and requirements from large insurance carriers with hundreds of investigators and adjusters to small forensic teams. Each now has a customized solution to meet their needs.

Alastair Steel, Dip.Crim. is the co-founder of Polonious.
Find Alastair on LinkedIn

I thank Horsemen Investigations Inc. and Patrick Carroll (CEO Horsemen Inc.) for allowing me to share this example with you.

Patrick had long been perplexed by his clients, insurance carriers, frequently asking for only half-day surveillances and some only wanting those to be performed in the early mornings. The rationale was that statistically this showed the most significant result. Patrick knew from his experience that this was only part of the reality and that if you only conduct surveillance in the mornings your statistics will lead you to believe this fallacy.

We will focus one initial metric that Horsemen Inc. decided to capture and report to their clients, how it changed their relationship with their clients and how it is becoming a standard in the industry. That metric, is “Time Became Active,” is the time the subject of the investigation first became active.

What is significant here is that Horsemen decided to record a new metric. Why? Because it would confirm or deny a theory that they had developed based on experience.

We discussed the best points to collect the metric and decided on the daily updates by surveillance investigators. This gave us a better data set than at the case level as within a single case there could be multiple days of surveillance each producing valid data points.

Now that the data was being collected we went to work on how we reported on that data and the variables that we considered important to cross reference with the data. Once they were defined and agreed to we developed the statistical reports Horsemen Inc. wanted.

As the data set grew over the coming months Patrick’s theory was proven correct. There were in fact two peaks of activity in every day. As expected, one peak was in the morning, but more significantly there was another in the afternoon.

Armed with the data and reports to validate the theory Horsemen visited their clients. Their clients were impressed to say the least. They were not expecting this type of initiative and forethought to come from an investigative firm.

As a result Horsemen gained;
* ability to predict behavior of claimants based on historical data
* better results for clients
* decrease time wasted on inactive claimants
* more freedom to allocate surveillance resources
* reduce down time of valuable investigative resources in the field
* confirmation that long held beliefs based on experience were correct and are now backed by rock solid data

This was a win for both Horsemen and their clients.

Horsemen continue to develop their system and have since developed predictive analytics based on this and other metrics they collect on a day to day basis with Polonious.

Video – Patrick Carroll, CEO Horsemen Inc, talking about predictive modelling.

Video – Alastair Steel, Co Founder of Polonious talking about working with Horsemen Inc.

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Horsemen should be flattered as since they first introduced this some years ago we have now seen it become a new standard across the investigation industry.

Many of our customers have come to us and we have started recording this statistic for them as well.

If you have ideas that may help your business grow and need help with a customizable investigation management system that can enable you to capture and report on your unique business metrics please contact Polonious.

About Horsemen Inc.
Horsemen’s investigative approach is highly client centric; they are driven by their commitment to excellence and deep passion to succeed at meeting your case specific needs! No other firm approaches fraud investigations quite like Horsemen and nor do their results compare!

Find out more about Horsemen Inc. link here.

About Patrick Carroll.
26 years in the Insurance fraud investigative Industry. Founded Horsemen Investigations in 1995 which is a California based Insurance fraud firm. With over 80 full time investigators here in California and additional coverage in Hawaii, AZ, Nevada, Washington and Oregon. We only use our own employees and never sub contract.

Specialties
Rural surveillance specialist. Noted public speaker on Surveillance, Surveillance training and Managing a surveillance crew

Find Patrick on LinkedIn.

About the Author
Alastair has more than 28 years of experience in the law enforcement and the investigation industry and has guided the rollout of the Polonious Investigation Management System to over 50 organizations across the globe. Our customers have varied business processes and requirements from large insurance carriers with hundreds of investigators and adjusters to small forensic teams. Each now has a customized solution to meet their needs.

Alastair Steel, Dip.Crim. is the co-founder of Polonious.
Find Alastair on LinkedIn

Often we are asked what are the key benefits of Polonious investigation management to an organization. I sum it up this way ‘we help you keep your clients’. Let me explain what I mean.

We enable you to build investigative processes that reflect your uniqueness and help you bring those benefits to the market.

We enable you to comply with current IT requirements such as security, disaster recovery and redundancy.

We enable you to report on your investigations and business via business intelligence reporting tools.

We augment your ability to win business, but your organizations talents have done that already, that is how you got to where you are.

But!!!

Above all else we help you keep your clients.

Delivering late will lose you business.

Nothing limits your business more. Time is always a constraint on an investigation, much more so than budget.

I have had experience both running a successful PI Firm and running SIUs for several national insurance carriers so take it from me that I understand both sides of this challenge.

The SIU Perspective: ‘Controlling Fraud and Managing Vendors’

From a SIU viewpoint when my vendors (suppliers) were slow in completing work I simply instructed other vendors to do any new cases for me. Even if the slow firm produced higher quality results I knew they would eventually cost me my relationship with my client, the claims department.

So on a day to day basis, I chose vendors who could deliver on time. I categorized the other vendor as ’boutique’. I would use boutique vendors when I had a special requirement and I was willing to wait for a result.

The outcome of this for the boutique vendor is;
* Recognition for high quality
* Less work because of bandwidth issues
* Harder cases to work because they have been identified as boutique

This was not exactly where they wanted to be in the market. If it was then they needed to extract significantly higher rates than their competitors and work harder to produce a better result.

From my experience running SIUs, and despite many phone conversations with such vendors claiming they were late as they were being more thorough, producing a better product, at critical times they often weren’t. Even those that were ‘mostly’ delivering a superior product delivered more sub standard investigations more often than those companies that could handle much bigger workloads. The key difference being they had investigation management systems in place to check their process and quality.

The PI Firm Perspective: ‘Nulli secundus’ (second to none)

You have started the firm confident in the knowledge that you can do a better job, are a better investigator than the current competitors in the market place. You are passionate about what you do and every job that heads your way gets your full attention and is delivered on time, on budget with all the dots on the Is and crosses on the Ts.

This gets much harder to replicate as the firm grows. You need to capture:

* The processes
* Ideas
* Investigation methodology
* Reporting requirements

These are the things that made you a success and are often compromized with the growth of the firm.

To try to stop this, the founder / owner ends up reading every report before it goes out the door and even worse checking every invoice to ensure both quality and profitability. Now the very person that was the cornerstone of the firm is its greatest constraint.

Investigations that are not up to the firms standards are sent back out to the field for completion and the firm eats the expense. Profitability is reduced and ultimately the reports are delivered late.

In a short time after successfully growing you have gone from great to late.

Your clients are starting to recognize your organizational constraints even if you can’t and have already decided what your likely case load is per month. You may well be downsized.

Now your choices are:

* Systematize the business from the receipt of a case through to invoicing and quality assurance to achieve both quality and timeliness so you can handle the workload the market wants to give you

OR

* Decide that growth is not what you want, start pushing up your prices and market yourself as an expert in specific fields

If your choice is systemization and growth, Polonious can help you keep your clients, whilst you grow your business.

So how does a Polonious investigation management system help your business? We help you deliver your high quality investigations on time and on budget.

Contact Polonious to find out how we can help your business.

About the Author

Alastair has more than 28 years of experience in the law enforcement and the investigation industry and has guided the rollout of the Polonious Investigation Management System to over 50 organizations across the globe. Our customers have varied business processes and requirements from large insurance carriers with hundreds of investigators and adjusters to small forensic teams. Each now has a customized solution to meet their needs.

Alastair Steel, Dip.Crim. is the co-founder of Polonious.
Find Alastair on LinkedIn

Polonious provides many Return On Investment (ROI) savings to our customers. Some of these are realized immediately, others take longer to achieve but all are part of the unique, consistent and thorough roadmap to great returns for any investigation unit or Investigation company.

Central to our roadmap is our Situation, Action, Metric model and defining our clients investigation management processes and reporting requirements in the Polonius system. During that time we identify processes that can be improved, automated or are redundant and can be removed. We focus on obvious constraints (bottlenecks) that the organization is facing and how we can negate those restraints moving forward.

These show the immediate benefits of a business process based investigation management system to our customers, that can be seen and measured within the first 3 months of use. Typically they realize a full ROI within 12 months.

That is only the beginning.

What we have noticed is that improvement is a long term journey and as our customers come to understand how to define business processes better and are able to better measure their performance during the stages of that business process they can more clearly identify constraints and refine those processes.

Improvement does not end after the initial adoption. That is just the start of an ongoing process of improvement.

With new tools at their disposal to better measure not only the process as a whole but the individual sub processes or stages of the process our customers start to identify more constraints in their organization.

Focus is then moved to the constraints and those processes are improved.

A recent review of our customers shows us that not only is there is a ROI in the first 12 months, much more impressive is the company’s position after 24 months. Improvement has become part of the organizations cadence.

One of the most interesting statistics we discovered was ‘current workload’.

One particular customer carried 900 current investigations on the day they went live. Thats 900 files where you need to manage internal staff, external clients, budgets etc. After 24 months that customer has not only increased their number of cases they receive from clients they have halved the number that are currently open.

That’s more than 450 less files to manage day to day.

If you are a PI Firm thats also 450 invoices out the door that were once sitting in the office. This significantly reduces the working capital tied up in a PI Firm, if the example above is used and we say the average case is invoiced at $1,000 then there would be $450,000 less invested in the working capital of the business. That’s number of files x Av. Invoice = Reduced working capital.

For an SIU Customer we reduced the total investigation time of claims from 40 days to 20 days for genuine claims. This significantly reduced the ‘current workload’ and dramatically improved relations with the claims department. That in turn led to an increased referral rate and ultimately greater savings being achieved by the SIU.

Delivering our customers the tools to define, manage and measure business processes enables them to improve their own business.

We are always looking to augment that ability with improved functionality such as the recent drag and drop scheduling feature where with one action a user can;
* Allocate an investigator
* Edit event details (start, duration, notes, lock etc)
* Automatically generate an email to the investigator
* Add that event to the investigators schedule

Although each of these steps only removes minutes or seconds of administration time they are core to increasing your investigative productivity and reducing your administrative burden.

For PI Firms this a savings to their bottom line as administration is rarely 100% billable.

For investigation units this frees up valuable investigative resources to investigate.

Polonious is always working with our customers to improve our investigation management systems.

About the Author

Alastair has more than 28 years of experience in the law enforcement and the investigation industry and has guided the rollout of the Polonious Investigation Management System to over 50 organizations across the globe. Our customers have varied business processes and requirements from large insurance carriers with hundreds of investigators and adjusters to small forensic teams. Each now has a customized solution to meet their needs.

Alastair Steel, Dip.Crim. is the co-founder of Polonious.
Find Alastair on LinkedIn

If you want to know how Polonious can help your organization please complete the contact form.

USA SIU-Systems

Rest of the world PoloniousLive

Situation:
In the Polonious Investigation Management System (PIMS) situation is represented in a number of ways.

* Status – The stage that the investigation is currently up to.  Customized for each customer to reflect their business process.

* Timeliness – When is the next action due, last action taken, completion date and escalations based on action and non action.

* Priority – Which tasks should be addresses first.

* Resources / Budget / Effort – What resources have been engaged to date or are required, costs incurred assets engaged including managers, administrators, specialists.

Action:
In PIMS most of the users interactions with the investigation are via log entries that reflect the actions that are being taken by the participants. These actions can cause a change in situation, record metrics and upload investigation product such as documents, video, images, audio recordings, etc.   Actions can be linked to other actions, a lack of action or set time periods.

Metrics:
In PIMS the metrics are recorded with most actions that are taken.  Metrics can encompass hours taken, expenses, investigation features or reporting metrics required for end of month, quarter or year reporting.  Metrics can also be linked directly to case data or attributes relating to evidence, people or organizations.

SAM Engaged – Situation – Action – Metrics:

Situational awareness is key not only to understanding what is going on but more importantly what the next, best, action is.  The greater your situational awareness is, the better the quality of the information, the more timely the information, the better that decision will be.  With Polonious Investigation Management Systems (PIMS) you ensure all participants have the best possible situational awareness.

Action is then key, with the right information at hand the correct actions are more easily identified.  With PIMS actions can be limited by the current situation to assist participants with their decision and we can prompt them to action if appropriate.

Once action is taken it is critical to collect all relevant information about that action, collect any investigation product, record details of any new participants, organizations or assets identified and record any exhibits collected to ensure that your situational awareness is enhanced.

About the Author
Alastair Steel, Dip.Crim. is the General Manager || Product & Sales for
Polonious Investigation Management Systems and has more than 28 years of experience in the
law enforcement and the investigation industry.

Alastair has guided the rollout of the Polonious Investigation Management System
to over 50 organizations across the globe with varied business processes and requirements from
large insurance carriers with hundreds of investigators and adjusters to small forensic teams. Each now has a customized solution to meet their needs.

Find Alastair on LinkedIn

Want to know more:
Contact Rick Shepherd, CFE the president of Polonious Investigation Management Systems.  Rick specializes in working with clients to incorporate technology into their business and improve their work processes.  Rick has been able to help firms implement solutions that improve their results, save money, deliver faster, and improve internal and external client relationships.  You can contact Rick at 888-650-POLO(7656) or via email rick@investigation-management.com.

Find Rick on LinkedIn

When we visit SIUs today we often find some very important and costly employees spending days compiling rudimentary management reports at the end of the month. Sometimes the value of these reports are merely taken for granted, since the process of adding metrics or modifying reports can often be difficult and lengthy, involving MIS hurdles and time consuming meetings. What we find is SIU directors trudging through the monthly reporting period with a dissatisfaction over the data they are getting (or the lack thereof), and a general uneasiness about the reports themselves.

The first step is to imagine there are no barriers to capturing and reporting data. Begin to think about what you and your organization really need to know, what will help you achieve your goals and what will allow you to help develop your staff. Perhaps there are executives and financial personnel in the organization who need return on investment information. Would it be helpful to capture data on outcomes that show the types of savings and costs of investigations? From a personnel development standpoint, how much would it add to your staff reviews and discussions if you could grade each investigation based on the metrics that are important to you? And if you could measure turnaround time on cases, identify steps along the way where bottlenecks occur and quantify varying outcomes based upon the source or type of investigation, would that help you improve your unit?

We’ve been able to work with SIU directors to help improve their reporting and develop the metrics they want to see. We have over 80 standard management reports in the Polonious Case Management System available at the touch of a button, and Polonious users have the ability to modify or create their own reports and distribute them automatically if desired. The reports you’ll need depend upon the types of cases you’re doing and the needs and desires of your organization. Because we’ve automated this process, SIU managers and their staff have been able to reduce their reporting cycles down from several days to only a matter of minutes and have been able to improve the performance of their units through real feedback on important items. Ultimately, this automation and access to data improves the efficiency and effectiveness of the unit. What’s more, being able to demonstrate the value of your unit through these reports can be extremely helpful in getting you the resources you need at budget time.

Find Rick on LinkedIn

About Rick Shepherd
Rick Shepherd, CFE is the president of Polonious Investigation Management Systems USA and has more than 24 years of experience in the investigation industry. Rick specializes in working with clients to incorporate technology into their business and improve their work processes. Rick has been able to help firms implement solutions that improve their results, save money, deliver faster, and improve internal and external client relationships.

You can contact Rick at 888-650-POLO(7656) or via email rick@investigation-management.com.

Whilst some organisations tend to have a churn-and-burn approach to clients and suppliers, at Polonious, we like to engage in long-term relationships with successful outcomes for all parties.

Technology partners are not to be taken on lightly so it’s worth considering whether you agree on definitions of a good partnership arrangement. At Polonious, we treat our partners consistently, from the smallest SME to the largest corporation.

Our partnerships are based on:
Trust
Value-add
Joint success

We firmly believe that partnerships fail if these components are not in place.

Trust
Both parties must explicitly trust each other, both parties must add value to the relationship. Ther e is no point engaging with an enterprise you think does not have your best interested at heart, it slows the wheels of commerce and leads to ‘lawyers at 50 paces’. We all staff adopt this creed and have signed documentation to prove it. Failure to be trustworthy is a serious offence at Polonious.

Anecdote alert: Many moons ago (1986), I backpacked through Egypt and attempted to enjoy the sights of the pyramids and temples. The local merchants were their own worse enemies. It only took one bad transaction to slow the wheels of commerce. Instead of working my way through a few hundred dollars or so, they got $5 in a rip off and maybe $50 begrudgingly over the next week. Who won? Nobody. I wanted to do more but was not prepared to work with dishonest traders. In my opinion, this is reflected in state of commerce in many countries. If you can’t trust your business supplier or client, you are going to take many more steps to transact compared to situations where trust exists.

Value-add
In some cases this is a simple of case payment for services. In true partnerships this extends to helping each others success, referring opportunities, networking on behalf of each other, endorsing services and offerings, reaching out with good ideas for each others organisations and sharing advice and friendships. These are truly value-added relationships that enable both parties to mutually benefit.

An example of this is one of our customers in the USA. They regularly endorse our offerings. The feeling is mutual, this company is great at what they do. We regularly endorse them by running videos of the owner at conferences all over the USA. We know this has brought them business and likewise us. It’s a real value-add proposition we would do for all our great partnerships.

From our perspective, you also need to review our offerings and see if they sound like the approaches you would be happy with. For example, we have a deep understanding of:

* Business – Operations, Accounts, Marketing, Sales, Manufacturing, Finance, Media and many others.
* Open Source technologies ( the same ones Google, Apple, IBM, Cisco, Citrix, VMWare and many others are leveraging)
* Integrations points and long term issues with various solution choices.
* Human factors associated with productivity, user experience, training, project management.

Joint Success
It’s unlikely that a partnership will go long-term if it’s an unfair situation where one party gains and the other feels they have lost. We’ve seen these before and they always end badly. To have an enduring relationship with your technology partner, you have to give to get. The more you give (and I’m not just talking about money here) the more you are likely to receive in return. It’s been true of humans since we climbed out of trees and roamed the Serengeti.

Polonious are dedicated to the success of our customers. We wish them the best in their endeavours each and every day and are constantly dreaming up ways that technology can help achieve these goals. Just ask them yourself.

What’s wrong with short-term technology partnerships?

Support – If you want things to work this year, next and 5 years from now, you want a partner who will put up their hand, drop everything and help you in your hour of need. Burning continually is likely to leave you with a lot of orphaned technologies and a big problem keeping them operational.

Initiation – There are advantages with your partner understanding your business and operational requirements, how things are structured and where you are trying to go. A newbie partner can take a while to bring up to speed on all this..

Conclusion

Choosing a long term technology partner is a tricky business. However it’s important to consider both sides of the transaction. If you are going to gain at their expense, don’t expect the partnership to last long.

About Stuart Guthrie
Stuart Guthrie is a senior technology specialist with more than 25 years of experience in software development, IT management, project leadership and business development. Stuart specialises in working with clients to develop plans and execute new technology capabilities with open source software. Stuart’s work has previously helped his customers win awards, reduce long term costs, improve productivity and generally love the technology they work with. Stuart has experience in a wide variety of industry sectors with previous engagements across: Banking, Insurance, Broking, Investment, Manufacturing, Distribution, Media, Software, TV, Vehicle, Local, State and Federal Government. Clients have included Otis Elevator, Rothschilds Investments, Mercedes Benz, British Broadcasting Corp, Sims Group, Galore Group, Hannan Print, Channel Seven, Progress Software Corporation (UK), IMAN Health Plans, Hartford Insurance Group, Pittwater Council, RTA NSW, DPIE (Canberra).

Find Stuart on linkedin:

For more about Polonious visit Polonious.

Want to know more:
Contact Rick Shepherd, CFE the president of Polonious Investigation Management Systems. Rick specializes in working with clients to incorporate technology into their business and improve their work processes. Rick has been able to help firms implement solutions that improve their results, save money, deliver faster, and improve internal and external client relationships. You can contact Rick at 888-650-POLO(7656) or via email rick@investigation-management.com.

Elite Investigations has opted to not utilize this type of technology on a daily basis, although on a more limited, case specific basis. If you are attending a meeting or a seminar, the video glasses are ideal.

The daily use of the video glass cameras do not suit our special needs on a daily basis due to the fact that the operator normally would need to wear the glasses and when wearing the glasses, the operative would have to maintain direct visual contact with the target of the investigation. Staring at the target of an investigation is not typically conducive to gaining the best covert footage, as people tend to drop their guard while not being watched or looked at.

We prefer covert cellular phone cameras, or the newer, key fob covert units. No one can detect the camera and it can be left on a counter, on a shopping cart, or on any surface while you are looking away.

About the author;
Jonathan E. Girard founded Elite Investigations in 1998 and since that time has built a premium investigative service in Nevada servicing the private, corporate and insurance markets. He still influences every case Elite handles and manages complex cases on a daily basis.

About Elite;
Since 1998 Elite Investigations has been utilizing every available resource to solve their clients problems. They know the State of Nevada and the Elite team of private investigators have the experience, tactics and professionalism for any challenge your business may be facing. Establishing longstanding relationships with the business leaders of Nevada has been a passion of the firm since inception. Relationships have built our business over the years, as all of our clients and our staff understand that we are only as good as our last case.

Find Elite here:

You can also purchase video glasses and other surveillance or spy equipment here:

Let’s talk about the core of your organization, about ensuring your repeatable uniqueness is captured in your organizations heartbeat: your operations, your outreach, your business process, your IT, your team leaders, your operatives and your back office need to ensure what your clients expect is what they get.

Uniqueness

Uniqueness is a key to survival, look at nature: every species has unique characteristics for gathering food and surviving, sometimes in the most extreme environments. Without it, it’s just a numbers game and you probably do not have the numbers (ie $, people) to match it with your big competitors. This uniqueness is most important on the uphill climb to size and volume.

Operational DNA

Operational DNA: Your Investigation team has it.

Every Investigation Manager we’ve met has a very clear idea how they want their operations working, who says what to whom, who does what to whom at which stage.  Lists are ticked,  repeat cycles of client updates whether, weekly or whatever are followed with consistency. Update reports are fired off with clarify, consistency and regularity to clients to keep them posted.

All good Investigation Managers also need to track their current workload and capacity and make sure the fires are stoked and running hot (but not too hot). Their unique approach to delivery and expectation management requires that their paper, people and software fit like a glove. They cannot easily bend their unique proposition to the market if their underlying systems will not bend with them. Therein lies the problem. Not all people and software are adaptable.

You’re Marines now. You adapt. You overcome. You improvise. Let’s move. Four minutes!

Gunnery Sergeant Tom Highway, Heartbreak Ridge

Problems with inflexibility

What hinders your operational DNA and is it a big deal? I think so, I’ve seen it throughout my career in lots of diverse businesses:  300 year old merchant banks, elevator companies, insurers, TV stations and of course Investigation units. It’s the same story: If your operational needs cannot be easily adapted into your software you have two basic choices:

1. Hire more people, pay additional hours to manually adapt outside the software with paper, spreadsheets, unnecessary process.
2. Get your software provider to change the code to allow for your unique requirements.

Let’s drill into these a bit:

Polonious won a Silver award for BPM excellence in 2009

Solution 1 – Hire more: The problem with the first path is also a bonus for us when we encounter it. It’s common is all our new clients. The adaptations develop a life of their own, you hire people to maintain spreadsheets, paper forms, hold meetings to work out things that the system should do for you, spend hours writing special needs spreadsheets and reports for individual clients. Essentially, all the things we clean up and give back to our clients in savings when we implement our investigation management software. Software just doesn’t do your type of operation unless it’s really adaptable. You pay because of this. By the way, we know this stuff, we won an award last year for business process management in the insurance industry.

Solution 2 – Get the software changed:

OK, this is a good idea (if your software provider will do it, some adopt a ‘one size fits all’ approach – go figure). We think it’s better if the software just does it in the first place. We tend to solve most of our client’s needs with simple configuration choices and selections made by our subject matter experts Alastair and Rick. There are points where we find the software does need adaptation, we bring those changes on quickly with minimal cost to our clients and make them configurable, this means our future and past clients can benefit from similar needs whilst still remaining unique in their market. As they say ‘a rising tide lifts all boats’.

Some thoughts to leave you with

Richard Shepherd, our President of US Operations

You and your team are definitely unique, that’s why your clients keep coming back to you, you do the sort of work they need. Our question is this: Should you be paying a penalty for this uniqueness?

If you’d like to call Rick to discuss, he’s been involved in investigations management for more than 20 years, he knows your challenges, can quickly get up to speed on them and has some great ideas on how to solve them.

Rick Shepherd 561.515.6040

About the writer

Stuart Guthrie has loved software since his first Apple II in 1978 when he helped write a star wars game.. His clients have included OTIS Elevator, Rothschilds Investment Bank, Insurance Australia Group, British Broadcasting Corporation, Mercedes Benz, Sims Metal Australia, Production Plus, Hartford Insurance Group and many others of all sizes.

Stuart is passionate about adapting software to fit business rather than the other way around.

In 2004, Stuart partnered with Alastair Steel to form Polonious and created market-leading software for all aspects of the investigation management industry from small PI firms to large insurance and government special investigation units. Stuart believes that innovation and new techniques will drive future success for Investigation Units and Polonious are leading that charge..

We talk a lot about business process and reducing the steps and time required to produce the best investigations possible. But we are not a factory. Our customers have the best of both worlds, a proven tool set and the ability to make it what they want. It does not have to be black, it is not our way or the highway.

A perfect example of this is exhibited in our latest video produced by Horsemen Investigations Inc. where Patrick Carroll discussed how Polonious enabled him to prove something he had known for years.

With the right tools and partners you gain the ability to realize your own vision, record your own metrics, run your company the way you want to.

Patrick came to us with an idea to record the details of claimants movements, I know everyone does that, the difference is Patrick wanted it captured in detail and reported on over time and in several ways. Patrick was right. There were patterns that Horsemen Investigations Inc. could use internally to better allocate their resources and plan their surveillance. Their results improved, they achieved more with less, they have an edge over their competitors. Additionally they were able to share those results and methods with their clients.

Patrick Carroll’s insight was the spark that lit the fire, but Polonious was happy to be the flint that produced it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAounEk6ndA

Regards,

Alastair Steel,
General Manager – Product & Sales

If you would like more information on the sorts of benefits our software offers our clients, please contact our industry expert Rick Shepherd. Before he joined Polonious, Rick was a senior executive at a nationwide Private Investigation firm. His ability to understand your business quickly will provide you with list of hard and soft savings this unique product provides. Rick’s number is 561.515.6040.

Alternatively, contact us using this form and we will respond rapidly:

cforms contact form by delicious:days

Every PI Firm we first meet that is engaged in quality surveillance operations blows a lot of dough each day updating their clients with fancy word processed version of an ‘update report on subject activity’.

This is a necessary and useful part of the process as it keeps the adjustor up to date with progress and gives the account rep the opportunity to discuss extending the investigation based on the update provided.

To do the process well using a word processor is time consuming.  Let’s say your software gets you some of the way there, how long each day do your account reps spend producing the updates? Let’s assume it’s 5 minutes per file since they’re all fast at your business. Let’s assume most reps are running 20 updates a day. So we’re looking at around 100 minutes per rep per day. That’s a lot of time. Considering most working days are a minimum of 480 minutes, your reps could be blowing as much as 20% of their time clicking, copying, pasting, dragging, dropping, tuning these reports before updating each client each day with the good news.

What our product PiMS provides is a tool that can instantly create these case updates from all the pertinent case facts (comments, notes, data, photos, etc) and the information uploaded directly from the field by the operative.

The generated case update is a neat, consistent, nicely presented PDF or DOC that can be instantly digested. Your clients will appreciate that you are not wasting their time with the update being high quality, consistent and instantly absorbed.

So what do out customers account reps do with all that spare time? Play computer games? No. Surf facebook? No.

They get more clients of course!

Our experience

We’ve known, from our industry experience, that this is a crucial part of the investigation delivery cycle and have been working hard to reduce it to a simple, fast and consistent process.

We’ve won prizes for this sort of work (see picture below) and have saved all of our 34 clients considerable time and money with technology like this.

Polonious won a Silver award for BPM excellence

This prize was awarded for business process re-engineering (a combination of Polonious software and deep understanding/improvement of how IMAN’s business processes work). The case study in question saves our client IMAN Insurance 60,000 hours of employee time per annum. This equates to $2,400,000 each year at their current workload.

Take advantage of our experience..

If you’d like to know more about what PiMS can do for you, talk to Rick, our President of US Operations. Before he joined Polonious, Rick was a senior executive at a nationwide Private Investigation firm. His ability to understand your business quickly will provide you with list of hard and soft savings this unique product provides. Rick’s number is 561.515.6040.

Alternatively, fill out our contact form, and we’ll be in touch:

cforms contact form by delicious:days

Our blog investigation-management.com regularly produces content we believe improves your capabilities in this important industry. To subscribe, click here.

Admin is a business killer – particularly in the investigations industry. It’s a necessary evil that we all must deal with. Compliance, SLAs, reporting needs, paper signoffs, filing, reviews, requests for information, etc, all destroy chunks of your profit.

As your business grows, client complexity increases, this inevitably leads to the admin overhead eating more of your bottom line as you react by adding layers of people and steps to cover off these requirements.

Growth in inefficiency as firm expands

It’s great practice as a PI firm to regularly review and improve your methods and operations but these attempts are often thwarted by un-integrated and old information technology, lots of little subsystems in spreadsheets, email accounts and files. All you can do is add to more of the same.

“You get into a history of doing something and though the original reason for doing it has long disappeared, you continue to do it because you have always done it” Mark McCormack on Managing

The solution:

Our whole-of-business solution will streamline the whole process of running a case. The fancy term for this is ‘business process re-engineering’. For us, it’s a by-product of our software, our installation and our training. Our industry experts (both Al Steel and Rick Shepherd have 25+ years of experience in the Investigations industry) provide unique insights into how to take your business to the next level using our industry best-of-breed software solution PiMS.

In all of our 34 clients to date, this streamlining reduces several steps and saves significant administration time. The software itself is full of productivity features, for example – we provide click-of-the-button retrieval for case reports, client updates, invoices, requests for information. Pretty much anything you can type in a word processor, we can automate. You are going to love the savings.

So the two step plan for dropping 20% of your admin costs is:
- Get the most capable software you can use for this industry (that would be PiMS)
- Get Industry veterans to implement and train you to take best advantage of it’s productivity savings. (this comes standard in our rollout plan).

The Proof:

Don’t take this from us, listen to Patrick Carroll, CEO of Horsemen Inc. a significant player in the West Coast. He will tell you how in the first year of PiMS operation, we enabled him to re-purpose 4 individuals on his team (about 8% of his team). That’s a lot of efficiency that’s produced a workforce for other parts of his operation. His client’s are also reaping the benefits of these changes and Horsemen are rewarded in kind with a bigger share of the market.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMg8E0S4lJA

Certainly it’s made a huge difference as far as what we were doing.. you certainly don’t ever want to sit down and say an individual’s obsolete but we’ve been able to take individuals who’s job descriptions were based on our old method and that’s freed them up to do other things now. So I would say from a stand point of, “has it decreased..?” I’d say it’s probably 20, 25% decrease in the amount of administration costs we’ve seen as far as the number of people required to do our old system as opposed to now. Patrick Carroll, CEO of Horsemen Inc.

Our product and our rollout method are proven in the field to deliver real savings to small to large PI firms just like yours. 20-25% efficiency frees up your people’s time to accomplish other missions and needs such as closing more business, talking to clients to understand their challenges, improving quality of report, scheduling better. Your business cannot help but benefit from this freed up resource.

What can you do about it?

Talk to Rick, our President of US Operations. Before he joined Polonious, Rick was a senior executive at a nationwide Private Investigation firm. His ability to understand your business quickly will provide you with list of hard and soft savings this unique product provides. Rick’s number is 561.515.6040.

Alternatively, fill out our contact form, and we’ll be in touch:

cforms contact form by delicious:days