Ohio Mutual Insurance Wins Interactive Intelligence Innovator Award

INDIANAPOLIS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

Interactive Intelligence Group Inc. ININ, a global provider of software and cloud services for customer engagement, unified communications and collaboration, has honored its customer Ohio Mutual Insurance Group with its annual Innovator Award.

Ohio Mutual won the award based on its unique and forward-thinking application of the Interactive Intelligence business process automation software, Interaction Process Automation^® (IPA).

Ohio Mutual deployed IPA to streamline and automate business process flows for its service center and PL (personal lines) and CL (commercial lines) underwriting groups comprised of 46 associates.

"Prior to IPA, we had multiple workflows in various formats, which included paper processes," said Bethany Foy, Ohio Mutual's business lines service center manager. "This made gathering, prioritizing and distributing work incredibly labor-intense and time-consuming. It also meant we had little visibility into our volume of work or service levels, thus no good way to prioritize or make improvements."

Ohio Mutual used IPA to replace its disparate systems and manual processes with a single application for automatically capturing, prioritizing, routing, escalating and tracking work within its service center and underwriting groups.

"We used IPA's simple templates and graphical process maps to standardize and automate the distribution of work among our service center members and underwriters," Foy said. "We were also able to automate follow-up communications with our insurance agents. Combined, this has reduced redundancies, errors, and delays, which has led to dramatic increases in efficiencies and improved service."

IPA has also given Ohio Mutual insight into work volume and processes. "Our associates can now see all their work in one place, which has improved productivity," Foy said, "and management has a clear view of how much work is actually in progress. This has enabled us to prioritize and adjust work as needed to most effectively meet our business goals."

Ohio Mutual has also credited IPA with helping it meet compliance requirements. "Being in the insurance business means we have to take our rules and regulations very seriously," Foy said. "We've used IPA to create standardized processes so nothing falls through the cracks. It's given us a framework that's empowered associates to do their jobs more effectively, while maximizing accountability and compliance."

Ohio Mutual has further exploited the value of IPA with a number of customizations, which include the following:

• The ability to pull data from its policy management system and Salesforce, and push data to its content management system.
• The ability to request information from external agents and have IPA manage the follow-up.
• A search function that enables users to find other people's work, view it and make notations.
• A maintenance process that enables managers to easily and quickly add new work type categories and email templates without assistance from IT.

According to Ohio Mutual's President and CEO Jim Kennedy, the IPA deployment was a perfect application of the company's Guiding Principles.

"I applaud our service and underwriting teams for exemplifying our Guiding Principles through this IPA deployment," Kennedy said. "They were passionate about finding workable solutions to increase efficiency, they took an innovative approach to addressing the complexities of managing thousands of work items, and they established a solid partnership with Interactive Intelligence to make this project a success."

About Interactive Intelligence
Interactive Intelligence ININ is a global provider of software and cloud services for customer engagement, unified communications and collaboration that help businesses improve service, increase productivity and reduce costs. Backed by a 21-year history of industry firsts, 22 patents and more than 6,000 global customer deployments, Interactive offers customers fast return on investment, along with robust reliability and security. The company gives even the largest organizations an alternative to unproven solutions from start-ups and inflexible solutions from legacy vendors. Interactive has been among Software Magazine's Top 500 Global Software and Services Suppliers for 14 consecutive years, has received Frost & Sullivan's Company of the Year Award for five consecutive years, and is one of Mashable's 2014 Seven Best Tech Companies to Work For. The company is headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana and has more than 2,000 employees worldwide. For more information, visit www.inin.com.

Interactive Intelligence is the owner of the marks INTERACTIVE INTELLIGENCE, its associated LOGO and numerous other marks. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners.

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