ACC's Palmerston North Office - all offices are expected to remain open after transformation and front line staffing levels will remain the same.
The Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) is poised to embark on a high productivity application PaaS (HPAPaaS) tender as it shifts its focus to case management.
HPAPaaS is essentially a "low-code/no-code" platform for rapid enterprise application development and deployment.
NZ Police went to market in March 2018 for a similar capability, eventually selecting Appian, Pegasystems, Salesforce and Service Now as its supplier panel on 1 August this year.
ACC reached the end of a huge core refresh called Shaping our Future and is now moving on to transforming customer facing case management in a phase called the Integrated Change Investment Portfolio (ICIP) including what it calls "Next Generation Case Management" (NGCM).
The total transformation is expected to cost $669 million by completion in 2022.
Advance notice has now been given of a tender for a HPAPaaS including preconditions any successful bidder will have to fulfil.
Bidders need to provide the service must have an established and proven track record and global revenue from the in-scope services greater than NZ$50 million.
They also have to demonstrate relevant capability delivered in-region in the form of five or more significant use-case scenarios in A/NZ completed in the past five years.
A strong, established support and configuration channel/partner capability must also exist in-region as is the ability to run enterprise applications "at scale".
ACC wants to contract with a single entity which will be solely and contractually liable for the supply and subscriptions or licensing of the HPAPaaS.
The successful provider must also demonstrate an evolving application or module catalogue driven from investment in research and development.
Security, high availability, integration capability flesh out the requirements.
ACC is experiencing high growth in new claims and in weekly compensation claims, which are by their nature more complex.
"A core part of ACC’s customer transformation is a redesign of the case management approach, which, until recently, had not been reviewed for more than 20 years," the state-owned corporation told Parliament earlier this year.
"When fully implemented, Next Generation Case Management will deliver more effective case management tailored to customers’ specific needs and requirements, and involve greater collaboration with providers. ACC believes this will enable clients to recover faster and return to work sooner."
Next Generation Case Management has been tested at what ACC calls "launch pad" trial sites in Hamilton and
Hastings since September 2017 and March 2018 respectively.
"To date, 25,000 claims (approximately 1.25 per cent of ACC’s total open claims) have been managed through the launch pad," it said.
"This trial has demonstrated substantial improvements in service delivery for clients, including in rehabilitation."
ACC’s nationwide roll-out of NGCM was scheduled to begin with staff changes and some enabling technology in August, followed by full technology integration in November. Roll-out was planned in five tranches between August 2019 and August 2020.
Other elements of ICIP include client payments, phase two of which was scheduled to begin in late 2019.
"ACC anticipates three releases, including customer experience improvements through digital channels, with a planned completion date of late 2020," the corporation advised Parliament in June.
Over the next six months ACC will also continue implementing its Health Services Strategy, through the following four ICIP funded initiatives in primary care, escalated care, non-acute rehabilitation and home care support services.
A new business analytics platform was also scheduled to go-live in late August.
Today ACC and IRD also jointly announced they would no longer accept cheques as payment from March next year. IRD received more than 430,000 cheques while ACC received approximately 25,000, but the numbers are falling.
Inland Revenue deputy commissioner Sharon Thompson says New Zealanders are already embracing the digital world and IR wants to do everything it can to help customers switch seamlessly to cheque alternatives.
“Cheques are part of a paper-based world and don’t mesh with the increasingly digital world we now operate in. The number of cheques being used is spiralling down and will continue to trend that way. Electronic payments are simpler, easier and safer,” Sharon Thompson says.
ACC head of business customer service delivery Phil Riley says ACC and IR have both agreed that business customers were better serviced using electronic payments.
“Electronic payments are more efficient and secure, with only a small percentage of customers still choosing to make their payments by cheque," he said.
"Our digital portal MyACC for Business makes it really easy for business customers to set up and manage their payments.”
