Background

ARDEM has been a proud partner to Non-profit organizations changing the landscape of the United States with the collective effort to create an equivalent world. 

 The client, in search of quality leads for data processing solutions, reached out to ARDEM. The Non-Profit Organization (NPO) wanted to engage with a Business Process Outsourcing company  to provide a reliable application approval solution. They needed a data processing outsourcing solution that can  help NPOs increase operational efficiency.

Nature of the NPO

This NPO helped families and individuals struggling financially and provided them direct financial aid. These funds could be used  by these families and individuals for their needs and empowered them to use their own solutions to build their economic and social mobility.   

The U.S declared a war on poverty more than 50 years ago, and non-profits spend billions annually to help individuals with low-income.  To ensure that more money is available for the programs they are funding, NPOs are constantly seeking operational efficiencies to reduce their administrative expenses. 

In this case an efficient outsourced solution could help reduce e the overhead expenses and also shorten the application review processing time. 

The Challenges

This NPO was facing challenges to streamline the application process to increase the number of applications accepted each day and increase the number of families that could be helped. They wanted to accept more donations and raise more funds to create further opportunities for a larger group of families across the country. Therefore, they were looking for a reliable application approval solution which could help increase their operational efficiency and reduce their application processing costs. 

The Solution – ARDEM’s Support to Overcome Current Challenges  

Building a Dedicated Team 

As a BPO partner, ARDEM created a team that understood the NPO’s mission to put more money into the community. This enabled the NPO’s internal personnel to focus solely on all voice-based interactions with the fund recipients and help improve  every applicant’s experience.  

Designing a transition plan – 1k application reviews/day 

ARDEM, managed the  sizable ongoing application review processes with variable daily application volumes, formats, and processing specifications. Daily processing volume was  adjusted to fit the NPO incoming application volume. ARDEM drafted a transition plan to meet the daily/weekly/monthly turnaround volume goals set forth by the NPO and managed the complete process from initial training of the processing team to going into live production.  

ARDEM’s goal was  to train and define a team, train them in a training sandbox so that they couldmeet the required service level benchmarks. As the team increased in their  experience, more applications could be  processed each day.  

Quality Measures and Continuous Improvement 

ARDEM employed a combination of automated quality measures to provide the NPO with responsive and scalable solution. Every solution with ARDEM is built to bring continuous improvement that will assist the client’s goals. ARDEM  mirrored the client’s current process and continued to improve the daily volume of applications processed. ARDEM’s development team  worked with the client to  automate processing solutions to increase the number of daily applicants accepted.

ARDEM’s Quality Control Process 

ARDEM employed quality-control checks to deliver the highest accuracy. An established quality control methodology for this NPO put quality first to deliver high-quality data with real-time processing. 

Transition Plan-Proof Of Concept

Here is what ARDEM did to ramp up to 1,000 application approvals in a day. The concept proof included Analyst interviews and hiring based on the NPO mission,value, and, applicant standards. The training within its sandbox and training environment were also considered.  

Once the ARDEM reached the target of  1,000 applications approvals each day – this  was sustained for as long a duration as required for successful proof of concept.  

A further ramp-up was possible to achieve a larger volume of approved applications. As per the estimated growth  plan, it could be increased  to 3,000+ reviews/day.  

The timeline for ramp up was:

ARDEM Team And Training 

ARDEM recognized the need to have a team with both strong ethical and analytical skills.. 

The team consists of a Project Manager and Project Owner with dedicated application review/approval analysts. Project Manager was the the main point of contact  for the NPO The Project Owner manageds all the Analyst team and was responsible for the management of daily tasks. 

The Quality Analysts ensure that the application processing is occurring according to the client’s instruction for output quality measures. They are responsible for quality management and successful implementation. 

Every team member including application analysts in your ARDEM team was college educated  and fluent in both reading and comprehension for English and Spanish.  Additional language proficient Analysts could be added, if required by the NPO.   

Application analysts were responsible for application approval based on the client’s defined scope. 

Each candidate was interviewed and screened according to the client and ARDEM standards. We ensured that the team understood the client’s mission.  

T3 Training Method 

ARDEM used the T3 Training Methodology on this assignment. In this we, 

  • Train-the-Trainer model after understanding your entire process.  
  • Receiving the training documents, and training approach to mirror your process that yields the desired results .
  • Increased scalability with the adjusted team as volume requires and quick ramp-up with additional funds and opportunities.

Training Platform 

ARDEM utilized the NPO’s training sandbox to train the team for Identification, Address, and Income Verification, Financial Hardship, Rental Amount Verification, and Other Verification.  

Performance  Measure – Managing the Team and Improving Overall Acceptance Rate

  • ARDEM created performance plans to ensure that each analyst met specific thresholds of applications approval/day. 
  • Using the sandbox, every team member  had a report for their performance and efficiency. 
  • Quality Analysts  ensured accuracy. Each analyst’s work in the team was reviewed to check for both accuracy and logical decision-making. 
  • Error logs were available to list all issues and their resolution. This log was used while training new analysts to perform a larger number of approvals from the start. 
  • Certain applications were dismissed to retrain programs to find ways for approval. 
  • The training manual got updated with the lessons from processing and feedback, and the team was retrained.

Reporting

The NPO had  visibility into what their team was doing and when. We provided variety of options for reporting- daily, weekly, monthly, or in real-time, or, customized via our ARDEM Collaboration platform.

The Outcomes  

Our perfect combination of qualified experts, robust processes, and advanced technology helped the NPO achieve: 

  • Ability to Accept All Donations as we curate the most qualified team members 
  • Highest Accuracy – before delivery we ensured close to 100% accurate data. 
  • Increased Visibility – the ARDEM Collaboration Platform provided  you access to your account on our server from where you can upload raw files, view the status of your project in real-time, and even download the flat output files, in a few simple clicks. 
  • Cost reduction –  anywhere from an immediate 30-50%+ cost reduction  
  • Security and confidentiality at physical, network, and employee levels 
  • Continuous process improvement 

The Conclusion 

ARDEM  believes in being a positive contributor to our community and to our environment. As a team, we aim to make a positive difference in our community. At ARDEM, we   understand our clients’ needs anddevelop solutions that help them improve their operational efficiency and reduce their costs.

ARDEM was glad  to help the  NPO provide financial aid quickly to the community.

ARDEM provides Business Process Outsourcing and Business Process Automation Services to established NPOs to help them improve Operational Efficiency and Reduce Costs.  For more information please reach out to us  at pricing@ardem.com or call us at 908-359-2600. 

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