Case Study: Insurance Builder ABCG 2x Productivity

How Australian Building and Construction Group replaced SugarCRM with one platform to automate work, drive revenue, and complete work faster. From anywhere.

Australian Building and Construction Group (ABCG) have been operating in the insurance building repair industry for over 13 years. Their clunky SugarCRM system frustrated their team, subcontractors, and clients. It caused issues across compliance, efficiency, speed, and data. So, their sister company, Codafication, created Crunchwork. Crunchwork is an end-to-end, all in one project platform that automates manual processes, lowers costs, and drives profits.

• 2 x as many jobs processed daily
• 50% faster data-entry
• 40% increase in efficiency

The Challenge

The team at ABC Group used a custom configuration of SugarCRM as their Claims Management System. It’s known internally as CMS. Since 2012, they modified the software to suit how they run end-to-end projects and jobs for insurers.

Even though CMS had been customised, it still failed to make the most of their resources.

“We were really constrained by what we could do with CMS. We could see ways to work faster, or improve processes, but we hit a wall with the software. We knew there had to be an easier, faster way to do things.”

Sam Brown
General Manager of Insurance

But with so much time and money already invested in the solution, the ROI of a replacement system had to be outstanding to be considered. Their challenges included:

• Slow turnaround time on jobs due to an inefficient system
• Expensive system maintenance overheads
• Difficult and slow to customise or add changes
• Confusing system that took 6-8 weeks for new staff and contractors to learn
• Inability to customise for different clients or industries
• Difficulty customising or making improvements
• Required extensive, ongoing modifications to be suitable
• Frequent crashes during customisation or high-volume periods
• Repetitive data-entry at multiple points in the same system
• Poor visibility over what was happening in real-time across the business
• They could not scale resources up and down quickly during a CAT event

The team at ABC Group needed a user-first system that could be adapted to their business processes, instead of having to change their business to fit the software. They needed a solution that could quickly scale up and down during events, that brought their clients into one place, and automated data entry and admin. They needed to improve resource utilisation and simplify their software.

“Our old system was like a house of cards. Any change would have a system-wide impact – we never knew if one small change would topple the whole system. So, we ended up with a generic process, even though our clients all have unique needs and expectations.”

Sam Brown
General Manager of Insurance

The Solution

In 2016, Codification’s end-to-end project platform, Crunchwork, was implemented across the entire organisation. Crunchwork integrates with leading insurer portals so the team can manage all their work without leaving the system. A series of industry-specific workflows remove manual processes, foolproof compliance, and accelerate performance.

• Easy and quick to customise
• Allowed the business to leverage machine learning, AI
• Business analytics in real-time
• Industry-specific set up and workflows
• One solution that could satisfy various client needs and configurations
• Easy, and fast customisation to meet changing client processes quickly
• Scalability to support their work in CAT event
• Send clients live updates and data
• Unique workflows and value chains for each client in the one system

Results, ROI & Looking forward

ABCG had invested so much time, money, and resources into their SugarCRM system the team was hesitant to abandon it. But the workflow automations, one-point data entry, and user-first design meant that Crunchwork added instant value. ABCG found:

• 2 x as many jobs processed daily
• 50% faster data-entry
• 40% increase in overall efficiency
• 90% reduction in new staff upskill time
• 5 hours back weekly per staff member