Company: Optum, Eden Prairie, MN
Company Description: Optum is a health services and innovation company whose mission is to help people live healthier lives and to help make the health system better for everyone. At Optum, we design every experience by leveraging the voice of our customers and implement channel solutions which enhance and streamline the customer experience.
Nomination Category: Customer Service & Call Center Awards Individual Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Back-Office Customer Service Professional of the Year - Other Service Industries
 Nomination Title: Cathy Sandlian
- Which will you submit for your nomination in this category, a video of up to five (5) minutes, explaining the achievements since July 1, 2021 of the nominated woman, OR written answers to the questions? (Choose one):
Written answers to the questions
- If you are submitting a video of up to five (5) minutes in length, provide the URL of the video here, OR attach it to your entry via the "Add Attachments, Videos, or Links to This Entry" link above, through which you may also upload a copy of your video. If you are submitting written answers to the questions for this category, provide them in the spaces below.
- Briefly describe the nominated individual: history and past performance (up to 200 words):
Total 200 words used.
Cathy Sandlian’s career began in 2006 as an administrative assistant supporting a Senior Vice President with Request for Proposals for Medicaid businesses at AmeriChoice. In March 2008 she became Project Coordinator, managing Avaya automated outreach systems while coordinating programs for AmeriChoice. In June 2008 she became an Associate Project Manager responsible for United Health Care Community and State Medicaid automated outreach systems while coordinating and managing their National Call Center.
Cathy managed these Avaya processes after transition to Optum in 2012. At this time, she became a respected Business Analyst and by 2016, she became the Subject Matter Expert for Avaya for Optum automated outreaches, handling all job set ups and administration within multiple systems, including Aspect, Live Vox, Avaya and Silverlink.
In August 2018, Cathy took on a Team of five analysts, after Optum acquired legacy Alere, to restructure Avaya outreach systems to meet Optum standards. Optum began migrating Avaya outreach processes to Omni Genesys in 2020 where Cathy became outreach data manager for all outreaches, having taught herself Structured Query Language to do so. To this day, this is her primary focus, however, she has become the key developer for Omni data loading, outreach prioritization, automation, and reporting.
- Outline the nominee's achievements since July 1 2021 that you wish to bring to the judges' attention (up to 250 words):
Total 250 words used.
By July 2021, External Payor Channel migrations from Avaya to Omni had already occurred. Cathy had begun her journey in self-taught Structured Query Language to create and support data loading for the new Omni Automated Outreach system. She applied her learning beyond data loading by creating SSRS reporting to provide the business with capability insights, ensuring their needs and goals were met while utilizing the new system.
When Population Health Services migrations occurred in early 2022, new challenges were observed within the data load and execution processes for attempt management within the Omni system. Cathy’s rapid response with SQL based automation to clear attempt inhibiting data from active Omni tables allowed for the recovery of over $1.5M in connectivity revenue that would otherwise have been lost due to outreach campaign stagnation from a lack of call progression.
Cathy further recognized the need to clear already attempted contact data from the outreach system to prevent system capacity issues. She developed and automated purge logic to ensure consistently fresh outreach data remained within the system at any given time. To ensure business needs with outreach priorities were met, Cathy developed system logic to ensure older records were completed first, tightening the identification-to-call attempt timeframe, and improving outreach consistency.
Other automation initiatives included learning and applying automated Agent Movement between campaigns, clearing precise 48-hour skip day logic to reduce agent idle times and provide time of day variability to attempts, as well as business selected prioritization automation and refined SSRS reporting development.
- Reference any attachments of supporting materials throughout this nomination and how they provide evidence of the claims you have made in this nomination (up to 250 words):
Total 250 words used.
Ensuring Call Progression Value Story – The first of many solutions to correct innate issues within the outreach system, this document shows how system behavior was preventing calls from progressing as intended and designed within Omni, and the steps taken to remedy the issue. At $1.5M in revenue recovery, this was the first of several efforts to ensure optimal system behavior.
Attempt and Skip Day Logic Value Story – This document illustrates the impacts of eliminating 48-hour specific skip day logic required by some businesses to prevent calling Members daily. This demonstrates improving Member connectivity by varying time of contact attempt and increasing meaningful wins once the logic was applied.
Automation Opportunities Capability Reporting Value Story – This document describes efforts with SSRS reporting automation to eliminate manual reporting and reduce errors. SSRS reporting replaced older EXCEL slicer reporting which was cumbersome to manage. With this reporting, businesses now had system insight that allowed for better outreach planning.
Business Priority Selection Value Story – This document describes efforts to streamline Businesses outreach priority changes. Instead of requesting sometimes hourly changes via a ticketing system, they now utilize a selections spreadsheet to select what groups, order, times etc., that they want to contact, and drop a file to a location where automation structures outreaches to reflect those selections. This also shows FTE savings incurred as part of this solution.
Other supporting documents include detailed lists of opportunities and accomplishments as well as direct accolades Cathy has received since July 2021
- Explain why the achievements you have highlighted are unique or significant. If possible compare the achievements to the performance of other players in your industry and/or to the nominee's past performance (up to 250 words):
Total 250 words used.
For over two years, Cathy’s efforts with data management, reporting and automations have led businesses to tangible successes with their automated outreaches. She now manages 67 data processes, and 134 capability reports of over 230 campaigns for 10 business partners who utilize Omni for automated outreach. These processes account for over 12 million automated outreach attempts to 6 million Members reached in 2022.
Within the past year alone, Cathy’s efforts have improved meaningful Member connectivity by 4%, improved agent productivity by reducing idle times by 25%, identified then rectified multiple innate system issues, and recovered over $1.7M in outreach engagement revenue. At the same time since last year, Cathy’s automation solutions have directly saved more than 60 hours per week in full-time employee efforts previously expended upon communicating daily system adjustment needs, making manual administrative changes to the system, and fielding tickets submitted by businesses when their priorities change. Her dedication to enabling businesses to exceed their goals with outreach, while reducing efforts and streamlining administrative processes is Cathy’s passion.
Value stories abound within her portfolio; accomplishments, discoveries, observations, behaviors, solutions, and implementations. Her unique perspective in managing Omni outreach data and over 18 years of experience with automated dialing systems, enables Cathy to identify outreach, reporting and automation improvement opportunities with ease. Cathy has several opportunities to potentially patent her on the fly SQL/SSIS solutions developed for Genesys, the development partner for the Optum Omni outreach system, as meaningful and impactful additions to their standard outreach product offering.
| Attachments/Videos/Links: |
|---|
|
