The Challenge
CASH needed to file 275,294 claims with the claims administrator on behalf of clients. Initially, they planned to hire dozens of temporary workers for manual data entry — each claim requiring about 5 minutes to process.
At that rate, processing all claims would require:
22,941 hours of labor (over 1,000 full workweeks).
An estimated $458,823 in wages (at $20/hour average data entry wage).
A team of 10 temporary employees would each spend 2,294 hours (more than a year of full-time work per person).
The average U.S. data-entry worker is 41.6 years old, meaning the task would have disproportionately relied on older temps doing repetitive, manual work for months on end.
Without automation, the project would have been costly, time-consuming, and likely to suffer human error.
The Approach
Albright Labs built a fully automated claims filing system that eliminated the need for manual data entry:
Excel parsing: Claims data was pulled directly from CASH’s internal spreadsheets.
Headless browser automation (PhantomJS): Claims were automatically submitted online, replicating manual entry but at scale.
Confirmation filing: Submission confirmations were automatically stored and printed for internal records.
Error handling: Queue monitoring guaranteed processes restarted if anything stalled.
We worked closely with CASH’s staff to refine the workflows and ensure the system could handle high data volumes without being rate-limited by the claims administrator’s site.
Execution & Delivery
The system was developed in a single sprint and deployed successfully for the first round of claims. Two years later, we delivered an update to adapt the system to changes in the claims administrator’s portal.
Key features included:
Claim management portal with submission tracking.
Automated submission system capable of scaling to hundreds of thousands of claims.
Confirmation logging for compliance and audit purposes.
Results & Impact
The results were transformative:
13,500+ payroll hours saved in the first round of filings alone.
$450,000+ in avoided labor costs, based on conservative wage estimates.
100% automation of a process that otherwise would have required dozens of temp workers for more than a year.
The client reported that the profit margins on claims more than doubled compared to the manual process, as overhead costs were eliminated.
Lessons Learned
This project demonstrated how targeted automation can replace hundreds of thousands of hours of repetitive labor — while increasing accuracy and compliance. By persisting through technical hurdles like rate limits and headless browsing challenges, Albright Labs delivered a solution that not only saved enormous costs, but also unlocked new profitability for CASH.
