Digital Transformation · Process Automation · Easy · 20-30 min

Automating Manual Back-Office Processes

Automating Manual Back-Office Processes is an easy Digital Transformation process automation case interview that runs 20-30 min. An insurer's back office processes claims and policy changes manually — slow, error-prone, and expensive, with 600 staff in operations. A strong answer works through 5 phases: Map the processes by volume, repetitiveness, and rule-based-ness to find automation candidates; Match the tool to the task; Distinguish automating a bad process from first redesigning it (don't pave the cowpath); Quantify savings; Plan the workforce impact.

Last updated 2026-09-05

The brief

An insurer's back office processes claims and policy changes manually — slow, error-prone, and expensive, with 600 staff in operations. Leadership wants to automate using a mix of RPA, workflow tools, and AI document processing, targeting a 25% cost reduction. You're asked where to start and how to capture the savings.

How to approach it

  1. Map the processes by volume, repetitiveness, and rule-based-ness to find automation candidates
  2. Match the tool to the task — RPA for rote rule-based steps, AI for document/unstructured work
  3. Distinguish automating a bad process from first redesigning it (don't pave the cowpath)
  4. Quantify savings — capacity freed, error reduction — net of build and maintenance cost
  5. Plan the workforce impact — redeployment, reskilling, governance of the bots

What a strong answer does

  • Prioritizes high-volume, rule-based processes first
  • Redesigns broken processes before automating them
  • Matches RPA vs AI vs workflow to the nature of each task
  • Nets bot build/maintenance cost against gross savings and plans the workforce change
  • Plans governance — who owns and maintains the bots when processes change

Red flags interviewers score down

  • Automates a broken process instead of fixing it first
  • Applies RPA to everything, including judgment-heavy work
  • Counts gross savings with no build/maintenance cost or adoption friction
  • Ignores the impact on the 600 operations staff

Cases are written in each firm's style, written and reviewed by working consultants; they are not the firms' own published cases.

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