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InsuranceFinance Operations

21% Productivity Increase Across Finance Operations — Without Adding Headcount

A global specialty provider of P&C insurance and reinsurance — specifically, their North American Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable functions.

IndustryP&C Insurance & Reinsurance
OperationAP, AR & Collections
Scale50 FTE · Hybrid / Remote
Time to Baseline4 weeks

Volume was growing — but leadership had no way to measure whether the team could absorb it

The department was tasked with absorbing policy-driven volume growth without proportionally increasing headcount. The teams were working full days, and Collections leaders were consistently requesting additional staff, citing an inability to keep up with daily workload — let alone anticipated growth.

Existing reporting was entirely financial: money in, money out, outstanding payment counts, total SAP transactions. These numbers described the business but revealed nothing about operational performance. Leadership had no visibility into productivity at the department or individual level, no cost-to-serve metrics, and no way to objectively assess whether capacity existed or was genuinely exhausted.

The estimated cost of inaction was $1.5M annually — driven by unnecessary hiring into roles where capacity already existed but couldn’t be measured, and the inability to model workforce requirements against actual workload.

Operational Friction DetectedPre-Bramble baseline
  • No productivity baseline0 metricsHigh
  • Cost-to-serve unknownNo dataHigh
  • Capacity invisible to leadersUnmeasuredHigh
  • Hiring requests unvalidatedOngoingMedium

The Collections teams didn’t lack capacity — they lacked visibility into the capacity they already had

Within the first four weeks of establishing data integrations across SAP, GetPaid, Concur, and five other core systems, Bramble built the department’s first trusted operational baseline. What it revealed surprised leadership: the Collections teams — the same teams requesting additional headcount — had significant untapped capacity. The gap wasn’t in staffing. It was in the absence of any metric that could objectively distinguish high performers from the average.

Key Operational Insight
Significant hidden capacity existed across the Collections teams. The operation didn’t need more people — it needed the data to prove what the VP already suspected, and the operational framework to lift productivity across the board by sharing the practices of high performers.
Before — Hidden friction
Productivity baselineNone
Cost-to-serve visibilityNone
Workforce planning basisGut feel
High-performer recognitionSubjective
After — Friction removed
Productivity baselineEstablished
Cost-to-serve visibilityPer-process
Workforce planning basisData-modeled
High-performer recognitionObjective

From zero operational metrics to data-driven workforce planning

Bramble connected seven core systems to build the department’s first operational baseline, then provided the visibility that transformed how leadership planned, measured, and managed their finance operations.

Days 1–30

Establish Baseline

Bramble integrated with SAP, GetPaid, Concur, AppZen, ImageRight, Outlook, and WorkDay to build a trusted operational baseline across Receivables, Collections, and Accounts Payable — the first time productivity had ever been measured in these teams.

Seven system integrations established and validated
Productivity baselined at department and individual level
Workload volumes quantified by team and process
Days 31–60

Reveal Capacity

The baseline exposed what leadership suspected but couldn’t prove: Collections teams had meaningful unused capacity. Bramble also identified significant productivity variance between team members, pinpointing high performers whose practices could be shared.

Hidden capacity quantified across Collections teams
Productivity variance between individuals surfaced objectively
High-performer best practices identified for replication
Days 61–90

Operationalize the Insight

Armed with objective data, the VP stopped open requisitions, closed hiring plans, and began sharing high-performer practices across the teams. Workforce planning shifted from reactive headcount requests to data-modeled capacity forecasting.

Hiring requests stopped — open requisitions closed immediately
Best practices shared to lift team-wide productivity
Workforce planning modeled against workload and productivity data

Results measured from the deployment

These are measured outcomes — not projections. Real operational improvements delivered through Bramble.

21%
Productivity increase per FTE
Baseline established Q3 2025. Measured improvement YTD 2026.
+13%
Workload absorbed without hiring
Volume growth driven by policy growth — absorbed by existing team.
−1%
FTE change
Headcount held flat while productivity and volume both increased.
$1.5M
Annual cost of inaction avoided
Hiring plans stopped based on validated capacity data.
4 wks
Time to trusted baseline
Seven system integrations established and validated.
0 → Full
Productivity visibility
From no operational metrics to individual-level performance data.
Sustained
Improvement tracking
Current performance continuously measured against baseline.

I knew we had capacity in these teams — I just didn’t have the right data to establish that as objective fact. Now that we have Bramble, I am not having to constantly bat away hiring requests. The leaders now understand that they can expect more from their team.

VP — Finance Operations & TransformationGlobal Specialty Insurer (North America)
See It For Yourself

See where your finance operations are losing capacity

We’ll map your AP, AR, and collections workflows, establish a trusted productivity baseline, and show you where capacity exists — so workforce planning is driven by data, not assumptions.

For COOs, VP Finance Operations, and Shared Services Leaders.