The claims processing solution quickly spread by word of mouth throughout the industry, and in 1988 KeyProcessors was contacted by both Sharp Electronics and Proton to process warranty claims submitted by their respective authorized service centers.
Merging in 1989 with a marketing firm to form KeyPrestige Inc. (“KPI”) the company launched a major campaign to promote its claims processing solution to manufacturers in both the consumer electronics and home appliance industries.
By 1992 the KPI solution was embraced by Alpine, Hitachi, JVC, Frigidaire and General Electric Appliances. Having had numerous discussions with these industry leaders, Ms. Salmon visualized a method to virtually eliminate paper warranty claims and thus began to guide her development team to begin laying out the framework for the electronic submission of claims via modem-to-modem directly from the manufacturers’ warranty service providers. As a result, the following year, KPI launched its Electronic Claims Processing (“ECP”) solution. Rudimentary in terms of today’s technology, each service provider was given a simple ‘Plug N’ Play’ DOS based claims entry and filing software on a 3 1/2” floppy disk. Using either a 286/386 personal computer with 4 Mb ram and a 2400 baud dial up modem, servicers would connect to the KPI IBM AS400 mainframe and upload their claim files for processing.
Larger service firms such as Sears, Montgomery Ward and many, many others already had warranty claims input in their legacy systems or commercially available service management software and did not want to print them out and load them back manually on a floppy disk. Therefore, under Salmon’s direction her team created a standard claim record format and custom interface programs that enabled these companies to send their warranty claims electronically. Within a few short years KPI had written over 50 such custom import programs to accommodate virtually any type of software.
In 1994 KPI merged with a formidable competitor named Information Network Systems, Inc. (“INS”), subsidiary of Westell Technologies, that provided virtually the same solution running on a UNIX platform. At this time INS processed warranty claims electronically for both Thomson Consumer Electronics and Zenith. The new company became known as KeyPrestige Information Network Systems or “KPINS” for short.
The KPINS warranty claims business continued to grow as additional clients we onboarded including Whirlpool, CAMCO, Pioneer, JVC, Phillips, Sony, Bosch, Fedders, Thermador, Daewoo, and several others.
In 2000 KPINS replaced the original DOS claims filing software with a MS Windows version named PROClaims™ which was later expanded with additional functionality and features for service companies to manage all of their job work orders along with warranty claims. The new software, ProClaimsPlus™ was eventually used by over 3,000 independent service companies across several industries.
In 2003 Janice and her executive team were introduced to ServicePower Technologies plc and were intrigued with their field service management solution that included a patented technician route optimization algorithm. Salmon’s vision was to bolt a service management product onto the claims engine to provide manufacturers with an end-to-end solution for job management, dispatch with warranty processing on the back end. In January 2004 KPINS was acquired by ServicePower and a separate company, ServicePower Field Service Solutions was formed with offices in Costa Mesa, CA and Louisville, KY.
The newly formed company embarked on a mission to develop and market the first SaaS based field service and claims management solution which it launched successfully in 2005. The rest is history!
Ms. Salmon left ServicePower in 2010 and founded JustPressOne, Inc. serving the independent service and repair industry with front and back office administrative support. Today the company has nearly 200 employees globally providing service to both SMB service companies and third-party service administrators.
Most recently Ms. Salmon embarked on a mission to change the way the service industry processes warranty claims once again with the recent launch of a new business venture called ClaimWorks™. ClaimWorks is a one-of-a-kind warranty claims aggregation and artificially intelligent middleware software solution that pre-screens, cleanses and automatically correct claims submitted by warranty service providers prior to being forwarded to one of the many final processing systems/portals including ServiceBench and ServicePower to name a few. Salmon’s team has been actively working with many of the most prominent providers of service company business management software and claims processing portal providers to add a proprietary API to their products enabling the connection to ClaimWorks.
In summary, based upon feedback received from numerous service companies, many of whom do not have the time to complete, submit and correct claims in a timely or accurate manner, are thrilled about the ClaimWorks solution. According to Salmon, 28 companies have already started using the service with more to follow.
