What is CAPS?

Simply described it is an IT communications gateway between the UK body shops and their work provider and insurers customers. CAPS therefore is able to present a common, secure and virus free business view of all motor claims information to an Insurer from what is today a very fragmented UK bodyshop repair community. CAPS therefore seamlessly connects multiple bodyshops to their insurer/work providers as if they all had the same IT management system.

Why CAPS?

There is an ever increasing need by the work provider and their policyholders for accurate and timely motor claims status information. The work provider’s response to these needs has been to introduce time consuming labour intensive web based manual update systems that continues to increase the overhead costs of their bodyshop networks with double entry key data and largely unnecessary duplicated effort. CAPS is a bodyshop led IT initiative that automates this information transfer to lower their overhead costs whilst seamlessly delivering more accurate and timely information to the work provider.

The Scope of CAPS v 1?

 

Each of the CAPS consortium management systems have the capability to record and automatically time stamp each of the milestones shown in the above diagram and transmit it automatically to any pre authorised third party using secure and encrypted xml messaging technology over the internet.

CAPS cannot recieve any information from a bodyshop management system that has not been contractually pre agreed by the bodyshop in advance and is not already a part of the technical xml script that CAPS currently uses today

CAPS v2

The data Scope of CAPS has now been extended with version 2 and now includes the automatic transmission of all the line items details of a bodyshops invoice, and pre loading capability of new work instructions direct into the bodyshop management system from an xml message sent from an authorised work provider via CAPS.

The Goal of CAPS?

The goal of CAPS then is to deliver a unified and automated view of motor claims information to any authorised third party, from the main source of that information, the multiple and many independent body shop management systems. This way the body shops admin overhead costs are lowered and the insurers get accurate, consistent and reliable information on which to build better customer service at lower claims costs.

The Point to Point Alternative to CAPS argument

Some industry leaders have questioned the need for a gateway to solve the need for communication standards and suggest that once a set of standards have been agreed by the industry point to point communication would be all that is then necessary.

CAPS research into the detailed technical and commercial requirements to operate practical standards in secure B to B environment however has led us to the conclusion that the gateway that acts rather like the telephone router is the best solution. Whilst CAPS does not store the claims data it does act as a communications validity checker and a filter for potential viruses from any one of the 5000 UK bodyshop systems, from infecting Insurers business systems that a point to point B to B environment simply could not do.

No insurer that we have spoken to would allow point to point direct B to B connections into their IT network direct from any bodyshop without some sort of filter and gateway.

However most importantly without the gateway concept in place many new cross industry applications could not be considered practical. Applications such as real time fraud detection of multiple claims from the same vehicle, cross insurer VM network penetrations analysis and refinishing business applications could not be automated and would remain manual data collection and reactive claims settlement exercises.

The CAPS gateway is about changing all that and enabling a marketplace for automation of the fragmented UK claims data.