At a Glance
About Crown Information Management
Crown Information Management, part of Crown Worldwide Group, is a trusted provider of business process outsourcing, secure document storage, digitisation and records management. With decades of experience supporting highly regulated industries including healthcare and government, Crown combines experienced operational teams, robust quality management and modern digital technology to run complex document workflows at scale.
The Challenge: High Volume, Hard Deadline, Unpredictable Documents
One of Crown’s major clients, a leading UK public healthcare organisation, needed 750,000 sight-test fee claim forms processed within a fixed, non-negotiable deadline. Each claim ran to two pages, giving a total volume of 1.5 million pages containing patient names, addresses, contractor numbers and performer list codes.
Volume was only part of the task. Crown also had to guarantee:
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High extraction accuracy across the entire batch
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Secure handling of sensitive personal and healthcare information
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Compliance with applicable data-protection and information-security requirements
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Consistent quality across a very large number of documents
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Completion within a demanding and non-negotiable timeframe
The documents themselves added further complexity. Many forms carried handwritten entries, corrections and crossed-out information. Rubber stamps partially covered printed labels, handwriting sat over machine print, and data appeared in unexpected positions. Apparently structured forms behaved like unstructured ones.
Crown had the operational experience, the teams and the governance required to deliver. What this particular combination of volume, content complexity and deadline pressure demanded was a processing model that could scale beyond conventional staffing limits at short notice.
Why AI Alone Was Not Enough
AI-powered OCR processes clear print quickly and recognises many kinds of handwriting. It still encounters difficulty with rushed or inconsistent handwriting, incorrectly completed fields, corrections, stamps obscuring print, layered content and entries outside the expected field positions.
In a healthcare environment, an output that is merely probable is not sufficient. Data must be validated to the required quality level before it enters the customer’s downstream processes. Crown therefore needed automation for everything that could be processed confidently, combined with secure human-in-the-loop handling for everything requiring judgement — and without compromising data security: no document was allowed to leave the Crown environment, a requirement that rules out many AI approaches.
The Solution: Automation Inside Crown’s Delivery Model
Crown designed and managed the end-to-end document processing service, retaining responsibility for operational delivery, process control, quality assurance, customer communication and completion of the project. ScaleHub’s AI-powered document processing and collective intelligence services were integrated into that model.
The solution combined:
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AI-powered OCR and ScaleHub VOLT field location, running 100% on-premise within Crown’s infrastructure
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Automated validation rules cross-checking extracted data against predefined logic
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Straight-through processing for forms meeting the confidence and validation criteria
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Secure human-in-the-loop processing for fields that could not be completed automatically
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Crown’s operational teams for process management, exception handling and quality control
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ScaleHub’s specialist capacity as an on-demand layer for exceptional volumes
Despite the complexity of the documents, more than 70% of the forms were processed straight through without manual intervention. Remaining exceptions were made available through ScaleHub’s secure Crowd Portal, where Crown’s teams reviewed and completed clearly defined tasks without disrupting the overall workflow.
100% Local AI: No Document Left Crown’s Infrastructure
In a project handling sensitive healthcare data, the processing architecture was a requirement, not a design preference.
ScaleHub’s AI ran entirely inside Crown’s own infrastructure. Field location and extraction were performed on-premise by ScaleHub VOLT, a field-location engine developed specifically for regulated industries. VOLT identifies field regions directly from the document image using object detection rather than relying on OCR text anchors — which is what makes it dependable on forms carrying stamps, corrections and handwriting in unexpected positions.
Because the AI ran locally, complete claim forms never left Crown’s environment. No full document was transmitted to a cloud service, and no external system ever held a readable claim or a reconstructable patient record.
Only after local processing were exception fields cut into snippets: single-field image fragments, deliberately stripped of their surrounding context. A snippet shows one isolated value — a contractor number, a line of an address — with no patient identity, no document and no claim attached to it. Only these decontextualised fragments were passed on for verification.
Elastic Capacity, Activated in 1.5 Days
Crown’s experienced operational teams handled the exception workload first, applying their established processing instructions, quality standards and escalation procedures.
As throughput ran ahead of expectations before a long public holiday weekend, Crown identified that the remaining exception volume would need additional capacity to protect the customer’s deadline. This was not a change to the delivery model — it was the activation of its next level of scalability.
Processing throughput exceeded our expectations. We could see that the volume of manual exception tasks would increase significantly ahead of the deadline, particularly over the public holiday period. ScaleHub gave us the ability to activate additional specialist capacity quickly while keeping the process secure and controlled.
Within 1.5 days, ScaleHub’s specialist crowdsourcing service was integrated into the running solution and operating as an elastic extension of Crown’s delivery team — no lengthy recruitment, no onboarding delay, and available across weekends and public holidays when conventional staffing options would have been limited.
These are specialists sourced, vetted and controlled by ScaleHub, working exclusively on defined field-level tasks within the security and quality requirements set for the project. The capacity complemented Crown’s expertise rather than replacing it.
The Results
Delivered on time.
Delivered on time, without loosening control.
All 750,000 two-page claim forms were completed within the customer’s deadline.
AI-powered OCR and automated validation removed manual work entirely for the majority of forms.
Specialist capacity handled roughly two-thirds of the total exception workload within two weeks.
On-premise throughout, with snippet-level isolation wherever human verification was required.
Continuous Processing Across Weekends and Public Holidays
Flexible specialist capacity kept the operation running through a period when conventional staffing options would have been limited.
No Compromise on Quality, Security or Governance
Processing rules, validation criteria, quality standards, escalation paths and acceptance criteria all remained Crown’s. ScaleHub extended Crown’s processing capability without touching Crown’s operational control or its accountability to the customer.
A Model That Transfers
Crown handles routine volumes efficiently through automation and its own operational resources, and activates additional specialist capacity when an unusual peak or a demanding deadline calls for it.
For Crown’s customers, that means the stability and accountability of an established BPO combined with the flexibility to absorb changing volumes, complex documents and hard deadlines — a model that transfers directly to other document-intensive work in healthcare, government and similarly regulated sectors.
Voices From the Partnership
Crown had the operational expertise, quality controls, and customer knowledge required to deliver the project. ScaleHub gave us the ability to add specialist capacity almost instantly when volumes peaked. Together, we protected the deadline while maintaining the quality, security, and control our customer expected.
Crown Information Management is a partner in the ScaleHub BPO Boost programme.
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