Josh Ehmke

All right, everybody, we’re here for another podcast again. My name is Josh Ehmke, and we’ve got Jeremy Traasdahl all over here with One Claim Solution. Happy to be with you guys again today. Some interesting topics that we wanted to discuss, and to get things started. Just kind of thinking through Jeremy, we’ve been in business since 2016, the beginning of 2016. We’ve seen a lot of trends, a lot of different things happen in the restoration space in the last eight years. And so if you were to have a crystal ball and kind of predict some things that you think might be trending or happening in 2025, what do you think some of those things might be?

Jeremy Traasdahl

So I would say, I think we saw it at the tail end of this year, where there is just a lot more sophistication entering the space of contractors. There’s a lot of technology, a lot of new CRMs or job management softwares that have entered the space. Obviously with AI, and some of the technology there.

And then some of the big softwares have done a really good job of just continuing to develop their own internal software to just be more user friendly and, frankly, get the contractors what they need on the job in real time to get their documentation where it’s at. So I think that trend is going to continue in 2025.

I think overall 2024, at least in, and we’ve seen it in some of the reports from, C&R Magazine and R&R is the industry was just a little bit down this whole year–

Josh Ehmke

It was.

Jeremy Traasdahl

–Across the board in terms of job volume and revenue volume. I would hope if I was to give you a crystal ball-hope, it’s that contractors don’t experience that type of year in the next year.

Josh Ehmke

Let’s hope. I think that, what you talked about, the AI, that’s been an interesting development and what’s been happening, adjusting claims and determining coverage. And so we know that AI is going to take a huge role, coming up in the insurance space. And it’s interesting to see how that’ll play out.

Jeremy Traasdahl

I even think even for us here, we have eight years now of data, from a bunch of insurance carriers, a bunch of contractors that have told us what they pay for, what they don’t pay for, who pays for what when they pay for it.

Jeremy Traasdahl

And we’ve seen fluctuations even within carriers or within even adjusters specific on different things that insurance companies are doing. In terms of their payment methodologies. Having said all that, I think for us, what we’ve done is and what we’re just on the cutting edge of doing is, is trying to get like a claim predictability model based on historical data, using computer learning, using AI to help us determine, hey, where do we think this claim is going? Where do we think the grade of this claim documentation is at? And based on the claim documentation based on the carrier, based on the adjuster, based on the claim size, what is the most likely outcome for this claim? I think for us internally and frankly, for contractors everywhere, that’s going to be a huge benefit to just even predicting cash flow, days to pay, and what to expect per claim.

Josh Ehmke

Yeah, I think that’s going to be absolutely helpful for these contractors to have that predictability in their accounts receivable. Right? Like that’s kind of what we’re all trying to do is figure out when’s cash coming, when when’s that going to be here. So, being able to use that data is going to be really cool. And there’s, there’s really nobody else that has that kind of data that we have on this side of the equation.

So, you know, it is interesting to see where the AI is coming to play into the industry and, man, scary to a little bit. You know, when you start thinking about taking out the, the human, portion of the equation and, and that process, but also, you know, humans make a lot of mistakes, and so it’ll be interesting to see how I can help solve a lot of those mistakes in the industry and maybe even streamline certain things. So, kind of excited about that.

You touched on the issues and the hardships from 2024 with contractors being having a slower year. We saw it across the board, you know, for pretty much everybody, it was a weird year. I don’t know if it was weather related or, or what, but, definitely saw that trend and hoping that that trend does not continue. Any other trends come on top of your mind? Or predictions?

Jeremy Traasdahl

I mean, I will say, I think that one of the things we saw late, late in the year too, is private equity seems to have a real interest in the space. I think that a lot of these independent contractors, even non independent contractors, are just being approached. I’m sure everybody here listening to this podcast has been approached by one entity or another about acquiring their business. I think that private equity made its way through HVAC and plumbing when they did roll ups there. And they’re showing a real interest, I think, in these restoration contractors’ businesses. And so I imagine that’s going to continue.

Which to be honest, I think that there’s going to be a lot of, again, sophistication being inserted into, into this industry, into the contractors way of doing business. In order to stay competitive, they’re going to have to just continue to change and develop and make sure that they’re doing the things that well-funded organizations are going to be trying to attempt to do.

Josh Ehmke

Yeah. No doubt, no doubt. One of the things that I’ve, you know, that I think is going to happen and have seen starting to happen already is, you know, it’s no secret that OCS is a big proponent of the assignment of benefits. We believe it’s an amazing tool that helps put the contractor in the strongest position possibly paid for their services.

What we’ve seen over the last little bit is more and more, states being lobbied or whatever in order to have laws changed, you know, surrounding the assignment of benefits. And so I can foresee that being a trend to continue is insurance companies don’t like the assignment because it does bring more accountability to them. I can see them trying to push harder and harder with different legislatures around the country to try to get these laws changed, similar to what they’ve done in Florida, Tennessee, Texas, you know, and it’s really sad to see that kind of stuff happen because those types of laws really only benefit the insurance companies. They do not benefit the consumer at all. And in fact, it harms the consumer by putting them right in the middle of that line of fire. So I can see that kind of trend continuing to happen.

And so it’ll be really important for contractors everywhere to stay involved with that. Monitor these things. And when they see or hear about any sort of proposed legislation, which is tough because a lot of times that proposed legislation gets snuck in at the 11th hour, and it’s intentional, in order to be passed through without any sort of opposition.

But it’s important for the industry as a whole to monitor those things. I know there’s different organizations out there that are trying to monitor these things, and it will be important for the whole industry to get behind those types of things. But, different things like that. I can see, you know, regulations continuing. As you know, it continues to, you know, the space continues to grow and, and it’s exciting. But I can see them continuing to attack that assignment because of what they know it can do for a contractor, for sure.

Jeremy, you talked briefly, you know, about the AI, with being those trends, and we discussed that a little bit. Your forte–and you’re amazing at it–is the processes and these procedures that you implement with One Claim Solution in our staff in order to handle different things that we’re seeing. We’re able to recognize trends in the industry a lot faster than contractors can on their own, just because of the sheer volume of claims that were processing. But you’re so good at being able to manage that process and make sure that the systems are in place. And, how do you see AI becoming part of that process for you?

Jeremy Traasdahl

Yeah, I think that there’s this misconception that AI is going to be able to replace any of what we do, in terms of the negotiations at a carrier level or at a contractor level, there’s still going to be a human element at all times. I say at all times–in the next five years. Right. Because AI will just not be sophisticated enough. Not to mention there’s just nuances with every job that is going to require somebody to have an explanation of what happened on that job, why it was done, etc. Having said that, we’ve implemented AI here and we’re just, again, on the very cusp of the beginning of this, but where we can have AI do what we would just as humans take a lot longer to do, which is, hey, read this job summary and to match it with these photos and does that match and what doesn’t match give me this comparative from a carrier versus this invoice and tell me what doesn’t match. Those are the types of things that I could see will just be massive time savers for us. Where we can have a claims advocate who’s now managing an AI system to give them, to feed the AI system what it wants, we want it to tell us, and it can spit it out in five seconds, versus a human that would have to side by side look at a comparative versus an invoice and say, oh, did they pay for that? Did they not pay for that? AI will tell that in five seconds. And so I imagine that for us it’s just going to be driving not only just speed to outcomes, but also making sure that, to your point, humans are fallible, right? Well, a computer is not. It’s going to actually just give you the data. So it’s just I think going to drive consistency in our performance, consistency across our organization from one claims advocate to the other as we start implementing AI throughout multiple points in the process.

Josh Ehmke

Yeah, absolutely. I think that, you know, when you when you take that efficiency gain that you’re talking about with AI being able to generate those types of positions and reviews so much faster, is there also a play where that coupled with you talked about the data that OCS has, you know, where that makes that data even stronger, even more, even better for what we’re doing on our end. I don’t understand the whole AI thing so I know you dove in, way deeper in this than I did, so I’m curious to hear your thoughts on this.

Jeremy Traasdahl

So yeah, there’s, you create your own kind of ChatGPT based on your, all your own data, is kind of how it works. And it says, hey, based on these and we’ve processed a half $1 billion in claims, right. We could feed that to the computer. We get to analyze this, we could give it our internal knowledge base and processes. And we say refer to that, give it to the IICRC, refer to that, give it the OSHA standards, refer to that.

And we feed the back end of the system to say, reference all of this together to give me your best, rationale or your best email back to this adjuster based on these justifications. So it’s not just pulling from the entire internet ether, it’s pulling from specific data points that you’re telling it to pull from. And again, it’s like a human having to go reference the IICRC to say, this is why we, you know, we decontaminated this piece of equipment or this is why we put an air scrubber on this job or etc. instead of a human having to just go reference it. We’re telling the AI system, go dive in.

Josh Ehmke

We’re able to coach and train the AI to go and do those things.

Jeremy Traasdahl

And then what’s so crazy about AI, which still is hard to get my mind around, is it learns. So when you tell it to do something, if you don’t love what it produced, you could say, hey, you’re missing X, Y, and Z, and it will reproduce it.

Jeremy Traasdahl

And then next time you ask it that question, it will produce the better version.

Josh Ehmke

So it’s like the perfect employee?

Jeremy Traasdahl

Yeah, yeah.

Josh Ehmke

It listens the first time.

Jeremy Traasdahl

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly, exactly.

Josh Ehmke

That’s incredible. I’m super excited to see where that goes and how we will be able to, you know, implement that in order to create efficiency gains and outcome gains overall for our contractors. I think it’s going to be freaking awesome. Yeah. So super motivated about that. 

Thinking forward towards, you know, 2025 and some of these predictions. Let’s talk more about OCS. You know, kind of where we’re headed in 2025. We’ve talked about the AI, we’ve talked about some of these other industry trends, but what specifically do you think OCS will be able to do for contractors, maybe in 2025 that we haven’t been able to do historically? I know that’s a tough question, but it’s, you know, yeah. We’re thinking.

Jeremy Traasdahl

Yeah. And I think it’s less that what we haven’t been able to do historically and more just I think again, contractors are coming into the realization that many of these contractors started construction businesses. They’re construction guys, most of them. Right. And they only own a business as a necessary evil to do what they actually want to do, which is to do the work.

Right? So they have a necessary evil, which is the business side of things, but they want to just go do the construction work or the restoration work, and that’s what they’re good at, and that’s what they’re trained to do. I would say that, again, as contractors are becoming more sophisticated in how they’re doing business, they’re realizing, man, if I could talk about my AR function of my business so my builders or my collectors or whatever, the internal system that they have at their offices, it’s almost a whole new business, right? It’s got all new processes. They’re not field management processes. They’re not documentation processes. It’s now, I’ve got to go hire a separate, completely separate archetype of individual to understand all the construction stuff, but be able to argue or negotiate or follow, or follow up with carriers or homeowners in regards to these invoices. Collect the checks, be sophisticated enough to know why we did the work we did in the field. And so these back offices are oftentimes just kind of not super efficient. Right. They’re going up against these profit centers that are adjusting. They’re trained. They’re trained adjusters within these insurance carriers. Right. That’s all they do. These adjusters, that’s all they do. And we have back office staff that are also trained. Yeah. What I’m saying is with the contractors, they’re just less trained because they’re less developed, because they’re less sophisticated, because it’s a secondary part of their business.

Josh Ehmke

So when you say “we have” you’re referring to the contractors?

Jeremy Traasdahl

Correct. Yeah. Now OCS birthed because of this exact problem. Right. It was like, well, we should really just start a business to be able to be as sophisticated and be able to be as educated as these profit center adjusters, and frankly, available, you know, and available to not only negotiate when the adjusters ready to negotiate, but continue to follow up, be that squeaky wheel continue to touch the claim, continue to get speed, to the AR process and that’s where I think in 2025–and we saw a big boom of this even in 2024 with OCS, is contractors are like I’m not dealing with this part of the business anymore. You know. And just, I’d rather just focus on my core business, which is construction work. You know, or restoration work. And I’ll let somebody else go deal with the revenue management, the revenue cycle management, the AR management of this industry.

Josh Ehmke

This space. Yeah. No doubt. You know, and as I think through that too, you know, 2024 was, it was a weird year all around. We talked about, you know, being a little slower, a little down for contractors here and there. It was a unique year for OCS too. You know, some things happened and we’ve been able to gain insight into, into a lot of things that we didn’t really have that type of insight into before.

And I think that OCS is positioned in a, in a very unique way now, to be able to continue to help contractors prepare for those types of things that the that the insurance companies and industry’s potentially going to be doing as well, and trying to help our contractors make sure that their paperwork is clean, that it’s correct, that it’s accurate, that things are being billed the correct way in order to protect them from these types of things, too.

And so looking forward to seeing how we can continue to help contractors make sure that they’re comfortable, that they pass that 60-minute smell test on their documentation and paperwork, too, to make sure that they get paid for what they actually have done. So pretty exciting stuff there in the future for OCS and its contractors. I’m pumped.

Jeremy Traasdahl

Yep.

Josh Ehmke

We talked about, you know, predictions for 2025. We talked about kind of the trends we saw in 2024, where things are heading. When you think about putting those two things together and kind of where OCS is headed on this kind of stuff, too. What type of advice would you have for contractors and getting ready to tee up 2025 and start the new year?

Jeremy Traasdahl

Yeah, I think with any business owner in general, like the year kind of gets away from you, right? You continue to put out fires, you continue to develop. I don’t think you stop that, ever. Right. But anytime you go into a new year, you want to just start things off right, you know? So the things that I think about and one of the things just having an analytical brain is like, oh, when did I implement the new paperwork? Right? Because did I see the value that I wanted to see when I implemented that? Right.

And so the New Year’s always, for me, one of the best times to say, okay, I knew I started that in 2025. My first job. I know I had the correct work authorization, or I knew I had implemented this moisture check in form. I knew that I had made this change at the beginning of 2025, and therefore, you can track against 2024. And so every time a new year comes, I’m trying to think of what is something that I wanted to make sure that I had done right, so that when I’m tracking to see if the results are what I wanted them to be, that it’s started with 2025. Right.

And so I would say my recommendation is like, hey, get your documentation in order, get your processes in order, anything that you’re trying to change within your business try to make happen by the end of the year this year, so that when you’re looking for your results, you know, you started in 2025.

Josh Ehmke

Yeah, no doubt. And you know, when you’re talking about those types of things, you know, every business, every contractor likes to have that, you know, that predictability or, or maybe even better transparency and visibility into their AR systems. And what better way to get that than starting that fresh at the beginning of the year.

You know and OCS is in a, you know, I keep using the word unique, and I mean it. OCS is in a unique position to be able to help these contractors gain that type of visibility into their AR systems with what we’ve developed and what we’ve been able to accomplish over the last eight years, and see those trends and adapt and adopt, you know, evolve with those trends. So, definitely, new beginnings. Right. And so important to take advantage of those opportunities. 

Hey we appreciate you guys tuning in to us again today on another one of these, podcasts. And, and, anxious to hear some of your guys feedback on, on maybe some trends that maybe you’re seeing in the industry and, and some of your predictions for 2025, but, obviously reach out to us.

You can contact us at oneclaimsolution.com. It’s the best way to get a hold of us. So look forward to hearing from you guys. Thanks for tuning in.