How Vet Claim Solutions cut processing time by 50% with Bigin to help veterans get the support they deserve

The company

Veterans Affairs (VA) disability claims are requests from U.S. military veterans to the government for compensation for any injuries, illnesses, or health problems they developed during or after their service in the military. If their claims are approved, veterans receive monthly tax-free payments as a form of support. This is a way for the government to thank veterans for their service and to help cover the long-term impact of serving the country.

After experiencing firsthand how confusing and overwhelming the VA disability claim process can be, retired U.S veteran Allen Magtibay founded Vet Claim Solutions in the spring of 2022. His goal was simple: Help fellow veterans navigate the system and receive the compensation they've earned. What began as a personal frustration grew into a full-fledged coaching and education business, offering support to veterans applying for tax-free VA disability benefits. Today, Vet Claim Solution operates as a B2C company with a team of 15 veteran coaches and 19 support staff, including IT, marketing, and admin professionals.

Each coach brings personal experience to the table, helping clients strengthen evidence and follow best practices for a successful claim submission. With 80% of veterans reportedly underrated in their claims, Vet Claim Solutions is committed to ensuring every veteran receives the support and recognition they've earned.

The challenge

When Vet Claim Solutions was just getting off the ground, Magtibay brought valuable experience from his previous role working with CRMs. In the early days, the team used Monday.com—a tool they initially hoped would support their growing business needs.

But it didn't take long to realize that while Monday.com was great for project management, it was to complex and difficult to use for a small and service-driven business like theirs.

So Magtibay started looking around for other CRMs, checking out options like Pipedrive and Salesforce. The problem was that they were either too expensive or hard to use.

The solution

Bigin emerged as an option in early 2023, when Magtibay was looking for an easier way to manage his business. He moved all of his data—including his contact and coach information—from Monday.com to Bigin and started organizing everything in one place. Leads come in from different sources like word of mouth, flyers, events, SEO, and social media. They've set up Zapier integration with Bigin to pull in leads automatically, each of which gets tagged by source so they can see which channels are working best.

Today, they manage over 7,000 contacts in Bigin. Communication happens through emails, SMS, and phone calls, though currently they've only integrated emails with Bigin. They use Mailchimp to send out mass emails and SMSs, and are considering integrating it with Bigin.

Vet Claim Solutions use two main pipelines: sales and finance. The sales pipeline helps them track the lead conversion process, while the finance pipeline manages payments from clients and payouts to coaches.

They also use three sub-pipelines to handle steps in the claims process: collecting leads, building claims, and submitting them.

• The lead collection stage focuses on capturing and qualifying potential clients.
• The claim-building stage involves gathering documents from veterans, planning a strategy, and getting them ready for exams.
• Finally, the claim submission stage is where all the compiled information is reviewed, finalized, and submitted to the VA. The team ensures every detail is in place to give clients the best possible chance of approval. 

Bigin's dashboards help them stay on top of things like how many agreements are signed, where leads are coming from, and which tasks are overdue. They've also set up automations, like welcome emails to clients and follow-up reminders for coaches, that go out using pre-made templates.

Benefits and ROI

Before using Bigin, it typically took the team around two months to complete the entire process after a lead came in. Since adopting Bigin, they've seen a significant improvement in bringing down the average processing time by 25 to 50% in most cases. This reduction has not only streamlined the process but also enabled them to serve clients faster.

Looking forward

Magtibay has been so impressed with Bigin that now he's considering expanding his use of Zoho products by subscribing to Zoho One and adopting the full suite of tools to scale his business.