Back offices are becoming more aligned with the front office – fact or fiction?  Please let me know your experience as I am hearing lots of noise on this topic but can’t see the reality – thanks

Bloor Research have published an InDetail white paper on Optimising Back Office Performance.  The report was produced in conjunction with eg solutions, building on the Bloor Spotlight paper ‘Operations Management for the Services Sector’ which looked at operational management solutions for the Service Sector. This latest InDetail release looks at eg solutions operational management solution, including technical architecture and client case studies and is a must read for anyone interested in improving operations management and optimising back office performance.

Here’s an excerpt…..

Bloor Research identified that there were a number of solutions that organisations may have already purchased or are thinking of purchasing to solve the issues involved in gaining control of operations management.  Bloor identified that there were two key approaches of IT solutions built to support operations management.  The first is based around Business Intelligence which requires significant effort to tailor an appropriate solution.  The second approach involves the use of specialised applications consisting of a variety of automated components, including workforce management, capacity management, customer management, process management.

If you would like to be the first to receive this paper please complete the short form below.

Other associated link that may be of interest:

Linked in groups:

eg operations management http://bit.ly/cq6Egd

Operational Intelligence http://bit.ly/acZvOV

Blog: http://bit.ly/b6fVQ9

As companies endeavour to meet social and employee responsibilities there seems to be a growing trend with the number of companies allowing staff to work from home.

Many sources seem to suggest that there are benefits for both the employer and employee with working from home, the employer gaining from higher productivity and reduced long term costs; the employee, greater flexibility and the great feeling that they wont have to fight the rest of the world on the road, train or bus in order to get to work on time.

If working from home is going to be successful, managers must expand their styles of management beyond traditional face to face methods. They need to develop a different approach as well as understanding what good looks like to enable stretching yet achievable targets to be set and progress monitored remotely.

Managing someone you seldom see is difficult.  The big challenge for managers comes with developing a suitable system to effectively communicate, motivate and monitor home workers with to ensure that targets are being understood and being met.

As my colleague referenced in an earlier blog employee engagement and the right behaviours will deliver the right results http://www.eguk.co.uk/blog/remote-working-and-employee-engagement/

I feel one of the key issues is a lack of effective management and the lack of social interaction which often lead to feelings of isolation.

I’m interested to know if you are a manager with team members working from home.  How has your management style had to change and how do you monitor your staff at home? What system do you use and have you developed it in-house or purchased it off the shelf? How successful is it and at what cost?  We can then get some views on your specific experiences.

Please email me to share your experiences at chrisfryer@eguk.co.uk

intelligent operations management

Following the ‘emergency’ budget earlier this week it appears major changes will take place in the public sector.  HR and Operations departments and will face huge challenges under the cuts and recruitment freeze.  So how can lessons be learnt from Financial Services who constantly face these challenges?

I refer to a blog post Colin Whelen, Senior Contact Plannning Specialist at the Professional Planning Forum from who discusses a four step process for planning.

Whilst there are mountains to be climbed, good operational management practices will drive efficiency gains – so lets share some of the learning and ideas we practice daily and maybe the pain of change will be made easier and deliver a better service for all.

When talking to operational & performance managers I hear that many of them are running programmes such as Lean, System Thinking or Six Sigma in order to help them make improvements to their processes. An interesting point that many of them raise is that whilst their adopted methodology is clearly delivering benefits they do experience common challenges which they feel limit the projects short term objectivity or long term sustainability.

I am interested to know if you are running a process improvement programme within your organisation. If so please email me to tell me about it.  How successful is it and why?  What are your challenges and what are you doing in response to them?  What is missing or what would make your project more successful?

Please contact me at chrisfryer@eguk.co.uk with your views and experiences and I look forward to sharing with you what’s recommended.

If you complete your details below we will send you a white paper on ‘Supporting Performance Improvement in Service Organisations’

The eg principles of operational management® recommend a balanced range of measures.  Wendy Jeavons, our Managing Director for eg’s South African operation based in Johannesburg, explains the need to maintain these in her Top ten tips for Team Leaders.

As part of getting this balance right, many Clients we work with across the globe want to ensure the quality of what they deliver to their customers (internal or external) is as good as the speed or turnaround and is achieved in conjunction with measures to improve team member capability and people satisfaction.  (All these things we will be looking for when judging the ‘best of the best’ at our forthcoming annual eg operational excellence® awards).

“It’s true productivity when we deliver something correctly, right first time – rather than spending more time later trying to make good something we got wrong the first time” one Client told me.

Paul Cooper at the West Bromwich Building Society shares more insights: see “Quality vs Quantity” and whilst you are there, check out Janet Ridley’s comments too.

eg operational intelligence® helps our Clients to bring quality and quantity together into a balanced scorecard for daily operations, so rewarding and recognising “what good looks like”.  But whatever your measure for quality, how do you know the amount you verify, check, inspect or audit is enough?  And what can you do to build quality in before the event, rather than find out after?  Finally, how do you ensure the learning is shared in a good way – if things do go wrong?  Let me know your thoughts!

Contact me via:

andrewbaker@eguk.co.uk

sms: +47 91 83 30 30

IM: andrew.baker.eg (Skype)

http://twitter.com/egsolutions

http://www.linkedin.com/companies/eg-solutions-plc

We’ll publish more of your views on delivering great operations management.  I look forward to hearing from you.

A well planned operation understands the demands placed upon it and manages the right resource availability at the right time.  But what about understanding why demand rises and falls as it does, this can only be achieved by understanding why customers call and the action that drove them to it.

Research has demonstrated*1 that 45% of all calls in the UK are unnecessary, they equate this to £1million per annum per 250 agents within the UK.  With an estimated 900,000 agents in the UK this equates to a staggering £3.6 billion per annum spent on unnecessary calls.

The majority of these calls are known to be caused by actions of the business itself.  Analyse your own operation and calculate the potential for savings if you could identify and reduce these calls and subsequent back office administration.  Every operation’s unnecessary calls are different in content, what are yours, have you even thought about it?

ContactBabel’s full report ‘Getting Call Avoidance Right’ is available White Paper – Getting Call Avoidance Right

If you could achieve even a 5% reduction in your unnecessary calls and back office administration think of the savings you could achieve.  Next time you are negotiating with your contact centre operation about headcount, think about how their operation would look with less calls – something you could help them achieve.

If you would like a free review to fully understand the reasons why customers call and make guaranteed operational savings, contact me spenceroleary@eguk.co.uk

View the short video how others have achieved guaranteed operational management improvements (hyperlink)

*1 Source: ContactBabel 2006

Remote mobile working is growing – fact.  As work evolves so does what work is, how work gets done, where work gets done and what workers do*.

Projections I heard about on a recent webinar show a major jump over the next 15 years in remote working.  The benefits could include more time on ‘tasks’ as there is less social interaction but does less face-2-face contact impact employee engagement?  From the evidence I have seen, working with many clients over the years, employee engagement is critical for effective teams.

My thoughts on how to address this is that emphasis should be put on real-time communication – goals, expectations, achievements and leadership.  Management information is key to recognise performance and engage team members.  It should be regular and effective.

Whilst technology can facilitate remote working it is behaviours that will deliver the right results.  See Andrew Baker’s blog on what gets measured gets better http://www.eguk.co.uk/category/blog/client/and Tim Becker’s ‘Managing our People Performance’  http://www.eguk.co.uk/category/blog/operations-management/

The mantra of coach, challenge, cheerlead combined with regular management information on performance will keep employees engaged whether working from home, another office or another country.

I have some specific case studies I can share with you, just email me – ask@eguk.co.uk

You can even take a free ‘health check’ to see where employee engagement would deliver bottom line results

http://www.eguk.co.uk/about-eg/sign-up-for-your-free-site-survey/

Further reading on this subject can be found in the ILM research article – ‘20th Century Bosses Hold Back 21st Century Working Practices’

As more solutions claim to be able to address front and back office optimisation – what do you think delivers and where can most gains be achieved?

Please send a short response by 16 April and we will use the results at the Professional Planning Forum event Back office Forum on Monday 19 April

http://conference.planningforum.co.uk/Default.aspx?tabid=695

I read an article recently regarding dynamic management and the ability companies have to make better decisions in uncertain times.

Reference was made to ‘Just-in-time’ decision making and the impact on a company of making hasty decisions under time pressure or economic duress, potentially resulting in bad choices or excessive risks.  Would this not be less of a problem if managers/key decision makers had access to the correct Management Information?  It’s obvious but not that common.

Many managers are reluctant to make important and sometimes difficult decisions at the point when they can have the maximum impact on current stability and future performance.  Could a well-designed management information/performance-management system not alleviate this problem?

In my opinion, a company can’t predict the future but, having systems in place which enable forecasting and forward planning is surely an invaluable tool in the current uncertain market and in any possible future.

I’d be interested in what systems you use?  What works, what doesn’t? – I think things have moved on from the humble spreadsheet, or are we still using ‘gut feel’ and ‘retrospective management systems’.  Email me with your experiences, Sarah Price – ask@eguk.co.uk

We have looked at the development of objective measures to help deliver improved operational results.  The measures eg recommend cover a balance including; service, quality, risk, compliance, people skills, throughput and productivity.  The first step is to make sure you have these results available each day and at your finger tips.  Read more information on how eg operational intelligence® can you help you meet this need.

The challenge in using these measures as a basis for day to day operational management is sometimes, “which one is the most important?”.  It can feel like a question of WHERE to start?

Some Clients have told me that the first thing to do is to make sure you understand what each measure really means.  “It helps to think of the Customer waiting for a reply when I think of the focus I need to provide my Team Leaders and their Team Members on delivering the right result everyday” said one Department Manager.

Putting in place a structured “process” to help Team Leaders manage consistently yields fantastic results in a surprisingly short time.  We have found it takes just a few weeks to show Team Leaders and their Team Members how to use the balanced range of measures to set realistic goals and make a tangible difference for the better. This “process” includes making sure all Team Members understand the goal for each day, the priorities – as well as their part of the plan.  Using the balanced range of measures to provide realistic goals and then to track performance against those goals sets a virtuous circle encouraging people to think proactively on:

- how can we make the “best” use of today?

- during the day, how well are we making the most of the day?

- at the end of the day, what have we achieved and how can we make tomorrow even better?

Another Customer Service Manager said of this process; “It felt like a voyage of discovery, but it was the Teams, with their Team Leaders, who discovered the potential that existed.  They were the ones that saw how to make small changes that delivered big improvements to our Customers and the bottom line”.

If you have any views on effective ways to engage Customer Service teams in the delivery of improved operational results, please let me know:

m: +47 91 83 30 30

e: andrewbaker@eguk.co.uk

im (Skype): andrew.baker.eg

I look forward to sharing more of your views and “top tips”.”

Catch up on recent blogs on this topic

http://www.eguk.co.uk/category/blog/client/

http://www.eguk.co.uk/category/blog/operations-management/

Catch up on related news

http://www.eguk.co.uk/news/the-measure-of-customer-service/

Promises, promises, promises….with the proliferation of BPM, BI and Continuous Improvement initiatives do management really understand what their true operational intelligence requirements are?

We tend to over emphasise the roll of technology yet fail to fully appreciate the fundamentals that truly differentiates day to day operational excellence from “betting the bank” on the latest technological fad.

Too many project-based initiatives that focus on improving efficiency and effectiveness do not sustain long after the relevant project has completed – I have heard this time and time again.

How is one able to address the following in a single focused initiative with quantifiable results as rapidly as 2, 5 months after commencement:

• Internal and external service level compliance
• Risk based quality framework
• Transformation of management’s capability to run the day to day operations
• Improved productivity by between 20 and 50%
• Reduced costs

while focusing on real-time operational activity with the existing processes and technologies?

Please share your experience with me at tonycohn@egsa.co.za  as I hear more and more often that promises of such results often fail to deliver.  Even when we do know what we are looking for….

Summary taken from a white paper written by Mr P Ezzard, eg solutions plc.

Introduction

Research in the USA retail banking sector suggests that at the turn of the century, 70% of customer transactions were still undertaken by face-to-face contact in High Street branches. By 2005 this had reduced to 42% and it is predicted in 2010 it will account for only 30% of service transactions (Corporate Executive Board 2006 – Lean Manufacturing for Financial Services).

These face-to-face transactions have been replaced by telephone; internet and ATM entered requests routed to large Contact and Processing Centres. This pattern is being repeated in service organisations across the world.

This change has been driven in part by the development of technology but also by organisations wanting to reduce costs and improve service through centralisation, outsourcing and off-shoring of service support and processing.

In this context further research in the USA suggests that in service industries 40% of operational costs are wasteful even when the work is undertaken in dedicated centres (Corporate Executive Board 2006 – Lean Manufacturing for Financial Services). Similar research in the UK suggests that “failure demand” in Contact and Processing Centres can account for anything from 20 to 60% of all customer transactions in financial services, often higher in local authorities and utilities (Seddon 2003 and 2008). (Failure demands are customer contacts and subsequent processing activities caused by a failure to do something or do something right for the customer.)

It is therefore not surprising that service organisations are continuously looking at ways in which to improve performance.

Two key ways of doing this are through:

• Operational management improvements that result in the more effective utilisation of resources and processing systems available. For example, implementation of operational intelligence and improved operations management practice.

• Initiatives aimed at achieving improvement through re-engineering processes, structures and cultures. For example, “Lean” and “Six Sigma”.

The two approaches are separate but complementary. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of several of the more common improvement methodologies and then to show how eg operational intelligence® can be used alongside them to monitor success and maximise the benefits that can be achieved by organisations striving to meet customer and cost improvement requirements.

To request a copy of the full white paper please complete the form below.

I read with interest the recent blog from my colleague, Andrew Baker where he explored how important it is to get the people who are dealing with customer interactions and processing to take ownership for a balanced set of operational measures that reward the right behaviours.

This ownership should always be supported by a subsequent ability to capture consistent performance data about the processes and activities as well as the people who are performing them.

The most striking thing that I have learned after nearly 10 years in helping our customers improve overall operational management is that having access to consistent performance data is a basic need that provides the catalyst for first line managers and senior managers to implement consistent operations management best practice.

Without credible information about how well processes are performing, what activities need to be completed and how well our people are succeeding in terms of customer service, productivity, skills and quality; a manager is unable to take the right actions to improve performance and in particular the level of variance that exists.

However, simply providing access to the performance data is only the start and organisations need to put considerable emphasis on first line managers and senior manager to make sure that they are effectively trained in how to analyse and use the information to drive improvements in the level of variance in performance.

So why is it so important to drive improvements in the level of variance in performance?

Let’s consider some examples of the impact of variation across a processing function of 200 colleagues:

• 10% variance in productivity can reduce the amount of customer work completed within by the equivalent of 70 man days a week

• 5% error rate in our quality can mean that we have to have extra 10 colleagues just to re-do work that has already been completed once and this doesn’t even look at the delay to the customer

• The impact of lower skill levels across key process can mean that we need to spend 25% more time producing the same level of work

Therefore the role of first line operations managers in particular, is to analyse the variance that exists and take action.  A large proportion of variance typically exists within the people due to different skill levels; pace and motivation levels or by the fact that different people will follow different procedures to complete the same activities.

Consistent operational performance measures at a people level for skills; quality and productivity therefore should provide suitable benchmarks that can be used to quickly identify where help may be required.  This needs to go beyond simply capturing actual activity levels and has to ensure effective comparison to what Andrew referred to as ‘what good looks like’ in his blog posting.

In my personal experience, the consistency and credibility of this data and its availability on demand is the key to providing confidence to first line managers to take appropriate action and make significant improvement in people performance.

Our clients using the eg operational intelligence^® software suite certainly prove that to be the case.

Tim will be sharing his extensive experience in helping organisations set, implement and sustain effective performance management objectives at the Professional Planning Forum Conference on 19-20 April.

Previously we have looked at achieving the right balance to ensure:

-          what gets measured gets managed and then….

-          what gets measured gets better!

Along the way, and with your help, we looked at the need for a balanced view of performance, to make sure measures rewarded the right behaviours and the need for people to “own” the measures that are used in setting the targets they aim for.

But how do you create “ownership”?  The challenge is that an approach to MANAGEMENT information is all about just “management”, right?  Well, of course not!  It’s about “delivering great customer experiences” and it’s about “being rewarded and recognised for the job that a Team Member actually does” to deliver great service to their Customers and Colleagues (as the case maybe).

At first glance, measuring workloads might appear to be the Manager’s job.  However, our experience from rolling out the eg operational intelligence^® suite to 41,000 users around the world, shows that the key every time is to make sure you involve the team being measured.  Rest assured everyone has a view, whether they choose to share it or not!  So to make sure you set plans and targets that people can see are fair – they need to know where the measures came from.

Secondly, “ownership of the measures” means more than just being fair to everyone.  They must cover the balance people need to achieve to demonstrate “this is what good looks like”.

This is why eg recommend:

-          measuring the process, not the person

-          reflecting “what good looks like” by measuring “quality” and “quantity”

-          allowing for development/training time (“earned” time for skills)

-          including appropriate rest and relaxation

-          ensuring customer delivery targets are set

As one case handler said to me:  “Now I know that my Team Manager knows I am doing the right thing, in the right way, when it’s needed.”

Do you agree with this approach of creating “ownership” in teams?  Perhaps you have some hints and tips you can share following your own experiences?  Leave a comment here, SMS to +447785 290346 or email me: andrewbaker@eguk.co.uk.

Finally, have a look at Jane Mayhew’s blog (below) at what engaging people can look and feel like and the benefits it brings.

Next time, I’ll look at “leadership” using eg operational intelligence®.  Look forward to hearing from you in the meantime!

Recently I have found myself attending an increasing number of webinars.  Some have been to help me learn new skills and keep up to date with Marketing tools, others have been hosted by analysts or industry experts to help with market research and some have been organised by potential suppliers to help me understand the products and services they have on offer.

I started to think about whether webinars are a positive or negative trend: yes they are convenient, ‘green’ in the sense you have immediate access to anyone/any company anywhere in the world without spending money or wasting energy on travel and you have the ability to quickly capture and share new information with your wider team.

But on the other hand, web meetings and web conferences are not suitable for all types of gatherings.  Human contact plays an import role in relationship building with customers and suppliers and should not be underestimated.  There is often no substitute for face-to-face contact, particularly at the start of an important business relationship and for the purpose of networking.  

Would you buy from a new supplier without meeting them in person, only via web contact?  Do we need to achieve a balance between face-to-face and web contact?  I would be really interested to know what you think.

Our next Guest Blogger is Jane Mayhew, Operational Performance Manager in the Client Services Department at Zurich International Life.

Jane wrote this in response to the recent blog entry written by Andy Baker – ‘What’s measured gets better!’

Recently I was asked about “engagement” – What does it mean?  What value does it add?  How should it be done? And why is it important?

Having discussed it with several colleagues I have come to the conclusion that engagement is important in helping our colleagues feel that they are contributing to the business success either as part of a team or as an individual.  

Management should have a good knowledge of their business and subject, they should be able to roll up their sleeves and help when needed and, most importantly, they should be able to talk in a candid manner with everyone, regardless of status.  Our Head of Customer Experience manages to share his vision with everyone within the team in a way that they understand and feel that they can challenge, even during staff briefings.  His warmth “engages” people and they want to be a part of the team’s success.  Some may say he has the Customer Experience factor.

Another manager said “say hello in the morning and goodbye in the evening, no matter what your own day has been like”.  Being professional in attitude and human in approach appears to be the key to success.

eg work manager® provides us with many of our Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that permit us to measure our successes.  It isn’t the only tool we use but it does allow us to measure and target team managers and team members and direct them in achieving our business goals.  Team members can see how well they are performing and if they need help, can request it from their colleagues with a clear idea about what the priorities in the team are.

Daily Capacity Planning meetings (DCPs) and bi-weekly performance reviews create opportunities to work as a team of teams and the sharing of resources across global functional units rather than at a local level have helped our ability to improve service to our customers.  With recognition and reward mechanisms in place, team members can feel that their managers talk to them honestly about what the metrics tell them and drive a cycle of continuous improvement at both a personal and process level because they have the MI to evidence this.

Please note: this blog post reflects a personal opinion and is not representative of the formal views of Zurich International Life.

• operational intelligence
• operations management
• operational management
• performance improvement
• workforce management
• resource planning
• operational management training
• productivity improvement
• customer services software
• workforce planning
• business process management

So what do all the above mean……why all the different angles?

Well the crux of things I feel is that we need to deliver to the customers’ expectations while minimising the costs of doing so.  If this is the case what is the best path to take…..getting people to do the correct thing at the correct time…not just for a project’s sake, not because a newer technology promises the world but takes too long or is too expensive to do so. Run your business properly.  Understand what you already have in place, use what you have coupled with real-time operational metrics and change operational management behaviours.

This brings sustainability, continuity and supports the proliferation of continuous improvement best practice. What do you think and which initiative has delivered the best benefits for you?

Over the last few weeks we have been developing a new area on the website for case studies.

The case studies detail projects with organisations such as The Co-operative Financial Services, Legal & General, Resolution (South Africa) and HBOS and will help anyone with an interest in operational management to understand the benefits that can be achieved through the implementation of eg’s operational management software and methodology.  All are available to download in pdf format or can be easily forwarded in an email.

If you have any questions about any of these case studies or would like to find out more about the eg operational intelligence® software suite, email ask@eguk.co.uk.

Last time (“You can’t measure my work” versus “What get’s measured get’s managed”) I looked at the tension between measuring variable processes and the value if you persevere in doing this.  It looks like I stirred up a hornet’s nest of feedback – and thank you for it!

I also promised to feedback those views.  Some of these were posted direct to the blog.  But however you fed back to me – whether there on the blog, through e-mail, calls/text or when we met face to face at your office, our Focus Group or Software User Group – thank you one and all!

Let’s start with Debbie Strickland, as she explained about the desire people have in WANTING to achieve the goals you set them based on the measure.  As they strive towards these goals they show their colleagues, themselves and you, HOW they add value.  So make sure you think carefully about WHAT each target is when you set it!  And don’t “micro” manage as you use the measure, but make sure you look at consistent performance over a longer time.

Gary Stone points out the need to measure the right PEOPLE, delivering service in the right way with the correct result.

Even though we measure a process, Paul Cooper reminds us to involve the team.  PEOPLE bring different strengths – so make sure you recognise these strengths and those that deliver QUALITY steadfastly – as well as those who produce volume.

Next time, we will focus on team involvement to support ownership and engender belief in measures, what they show us and the potential to achieve a POSITIVE impact on REALISING tangible business benefits.  Contact me at andrewbaker@eguk.co.uk or sms +44 7785 29 03 46 if you have examples to share too!

Written by Guest Blogger Colin Whelan, Senior Contact Centre Planning Specialist at the Professional Planning Forum.  

The Professional Planning Forum (www.planningforum.co.uk) is the independent industry body for effective resourcing and planning in the contact centre industry, working across all industry sectors to provide specialist support for contact centre professionals.  Championing the importance of these critical skills, the Planning Forum is widely recognised for its best practice research and case studies, as well as the results focused nature of its professional development training and in-company workshops.

Take a look at any call centre planning job on the market today and you’ll find a dizzying array of requirements.  Now, in increasing numbers of cases, employers are also looking beyond the call centre.  They’ve seen the gains to be made by bringing exceptional planners into their customer service environment and want to replicate their skills in the back office as well.

The problem, however, is that back office activity is inherently different to front office operations.  Instead of matching staffing levels to a call demand profile, back office planning is about creating a demand profile that suits the staffing levels already in situ.  It’s not aboutqueue management, it’s about workload management – and this, for many
planners, is a relatively untested area.

In fact, by following a four-step process, planners can not only get to grips with back office planning, but can actually start making as much of a difference there as they do in the call centre.  The fours steps are Process, Data, Planning and Performance Management.

• Process – Understand your processes and their complexity
• Data – You need to determine what level of detail you require from the data you’re capturing in order to ensure that each of those processes outlined in step one becomes as streamlined as possible and can be measured
• Planning – It is at this stage that a planner will be able to produce forecasts for workloads, start tracking targets and begin scheduling according to individual back office workers’ abilities
• Performance Management – Here, a planner will need to identify productivity, not only in terms of the individuals carrying out the work, but also the effectiveness of the processes those individuals are carrying out.

The reality is that defining processes and capturing data will only give you a snapshot of what’s happening in the
back office.  Equally, planning will only give you a tool to effectively resource the demands you’re anticipating. To
create a really streamlined back office environment, planners need to go one step further; they need to analyse all the
facets of steps one to three to identify what is being done well and, conversely, what aspects could be re-engineered and how.

Strategically focused planners are arguably the best people to support this process re-engineering work. But even the best planners in the country will not succeed if they don’t, right from the outset, have a firm grasp of what their success criteria are.

As the year comes to a close I would like to reflect on some of the award successes we have had this year, since the topic of awards has come up several times in the blog over the last few months.

The most recent news is that one of our clients, Legal & General Retail Savings, won the Ventana Research 2009 Award for Operational Intelligence.  This is a fantastic achievement and we would like to congratulate Paul Lewis, Customer Services Director at Legal & General Retail Savings, and his team once again.  Read more about this impressive operational intelligence win.

On 3 December the hard work of the last few months truly paid off with the announcement that eg was the winner of the ‘Technology Vendors – Most Innovative Financial Services Solution’ category at the Financial Innovation Awards.  We identified this award as a key target for eg after the category was launched last year as we believed the eg operational intelligence® software suite fulfilled the award criteria so were really pleased with this win. 

Two of our entries, including Nationwide Regional Brands, have shortlisted in the ‘Back Office’ category of the Professional Planning Forum (PPF) Innovation Awards  The competition is closely linked to PPF’s annual conference on 20 April 2010 with the winners being announced at an awards ceremony on the evening.

This week we submitted several entries into the the Financial Sector Technology Awards.  Last year two clients – The Co-operative Financial Services (CFS) and Legal & General Retail Savings – were shortlisted and CFS received a ‘Highly Commended’ for their project with Capita.  Hopefully one or more of this year’s entries will be shortlisted in the New Year.

With our own eg operational excellence® awards in November, being shortlisted in the UK IT Awards and receiving a ‘Highly Commended’ in ICT Cluster Awards, the last few months have been very exciting and we hope further success will follow.  As usual, look out for awards updates in the news area on the website!

Summary taken from a white paper written by Mr P Ezzard, eg solutions plc.

To request a copy of the full white paper please email racheloliver@eguk.co.uk

Research in the USA retail banking sector suggests that at the turn of the century, 70% of customer transactions were still undertaken by face-to-face contact in High Street branches.  By 2005 this had reduced to 42% and it is predicted in 2010 it will account for only 30% of service transactions (Corporate Executive Board 2006 – Lean Manufacturing for Financial Services).

These face-to-face transactions have been replaced by telephone; internet and ATM entered requests routed to large Contact and Processing Centres. This pattern is being repeated in service organisations across the world.

This change has been driven in part by the development of technology but also by organisations wanting to reduce costs and improve service through centralisation, outsourcing and off-shoring of service support and processing.

In this context further research in the USA suggests that in service industries 40% of operational costs are wasteful even when the work is undertaken in dedicated centres (Corporate Executive Board 2006 – Lean Manufacturing for Financial Services). Similar research in the UK suggests that “failure demand” in Contact and Processing Centres can account for anything from 20 to 60% of all customer transactions in financial services, often higher in local authorities and utilities (Seddon 2003 and 2008).  (Failure demands are customer contacts and subsequent processing activities caused by a failure to do something or do something right for the customer.)

It is therefore not surprising that service organisations are continuously looking at ways in which to improve performance.

Two key ways of doing this are through:

• Operational management improvements that result in the more effective utilisation of resources and processing systems available.  For example, implementation of operational intelligence and improved operations management practice.

• Initiatives aimed at achieving improvement through re-engineering processes, structures and cultures.  For example, “Lean” and “Six Sigma”.

The two approaches are separate but complementary.  The purpose of the full white paper is to provide an overview of several of the more common improvement methodologies and then to show how eg operational intelligence^® can be used alongside them to monitor success and maximise the benefits that can be achieved by organisations striving to meet customer and cost improvement requirements.

To request a copy email me or contribute to what improvement methodologies you are using please comment.

We were really pleased to win the title ‘Technology Vendors – Most Innovative Financial Services Solution’ at the Financial Innovation Awards last week.

It’s obviously great promotion for our proprietary software, the eg operational intelligence® software suite, but it also means that the term ‘operational intelligence’ is becoming more widely understood and accepted.

Do you have any examples of developments you have seen the ‘operational intelligence’ space or ideas as to how the profile of the term could be raised?

Let’s unpack this a little more and then please feel free to comment:

Given my previous blog entry around the problems with the “silver bullet” mentality to solve operational management issues, I wish to emphasise my belief that by getting the day-to-day running of an operational management area to be “optimised”, a minimum of 20 and up to 50% productivity gain is easily possible – while working with the existing operational parameters (the as is) before spending huge effort (time, money) on the move to a new future view (the to be).

This then underpins the understanding of the current situation, generates productivity gains and becomes the “measurement system” to understand what is required to migrate to the “to be” in a more controlled and structured manner.

Broadly speaking operational management should:

• Define what you have in terms of current processes
• Apply real-time operational metrics to unlock the understanding
• Gain control of the current operational space by applying a tried, tested and proven operational management methodology
• Deliver rapid productivity gains
• Understand the type and appropriateness of interventions (combinations of items mentioned under the “silver bullet” point above) and be able to measure their impact in transforming from the “as is” to the “to be” environment in a controlled fashion.

And yes, be able to do this before, during or after other initiatives….

Do you agree or can you share your experience of chicken or egg?  Please comment and we can get some debate going.

On the way to work this morning I heard an interview on BBC Radio 4 with ‘Roy Mayall’, a Royal Mail worker who has decided to speak out in defence of the those workers who chose to strike a few weeks ago -  see http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n18/roy-mayall/diary. 

I could actually see parallels between some of the issues he was describing and the work we do to help our clients improve the efficiency of their businesses.

The first is around unit times for tasks.  ‘Roy’ spoke about a new system into which incorrect unit times were being used, resulting in some postal workers doing their rounds well within allocated times or having to work overtime for unit times which were too short.  The result?  A system where it is virtually impossible to measure, monitor and improve staff performance and have a true understanding of workloads or a fair and consistent working practice. 

As my colleague Teri Febery explained within her blog post ‘Should individuals be credited with additional times for reworking a task’ on October 13:

“In order to measure, manage and improve productivity we spend time at the outset of each project measuring how long it takes staff to complete tasks.  The unit times we record help us to assign standard times to tasks – taking into account skill level – and these times can then be entered onto our software and used to forecast how long it will take teams to finish work and analyse how well they are performing against standard times.  This is essential to help Managers and Team Leaders understand how staff are performing and helps them to identify and correct any issues – such as training needs or underperforming staff – swiftly to reduce any impact on the performance efficiency of the organisation.”

Paramount to the measurement and setting of standard times is communication with staff to manage their expectations and help them to understand why we do things in this way and how it will benefit them and the business.  This helps to obtain the buy-in from staff you need to engage to make an implementation a success.

This brings me to my second point.  In ‘Roy’s’ opinion, the management consultants and the management team at the Royal Mail brought in change from the top without consulting or involving the teams on the floor.  This, he says, has meant that unreal targets have been set, workers are unhappy and traditional values have been lost.

This, I believe, is the most important learning point for any company or any size in any sector. 

In order to integrate a new system or operational management practices into a business, engagement with staff and communication is key.  Sometimes it takes time for people to understand and accept change and the most effective approach is to gain buy in from the start and remove the barriers that may exist. 

Our Delivery team pride themselves on the relationships they foster with clients and during projects are seen as one of the team rather than an external consultant.  Their aim is to understand our clients’ organisations, share best practice and guide & support them through the process of improvement.  As one of clients said at the end of a project:

“The way eg integrated themselves into our business was certainly one of their strengths. They became trusted members of the team, which enabled them to get a better understanding of the way our people and our business worked. The training they provide isn’t just about how the system works, it’s about the way people should approach managing and improving the way they work – a mindset that really does give positive results.”

The workers on the front line, back office or in the contact centre are the ambassadors for your company.  If you get it right for them, they will get it right for your customers.