With many of our Clients being challenged to meet ever more demanding budgetary targets, a clear focus for 2012 has emerged around cost reduction strategies.

Following a recent eg executive dinner delegates were asked to complete a short questionnaire which highlighted the main focus to be around reducing operational and IT costs without compromising a high level of customer service.

At eg we advocate a balanced set of measures to drive overall performance improvement, spanning the key performance areas of;

Service Levels achieved, Quality scores, Skill based Capability levels achieved, Throughput levels of work, Productivity based performance indicators.

With the numerous KPI’s available within the eg operational intelligence® software suite supporting these key performance areas, we are often asked which are the most important ones to focus on to drive improvements in your current Workforce Optimisation levels?

As a business which specific eg KPI’s are you focussing on in 2012?

Do you combine or link KPI’s from one key performance area to another, for example your Service % and your Efficiency %?

What KPI’s do you use in addition to those available within the eg software suite?

Let us know by sharing your thoughts on this post.  We look forward to sharing the feedback we gain and our thoughts on this topic on the 13^th March at Anfield for the first of eg’s Focus Group for 2012.

Data is often collated at the grass roots level of an organisation and then aggregated up by MI teams for reporting purposes – but have you ever considered whether the figures being reported back provide a true picture of actual performance? If the key measures are within target, do you still go searching for improvement opportunities?

This topic was raised within a recent site survey, where a potential client was always satisfied with the weekly team performance reports as they came back showing ‘lots of green’, meaning agreed target thresholds had been met.

However, when eg further analysed the ‘Team Performance KPI’ figure of 101%, we discovered that there was a big variance in actual individual performance of between 50% – 150%. So, below standard individual performance was being ‘hidden’ within the accumulated team performance effort and opportunities to manage and identify this underperformance was unknown.

Once the findings were presented back, the Team Manager was very quickly able to manage the underperformance leading to a reduction in the performance variance and reaped the benefits of increased outputs. If we always accept the combined effort results rather than take the opportunities to really analyse our data, then these types of opportunities to improve would be lost.

Have you had any similar experiences within your organisation, where tapping into the underlying data has identified opportunities to make tangible improvements? If so, it would be great to share these with our client base by adding your comments below…

Or, if you would like to know how eg’s back office optimisation product suite can help you discover where significant improvement opportunities are hiding in your organisation, then email or telephone us on +44(0)1785 715772.

The question comes to mind when Managers and Team-leaders ask “how do I motivate my team to achieve results I need?”

The solution……Adapt the right leadership style for the right people – Understand the diversity of individuals in the team and monopolise on their strengths and weaknesses to drive results.

This is easier said than done when dealing with humans that are driven by emotion.

So how do you motivate your team to achieve results?  Coaching is widely used and can be effective when done well but often coaches are not selected based on the right skills or training.

In one of our previous blogs Paul Cooper from The West Brom asked how others managed to make customer facing  staff who are, on the whole, at the lower end of the salary scale come back day after day?

People are our most important asset and in order to motivate you need to plan and forecast accurately, communicate the plans and expectations, set realistic and achievable targets coupled with the effective coaching, challenging and cheer leading that is needed to drive results and motivate individuals to succeed – not easy to do own your own but help is at hand.  eg have a proven methodology for success that is endorsed by the ILM and provides a recognised qualification.  If you’d like a copy of this just email me or with any specific questions.

Here’s some food for thought in the meantime “emotions move people!”

“Hersey-Blanchard Situational Leadership Theory states that instead of using one style successful leaders should change their leadership styles based on the maturity of the people they’re leading and the details of the task. Using this theory, leaders should be able to place more or less emphasis on the task, and more or less emphasis on the relationships with the people they’re leading, depending on what’s needed to get the job done successfully.” Source: http://www.mindtools.com

As an economically gloomy year draws to a close, income and profits in the UK financial services sector has fallen at record rates as the recession deepens and the credit crunch continues.  So what is next for Financial Services and what are the key business priorities and strategic objectives to turn things around?

As part of eg’s client events in 2011, Executives and Managers of back office operations across Financial Services organisations were asked to indicate what their key business priorities and strategic objectives would be in 2011/12?

Overwhelmingly, respondents, regardless of level chose the same three priorities (full list avaliable):

• Customer service improvements
• Cutting operating costs/IT costs
• Preserving existing revenue streams

So with this in mind, do you think it will be possible to make further Customer Service improvements and cut costs?  The results also indicated that growth will be limited as companies work to preserve existing revenue streams.  These results, indicate that recovery will be slow and reiterate the Bank of England view on the longer than expected recovery.

The Institute of Customer Services Customer Satisfaction results clearly show that service matters, as can be seen in these associated articles:

• UK Customer Satisfaction Index July 2011 – executive summary
• first direct and instilling a customer service DNA

Please comment on if you agree with the key priorities, what are your priorities.  It would be good to get some feedback from a range of industries and share some points on plans to make this happen.

Shared services provide an opportunity to reduce operational costs by optimising resources, technology and premises. Some of eg’s customers use this as a precursor to outsourcing to get their processes under control before entering third party negotiations – others use it as an alternative to outsourcing. All of our customers recognise that pockets of staff all over their businesses, with separate management structures, operating in different ways is not cost effective and is not good for customer service. Optimisation is at the heart of shared services strategies.

Whilst shared service centers may have their critics who claim that projects fail because they cause a disruption to the service flow by moving the work to a central location and creating failure demand, the facts certainly support in favor of the benefits service centers bring – particularly in times of economic uncertainty when administrative costs seem to rise and the burden of legislation appears to grow heavier.

Back office environments have the scale and scope to deliver great operational efficiencies so investing time and money to performance manage these areas and understand how optimisation can reap significant financial rewards is worthwhile.

We are interested in your thoughts, do you agree with some of our clients and think they deliver?

Please feel free to comment people or email ask@eguk.co.uk

Further reading……

Read the case study of how in creating this shared service centre benefits included improved productivity with less staff, backlogs were cleared, visibility over performance and quality resulted in recognition of best practice standards and the morale of staff improved.

More reading on shared service centers

eg offer a free on site review to help you understand the operational improvements that could be made.  Just give us a call on 01785 715772 or email ask and we can talk you through how this could apply to you and deliver real benefits – guaranteed.

This conversation was started on linked in group Back Office Best Practice Forum but it is worthy of a mention in our blog.

eg’s CEO, Elizabeth Gooch summarised thoughts as follows:

“One of the issues here is that ‘back office’ means different things to different people. It can include many different functions from a single sales support person in a regional office to groups of people processing customer orders, claims or mortgages, financial transaction processing, even HR and payroll processing. For eg it means the people behind the front line where transactions are processed that are critical to delivering the customer experience but are often unseen by customers.

Unlike call centres, where the one main input channel is the telephone, work can come in many shapes and forms via many channels. As a result transactional processing is vastly more complicated and difficult to manage than the call centre will ever be. However, transactional processing has the scale and scope to deliver great operational efficiencies so investing time and money to performance manage these back office areas should reap significant financial rewards – businesses need to reduce cost.

I disagree that there is an emerging class of Back Office Workforce Optimisation tools are designed to accommodate the issues in the Back Office. Back office planning is not the same as front office and it is this misconception that prevents WFM tools being used effectively in the back office as they do not address core requirements of back office operating environments (latency, backlogs, multiple channels etc). There is only one back office product on the market that properly addresses all of the requirements of the back office and since it has been around for many years it can hardly be called ‘emerging’.

Adrian’s point about the cultural and behavioural challenges are true and should not be ignored. The tools will only give you partial benefits. It is the Managers and Team Leaders using those tools that will deliver the real benefits with the right training.

I think the biggest factor that stops people using WFM for back office planning is that ultimately these are not fit for purpose. End users with back-office WFM needs should ensure that the solution they select can effectively meet all of their requirements for specific back-office processes, ideally with purpose built functionality that works”.

In response to this one of the members posted:

What a great post. I can’t comment on the different vendors but you make some really great points. Back office environments are so diverse – even in my own organisation I’ve yet to find two that are the same! Thus we use bespoke methods to plan for them in order to make our planning relevant and meaningful.

Read the full conversation http://linkd.in/tbLdqG or comment here on your thoughts.

This question was posted on the Professional Planning Forum Back Office Linked in Group and here is eg’s response:

I think that your question has two points to it. Firstly which back office solutions can use the cloud rather than having to rely on desk-top applications to capture relevant back office data. Secondly, which solutions also provide sufficient flexibility to integrate with existing solutions such as WFM. eg’s back office optimisation software suite provides the most complete functionality on the market whilst delivering guaranteed benefits together with being fully accessible from the cloud. Standard integration components are also included that can use a secure gateway to our cloud service to allow data exchange with our back office solutions. I would be more than happy to share further details either directly; through this post or at the upcoming PPF Best Practice Seminar in Altrincham on 3 November.

The following question was posted on the PPF linked in group and I wanted to share my thoughts in response to it:

“To become the experts in task and process data capture should the Planning team start by tracking and forecasting their own workloads?”

How long does it take to authorise a holiday, and how many holiday requests do you receive per day, per week, per month, etc? Do you receive more holiday requests at the start or end of each week? Do you receive more holiday requests in some months than others? When did you last review your holiday process and when the process last refined?

I’ve used annual leave/holidays as an example but these questions could be applied almost everything resource planning do.

For me the big question is: “Could Resource Planners plan their time, workload and schedule better by using the best practice principles they apply to their organisation?”

My response to the above: In my experience, having been involved with data capture for many years, I would agree that the best practice principles that resource planners apply across their organisation are absolutely applicable within their own teams. Any business area that receives work items that require any form of processing adds an operating cost – and it is foreseeing and controlling this cost that is the ultimate challenge.

The ‘holiday request’ example you have used illustrates the many associated factors that need to be considered when creating a resource plan – accurate data capture at key facets of this process would enable planners themselves to better understand the trend in these requests (volumes/date received), and armed with this information can seek to better plan their own workloads. The data also enables analysis of such processes as part of any process improvement initiatives – the outcomes of which may be to introduce service levels/cut off dates for holiday requests to add an element of ‘control’ and enable a better level of forecasting from which to plan.

The need to identify metrics/KPI’s to measure performance and better facilitate planning & forecasting is absolutely relevant across all teams and enables work optimisation, and collecting the right data at the right level requires intelligent operations management.

A number of eg’s clients have successfully implemented Back Office Optimisation software to capture and transform the detail of every activity and interaction with a process or customer into a three-dimensional view of their operation. It is through this data capture that they can plan their time, workload and schedules more effectively.

If anyone wants to know more about their approach to data capture please email me and I can put you in touch with these clients to share ideas – ask@eguk.co.uk

A recent linked in post prompted quite a few responses on the topic of forecasting and planning and the debate around what is a short-term forecast, mid and long-term.  Here is the question I posted….

I have heard long is anything between 36-60 months and i’d be interested to get a poll going on what is the most common for all three terms – please let me know your thoughts?  Here were some of the responses:

1. We define long term as the point at which you can recruit staff and get them trained to complete the work, currently 8 weeks, although we often use the word strategic and then anything before that is short term or tactical. We have detailed plans for 18 months and only occasionally are required to go longer than that. We don’t have mid ter.
Rachel, this is a very interesting question where the answer depends on the processes and more importantly the culture of the organisation we are discussing. But let me see if I can share what we see across the entire Customer Contact Industry (Front Office, Back Office, Email, Field etc…)

2. Long term is very much around what Graham said earlier in this thread, it’s the part of the planning process where you set your stake in the ground to set your capacity requirements (staff, desks, lines, IT, licences etc.) This can be anything from 12 months through to 5 to 7 years out. I’m not convinced in the accuracy of ANY forecast 5 years out, but that isn’t the point of the plan, to be accurate, it’s about being representative.

This is the key point of the transition from Long term to Midterm forecasting. This is where the stake in the ground is then required to be more than representative of demand; it needs to become a robust reflection of anticipated demand, so scheduling, investment and operational decisions can be made with confidence. This is usually ALWAYS within year, sometime rolling 12 months or often just within the live financial year for the organisation. We need to start to manage not just the level of demand we receive but to begin to profile it (What, When, Who, How and Why) which is what makes forecasting a full time role. Understanding this historically and predicting the impacts of ALL operational activity is what makes this such a demanding and specialist role. (Also often tied into the finance RAF process)

And I suppose this is also a hint of when a forecast becomes short term. When is it “handed over” from the forecaster to the operation or the real time function? How far out is this? Well what is it being used for? If I use front office as an example, if we are looking to produce flexible schedules/rotas then a strong short term forecast is very important, can be considered short term as far as 12 weeks out (as THIS is one of the key uses for the forecast). If we have an environment where the shifts are fixed, it’s the planning of offline activity which we have in our arsenal to deliver the best service possible, so the short term can be anything from 6 weeks out to the day before!. I would always expect the level of demand for a customer contact environment to have been forecast up to 8 times for any single day before you actually get to the day it’s being used for
1. Longterm
2. Midterm
3. Midterm RAF
4. Midterm / shorter handover
5. Monthly reforecast
6. Weekly reforecast
7. 2 days out
8. 1 day out…..

So the answer is a set one, it’s about how you intend to use the forecast and where the planning process sits within your culture and environment, but hopefully you can see often what dictates the terms is the importance we put upon i.

3. Well, this is a question with several answers i guess. When we started using forecasting in Operational Intelligence we plan for three months. In our business the amount of work change from period to period and it could be a waste of time planning long term. We have made some plans for 12 months, in areas with more predictability, but mainly doing a three months plan. The long term planning is more linked up to the budged, and number of employees and than it’s mainly 12 months planning. We have no shorter planning than three months, but this could be more relevant in the future.

Some varied comments and much variance between how organisations view this.  I’ll be certain to make sure we touch on this at the forthcoming focus group in Birmingham.

What do you think? Why not join the back office optimisation linked in group too.

Read the Forecasting data sheet.

There has been a great deal written recently about the merging of the front and back office.  I am not sure about the merging of the two but more that the back office has awakened to the performance benefits that can be achieved.  Practices adopted in the front office can be applied to the back office.

eg have been a member of the Professional Planning Forum for some time and it is great to see member organisations embracing the opportunities that back office can deliver.  The PPF website has some good content for anyone involved in Back Office Optimisation and also has back office specific events.  If you are interested in Strategic & Forecast Planning, Real-time work management and Operational Analytics for the back office then I’d recommend you attend this Back Office Optimisation event.

Our Chief Executive, Elizabeth Gooch, wrote in a recent paper that one of the issues is that ‘back office’ means different things to different people.  For eg it means the people behind the front line where transactions are processed that are critical to delivering the customer experience but are often unseen by customers.

Transactional processing is difficult to manage.  It suffers from significant variation, not just in defining its scope, but also because there can be:

• Many input channels
• Varied, complex and multi-stage processes
• A variety of systems in use and
• A high degree of manual interaction

Unlike call centres, where their one main input channel, the telephone, work can come in many shapes and forms via many channels.  As a result transactional processing is vastly more complicated and difficult to manage than the call centre will ever be.

What we are hearing more and more is that the trouble lies in that workforce management solutions are not equipped with the required functionality to address back office work.  Erlang based solutions are considered outdated because of the multi-skill/channel element requirements and Erlang C does not allow for latency or address backlogs.

Is this your experience?  I think this topic is one to explore as one thing is for certain optimising back office performance is here to stay.

If you are interested in a related white paper from Bloor on ‘Operations management – measuring and managing effectively’ then just complete your details and I will send a copy to you.

I’m trying to pull together some views and stats on Back Office Capacity Planning.  Please comment on what tools you are using and what works,  Do these also address forecasting and strategic planning.  Anyone who contibutes I will send a copy of the overall views and comments.  Feel free to share this to your network – thanks

In some organisations coaching has earned itself a bad name as a tool for remedial training but used effectively it is a powerful tool that can support operational management.

I’ve come across some interesting facts about coaching to share with you.

In a recent survey conducted by the Institute of Leadership and Management into coaching methodology across 250 large UK companies the following was noted:

• Coaching is widely used as a development tool. 80% of the organisations surveyed had used or were using coaching, with a further 9% likely to use coaching in the next three years.

• 83% use internally recruited/employed coaches and 65% use external coaches.

So who are the internal coaches?

• 53% of internal coaches are coachee’s line manager, 46% are ’senior staff members from within coachee’s own business area (technical specialists)

How were these coaches selected?

Internal coaches are selected on the basis that they are:

• Suitable individuals (54%)
• Line managers (53%)
• Senior staff members (46%)
• Members of HR staff (43%)

This led me to question if they have the right skills and how are they trained.  In the same survey two thirds of organisations (34%) offer some form of development, and one third encourage coaches to gain a qualification – but are the right people elected as a coach in the first place?

So can everyone be a coach?

Used well coaching is a powerful tool that can improve individual and company development.  However the coach needs to develop core skills, experience, knowledge and personal attributes to enable them to develop as a great coach.  You do not become a great coach just by being appointed one.  I’ve seen this many times and it takes a certain skills set to be effective.  A good coach knows there is always room for improvement – in themselves and the people they coach.

So over to you….

Do you see coaching as a proven way for managers to motivate people and improve individual and business performance – what works for you and what are the benefits?

Is coaching seen (evidenced) as a powerful tool in your organisation?

Leave a response and comment on what size organisation you are too please.  Thanks!

Janet Greenwood, Client Solutions at eg

It was with great sadness that we learnt of the passing of Dr. Eliyahu M. Goldratt.  He has had a profound influence on the lives of many and specifically for those of us here at eg.  During a visit to the UK, our Founder & CEO, Elizabeth Gooch, met Dr. Goldratt and it was that meeting that provided insight and inspiration in the further development of the principles of production management for the office and eg work manager® software, to enable organizations to identify and manage process bottlenecks.

He shared this insight to many through his books; most notably “The Goal” and “It’s Not Just Luck”.  Written in a compelling way, he ensured that the messages were both “received” and “understood”.  It is a mark of the man that he not only understood with such clarity issues at the heart of today’s challenges, when it comes to back office optimization, but that he knew how to communicate about them in the most effective way, to help others.  We owe much to the insight provided by Dr. Goldratt and we are saddened by his loss.

In his recent blog, Paul Cooper of the West Brom describes the benefit of measurement to help Team Members to deliver improved performance.  The theme is “measures that motivate” that can help Teams in the back office to optimise performance.  So the next question is “How to use measurement to make sure we motivate?”

Quantifying how much needs to be completed, prioritising activities and making sure there are enough people in the team are all important.  However, will Team Members feel engaged and deliver what’s needed?  Some Team Managers find that their Team Members understand what needs to be done but that doesn’t always translate into delivery.  Team Managers will allocate a full day’s work to their Team Members, in the hope that if they “pile the work on” everything will get done, only to be disappointed at what was left over at the end of the day.  Others let Team Members choose the work they do only to find that some haven’t taken enough and results are also disappointing.

What have you found works in your organisation?  We would love to hear your views on what you’ve tried and any learns from that.  Leave a response below.

At the next eg Client Focus Group @ Old Trafford on 21.06, we will also look at how pro-active work allocation to team members can help deliver improved performance to optimise the back office. Contact ask@eguk.co.uk if you would like to attend.

The problems of the back office are evident across virtually every sector including manufacturing, utilities, telecoms, financial services, healthcare and public sector.  One of the issues is that ‘back office’ means different things to different people.  It can include many different functions from a single sales support person in a regional office to groups of people processing customer orders, claims or mortgages, financial transaction processing, even HR and payroll processing.  For eg it means the people behind the front line where transactions are processed that are critical to delivering the customer experience but are often unseen by customers.

It doesn’t matter how good the front office is, customer perception will be shaped by what comes after their initial transaction – all too often failures in the processes that follow.

So what exactly are the problems that need to be addressed?

Unlike call centres, where their one main input channel, the telephone, work can come in many shapes and forms via many channels.  As a result transactional processing is vastly more complicated and difficult to manage than the call centre will ever be.

The key to choosing a back office system for your organisation is to understand the problems that need to be addressed and to find a vendor with a track record of delivering the full range of functionality required out of the box.  Many of the solutions on the market have been derived from experience in the front office, manufacturing or financial management – be sure to choose a system that has been purpose built to solve the problems of back office – a tool that will achieve your objectives and deliver real business benefit.  This is not about Marketing hype but solving a genuine problem – how to optimise back office performance.

Are you looking to optimize your back office and what are the problems you face?   Share your thoughts and leave a response and I’ll respond to any specific issues.  I’ll also share with you the finding of some research we commissioned on this very topic.  In the meantime take a look at the Back Office Optimisation video.

From Tony Cohn, Business Development Director – eg operations management (pty) Limited – South Africa

“After reading about this subject in an article from iSixSigma magazine it got me thinking about why six sigma is so slow to deliver and methods that can be used to make it more quantifiable and sustainable.

Without day-to-day operations being under control, the benefits expounded by all other initiatives tend to be understated and gradually deteriorate/revert to what was and are hugely dependant on individuals in the process as opposed to properly defined and executed management roles.

Typically, excessive time may be spent trying to identify data/metrics that exist in disparate systems and then try to understand them in terms of indicators of potential problems.  Often, such data does not exist or is really difficult to gather and correctly contextualise.  Does this sound familiar?

What I have noticed is that in equipping Management with real-time operational intelligence coupled with operational management best practices, ensures optimal delivery of all initiatives that are applied in the operational environments.

I have written extensively on this topic and invite you to learn more about utilising good operations management and request the full paper – just complete the contact form below.  Email any questions, thoughts and experience to ask@eguk.co.za”

Follow us on twitter @ http://twitter.com/egsolutions

Join our linked in Operations Management group – http://linkd.in/cgVtz5

By Paul Cooper, Contact Centre Operations Manager – The West Brom

It’s interesting the conversations you have in the middle of the night. As I write this at 2.30am, our Year End processing is taking place and a couple of bleary eyed chaps in our IT department are finishing off the remnants of the pizzas and bottles of pop to try to keep themselves awake.

One of them asked me if we were still using eg work manager®, to which I replied we couldn’t live without it as I have always believed that, as is posted so many times on this site, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it…” Then we got onto the subject of staff measurement.

They couldn’t believe the extent to which we can measure our staff through work manager and our telecoms system, but to me after more years than I care to remember, it’s a way of life in a busy Contact Centre and I should know as my team produce reams of MI for managers on an hourly/daily/weekly/monthly basis. I guess many HO support areas in other organisations are similar in so much as they don’t have the same level of measurement.

This got me thinking… In an age when we measure our most important resource, those at the customer facing rock face who are on the whole at the lower end of the salary scale against:

• quality of work
• effectiveness/productivity
• service standards
• regulatory compliance
• timekeeping etc, etc…

What keeps them coming back every day?? I guess it can’t be that bad a place to work, there is a good atmosphere within the teams and of course they get paid.

However, what will make them want to come back day after day? The best thing for some I guess is the chance to grow and develop their skills, improve their career and increase their pay and someday move to a support team when the amount of time you spend in the loo in a day isn’t as important.

This then reminded me that one of the objectives for the coming year for the Contact Centre management group is to dust down the skills matrices and create development and training plans for our teams.

Before I get too bogged down in it all, and taking the advice of a former manager of mine who said “Never re-invent the wheel” can any of the readers of this blog who have had to create development plans in the past provide any good points to consider and any pitfalls to avoid. We obviously want this to motivate staff to develop which should in turn help the company with peaks and troughs in the various work types we have to process.

Any help would be appreciated…

At the recent IQPC Business Process Excellence Conference, eg solutions were asked to share their experience on the Role of Operational Management in Business Process Excellence.  Here are some comments received about eg’s thoughts and client results:

“Great to see that huge results are possible without changing core processes and systems”

“Focus on the operational management fundamentals brings results – there is no silver bullet!”

So what was it about?

When one considers process excellence we typically think of project(s) as the mechanism to deliver the requisite operational excellence. The above diagram illustrates that these project(s) focus on a particular scope of work and this in turn impacts on the parameters of time, cost and quality. Different project methodologies have different methods of measuring the said impact of the project on these parameters. Some are good at tracking these operational metrics while others aren’t. Six Sigma (being very strong at measurement) for example could define:

• Cycle time as the primary metric – the main focus point of the project.
• Cost as the secondary metric – another metric that too will be measured to assess impact.
• Quality as the consequential metric – the metric to ensure that we “stay honest” i.e. it is all very well that things are happening quicker but is quality improving or decreasing?

We argue that this isn’t enough!

The above triangular diagram should be extended to all of the following dimensions and should be backed by an ability to view the metric dimension in the real-time:

• Enterprise/Division/Department/Teams/Individual/Process/Task

So with reference to the above project initiatives, what are typical examples of such projects in the people, process and technology space?

• Process Space

- Implementation of continuous improvement initiatives covering a broad spectrum of methodologies including BPR, TQM, Six Sigma and Lean etc

• Technology Space

- Existing system enhancement

- Replacement of existing systems

- Implementation of ERP/CRM/BPM solutions

• People Space

- Specific training relevant to core system utilisation

- Soft-skill training i.e. better communication skills, letter writing etc

In reality, the above are characterised by large budget spend/overspend, technical complexity, missing or deficient operational intelligence data, extended time frames, often sustainability issues and, in many instances, behaviours revert to what they were before the relevant intervention due to poor contextualisation.

What could be done to better implement the above and ensure sustainability?

• Getting management to better manage the existing operational environment and in doing so support their ability to drive large operational efficiencies/cost savings with their existing process, technology and people configurations
• Equip them to manage the transition from a current to future operational environment embodied in the aforementioned project initiatives that are ever-present in our back-offices?

This can be achieved by better understanding the role of the Team Leader and Manager in the context of the people, process and technology paradigm that is revisited in terms of operational management:

1.      Process and People:

The management communities, embodying the aforementioned roles, need to understand the following core elements of what is expected of them both day-to-day and in terms of the medium-to-long-term. The following key questions need to be addressed to transform their roles:

Measurement

• What measures do I actually need?
• How should I use them?
• Do I understand the inter-play between these measures?
• Do I know how to keep these measures current?

Planning – How do I understand capacity in the real time that includes:

• People – Who is here today, what is their skill and what is their availability?
• Work – What work is here, what work is arriving and what does this convert to in terms of effort?

Communication

• Do I know how to use visuals appropriately to review a balanced metric framework?
• Do I know how to set fact-based daily, weekly and monthly targets across a balanced metric framework?
• Am I able to communicate about performance at task, process, individual and team levels?
• Do I understand the utilisation of metric information in the terms of coaching, challenging and cheerleading?

Allocation

• What are the available allocation techniques and do I understand how to use them to maximise utilisation?

Monitoring

• What is true real-time monitoring not end of day, end of weak monitoring?

Analysis and Improve

• How do I understand peaks, troughs and bottlenecks and feed this understanding into better performance management at the aforementioned levels of task, process, individual and team?

2.      Technology

• Need to be able to utilise technology to deliver the following capabilities in the real-time:
• Real-time balanced metric framework
• Capacity planning
• Short-interval scheduling
• Line-balancing

And not necessarily with having to do via integration!

In essence, all performance improvement methodology initiatives require measurement and operational management tools to help define monitor and report problems and solutions. I’d be interested to hear your experiences.  See the short client video for how our clients have approached it.

In a recent article I read in ‘Call Centre’ it mentioned how the past two years have seen a huge 440 per cent increase in the number of complaints about the failures and shortcomings of UK banks.  The article then went on to say the majority of customer complaints were about workings and processes of the bank itself and complaints about staff had reduced.

So what are the contributing factors to these complaints?  Under investment in people, a failure in business processes, recession, the credit crunch, an unforgiving customer base?  It could be number of factors.  But how are you measuring these factors to make the necessary improvements?

The Institute of Customer Service recently blogged about First Direct and instilling a customer service DNA. First Direct are often the top of consumer satisfaction surveys so they must be getting something right.  They value training and development and this is evident through their employee behaviour.

In a blog from eg’s Tim Becker, he looked at the variation across a processing function and what this means in reality – elements such as productivity and quality will most certainly impact customer complaints. 

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 more about the right behaviours and understanding that what gets measured gets better.

So whilst complaints about staff may have reduced, staff are the ones having to work within the bank processes and without the right measures and management information, a complaint is a complaint regardless of the reason.

After all, with the City regulator handing out penalties for those with inadequate complaints procedures; training, transparency, comprehensive management information and the right behaviours are the DNA that is required.

Further reading:

Handling Compliance

Client Case study – Improving Efficiency

Top Ten Customer Service Tips from call centre helper

“Steve Coomber in the Edge January Edition raises an important issue – where poor performance is identified, there can be reluctance to tackle it.

Users of eg operational intelligence® tell me that they use the rich individual performance information to provide real-time, consistent and objective performance reports to help their Managers help their People to improve.

The successful use is put down to:

1) Measures are owned and understood by everyone in their teams

2) People can track and monitor their own performance during the day

In this way, there can be no surprises at “appraisal time” when each person can evidence how well they have performed, what quality standards they have achieved and see for themselves how their skills have developed, using the balanced range of measures covering all operational factors from service to productivity.

Get more information on the eg approach to Performance Measurement and how this can address a performance gap, positively with lasting results.

For more information, to comment on this post or find out more just send us an email.   If you want regular updates on our news and knowledge sign up to our newsletter.

As mobile phone consumer adoption shows no signs of slowing down, users are increasingly using mobiles to access the web.

Users expect websites to work on their mobile phones and in two to three years, mobile support will become standard for any website.

So, as the biggest internet giants like Google and Yahoo are now saying the future of the internet is on mobile phones – will browsers be the new leader or will the i-phone/apps continue to dominate?  How should our website be designed to be accessible to the masses.

It’s a tough one to answer and I’d like your views so we can begin to shape how we approach this.   Leave your comments below please.  I’m sure there will be a difference of opinion or two!

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

There are numerous performance improvement methodologies but 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”, “Six Sigma” and “Systems Thinking”.

It is generally accepted that companies must integrate their people, processes and technology to drive the implementation of process improvement throughout the business.

So, if this is the perceived wisdom, why aren’t more organisations doing it successfully?

Common reasons for the failure of process improvement/excellence initiatives include a lack of alignment with corporate objectives, little or no ownership from senior management, a lack of adequate planning and staff not understanding the reasons for the project, resulting in no buy-in.

However, one of the most common failures is the lack of effective and comprehensive MI to support process improvement activities.  The distinction between a project based methodology and a permanent performance management tool is an important one.

All performance improvement methodology initiatives require measurement and operational management tools to help define, monitor and report problems and solutions.  I’d be interested to hear your experiences.  See the short client video for how our clients have approached it.

Comment below or email me at ask@eguk.co.uk

Credit Today Conference

As an industry, it is widely acknowledged that debt purchasers and collectors are not always recognised as offering a great ‘customer experience’.  Whilst the dynamics of an organisation responsible for collecting debt cannot be championed as gracious, it is vital to engage with clients and customers in such a way to maximise the opportunity for equitable solutions.

At the recent Credit Today Collections and Debt Conference, the term “Can’t Pay/Won’t Pay” was used by several of the delegates when discussing attempts to develop customer profiles – separating debtors from those who can’t but want to repay from those who simply refuse.  This is a key area as it has a real affect on how an organisation will then attempt to recover debt, and if this segregation is incorrect it can lead to an ineffective and costly recovery process.

A speaker at the conference, Oliver Betts, Head of financial services & asset sale at TDX group, described his efforts at developing segregation and a deeper customer profile by adopting a strategy of “obsessive capture of data at every point in the process”.  The requirement for data collection covered all key areas such as customer profiling, outcome, and performance (KPI’s such as penetration, yield and roll rates) and provided the organisation with the analytics from which to shape itself for success.

The right approach to data collection, and using this management information to develop effective customer profiles, provides an organisation with the ability to match recovery processes to segments for greater efficiency – this will also improve the overall experience for the customer as they are targeted with the right methods for debt repayment.

Having a purposeful data repository is also an important factor when a lender considers selling or outsourcing a debt to a DCA (Debt Collections Agency), as without the customer profile the DCA could potentially undervalue the debt due to the work involved for them in subsequently building the customer profile from which to deploy their own collections strategies.

Collecting the right data at the right level requires intelligent operations management. eg has developed a range of products within its eg operational intelligence® software suite that captures and transforms the detail of every activity and interaction with a process or customer into a three-dimensional view of your operation.

In a collections area, data captured real time at agent activity level can provide managers with the ability to determine the true cost of debt recovery administration. A good example of this comes from within one of eg’s large retail banking clients who have sold part of their debt book to a DCA, but still administer the collections activity internally alongside their own books.  The use of eg operational intelligence® software in this client enables the segregation of each book, as well as the profiling of customers. A key benefit is the separation of administration costs, skills, and resources across both books and the accurate recoup of the administration costs from the DCA. The automated data captured can also used to determine the overall cost of debt recovery per account, a significant measure when determining which debts to sell or outsource.

Another eg client has applied data collection within their collections area to improve the performance of agents by measuring roll rates (early arrears through to late arrears), right party contact and outcomes. Individual performance is expected to increase by measuring at process level allowing the organisation to meet their overall recovery targets year on year.  To add balance within this operation, the client will also be collecting qualitative data to ensure improved performance does not come at the expense of expected customer experience standards – both measures will then be utilised for individual performance appraisals and bonus payments.

For more details on eg’s approach to achieving sustainable operational improvements within collections, arrears and debt management areas, contact me – adrianharvey@eguk.co.uk

In conjunction with the Professional Planning Forum there will be a FREE webinar taking place on 25 November.

This Back Office Online round table discussion will cover key operations management questions of the panel, around the three back office topics for the discussion:
·    How different is Operational Management to Real time management?
·    Can technology provide the support and multitude of data in the back office we see in the front office?
·    Can we begin to provide measures and metrics so we can plan and perform true end to end customer service?

You can ask the panelists questions and get their insight into Back Office Optimization.  Panelists include Innovation Award winners Adrian Hawes of Aviva and Grant Holden of HeroTSC, along with eg’s Tim Becker .

Register for the event today and join the debate.

We know the temptation of using eg production data for testing, training or support because you often want the same volume, variety and type of data which is hard to re-create.  But using production data backups without the necessary security measures, is potentially in breach of regulations and compliance laws.

Even when data is stored in a test or development environment it still needs to be protected against security breaches – this can often be overlooked.  The same issues arise when you want training environments, or when you copy data to investigate issues.

Fines of up to £500,000 can to be issued by the UK Information Commissioners Office for serious security breaches – and regulators are getting tough.

Are you protected?

* Overcome these issues and carry on testing with backups of your live data in eg work manager®/eg operational intelligence® WITHOUT THE RISK – by applying eg work manager® de-sensitisation

* Ensure legal, secure data management for test, training and support activities.

* Avoid serious security breaches and subsequent fines and penalties.

If you want a no obligation review of your eg data management just complete the form below or call 01785 715772.

The 19th October heralded the final focus group of 2010.

The agenda focussed on the potential business improvements that can be made within an organisation and the support that the eg operational intelligence^® suite  and principles can give in realising continuing benefits following an organisations initial investment.

With 10 organisations represented at the event, it provided a fantastic networking and knowledge sharing opportunity on how each business identifies and selects improvements, aligns the software to support these initiatives and how the ‘business as usual’ principles of operational management engages the staff and drives the benefits.

To support these discussions we were grateful for the support of Legal & General who provided a case study on how their Business Improvement Team within the Retail Savings business included the roll out of eg work manager^® as part of their tool set to drive improvements within their business.

As part of the discussions we also reviewed the various merits of a business improvement framework including Six Sigma, Lean and Systems Thinking – and how the system and principles can support this.  Further details on how this can be achieved can be found in a special eg white paper.  To request a copy just complete the form below.

eg would like to thank their customers for continuing to support the Focus Groups during 2010.  Any feedback on what you would like to appear on the agenda for 2011 please leave a response through the ‘add a comment’ option.

Focus group meeting dates for 2011 will be announced Q1 of 2011.