Since 1988, eg has been developing the definitive approach to back office optimisation.  During this time, there has been one constant: the need to deliver improved performance has grown.  Whether the business climate has been benign or torrid, the need to make the most of resource and skill to become more effective in what we do and efficient in how we do it, never subsides.

Through my observations of working with a number of clients recently I wanted to share my thoughts and get your tips on how you know ‘what good looks like’.

To help hard pressed operational managers understand there is a tried, tested and proven approach to improving their “production” has also been a key challenge.  Sometimes it’s been easier to start with explaining what the approach is not!  Firstly, it’s not about system replacements or process improvement methodologies.

Of course, these things happen and in some organisations, must happen to stay compliant or profitable – but time and again we have seen that regardless of current systems deployed or processes followed, improved performance can be delivered in the very short-term from the simple application of operational management techniques.

Continuing with the “what it’s not” theme, then secondly, these techniques are not new.  So the good news is two-fold:

1)     There’s something any Team Leader or Manager can learn that’s tried, tested and proven….

2)     …AND can give immediate pay back, quite independent of big investment decisions, projects or initiatives to change systems or processes which would take time to yield results

Our experience shows that to move forward with the eg principles of operational management^® there is a need for a common approach to plan, manage and improve everything we do every day.  This all starts with a balanced range of measures that cover the key things any operational manager needs to know more about; quality, service & skill.

When it comes to explaining what good operational management looks like and how measures form the foundation, we’d like to hear your experiences of what works to get Managers and their teams engaged.  Do you have any tops tips or handy hints on how to make “what good looks like” clearer?  We look forward to hearing from you – please add a comment below and share this post with your peers.

PS – It’s the 10^th anniversary eg operational excellence^® awards later this year, where eg clients from around the world will meet to celebrate the improvements they have achieved resulting from best operational management practice.  If you have a good news story about how you have delivered improved performance and tangible results using operational management techniques, let us know!  Client nominations for the awards can also be made now http://bit.ly/JMskBo but hurry, as the closing date is 15.06.

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.

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.

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…

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

In his book, Operational Leadership1, Andrew Spanyi is reported as saying that;

“Fewer than 40% of major improvement projects typically achieve their stated goals, and the sustainability of these gains is even more questionable.”

eg operational intelligence® automatically provides Clients with root-cause data from the activities that make up their processes so it becomes easier to target improvement activity AND make sure real benefits are achieved as a result.

Using this data makes it possible to understand the effectiveness of those processes, utilising a balanced range of measures covering resource, service standards, quality thresholds and unit costs. It also allows organisations to step back and understand “WHY” things happen.

eg operational intelligence® automatically captures a balanced range of performance measures that spotlight bottle-necks, skills shortages, errors and failures. This data informs operational managers, resource analysts and capacity planners to make the most of resource now and to manage performance. Through pro-active management, a step-change in performance is realised in weeks. Specialists use eg’s approach to intelligent operations management too: quantifying the volume and actual time taken real-time and enabling your people to “drill-down”, qualifying “WHY” things happen. This transforms the knowledge of how many times an activity occurs from being useful to being valuable intelligence, for example how long it takes and how much it costs.

Providing operational intelligence drives real focus to improve everyone’s efficiency and effectiveness whilst also augmenting business improvement initiatives to improve processes and drive out waste. Measurement to understand current process performance and develop future capability is essential. Capturing the data that is important to you, allowing you to identify and focus on the key things that will make the difference is vital.

Knowing what you have today, identifying the opportunities for tomorrow and having a clear view on the path between delivers the best benefits for all.

For more details on eg‘s approach to achieving sustainable operational improvements, contact me – andrewbaker@eguk.co.uk

ref:1 Spanyi, A. 2010. Operational Leadership. Business Expert Press LLC. New York.

Research from the Professional Planning Forum demonstrates that although improvement in back office operational performance is growing in importance, most organisations do not have mechanisms in place to increase efficiency.

For more details of the survey, visit: http://bit.ly/cWhjTd

Delivering tangible improvements in customer and people satisfaction, driving down waste and increasing performance are top of the operational planner’s agenda. Organisations have found that the insight required to make a difference comes from Operational Intelligence: a balanced range of measures, supported by active management planning and performance reporting.

Not only does this approach deliver “more with what you’ve got”, it provides a clear view that feeds and supports process improvement, using lean, system thinking and six sigma methodology. One eg Client sums this up as “Delivering today better, whilst developing a better tomorrow”.

To see more about the benefits that eg Client’s achieve with operational intelligence, visit: http://www.eguk.co.uk/case-studies/

eg are pleased to support the PPF Back Office Seminar on 14^th October 2010 at Manchester Airport, UK.  We hope to see you there. 

• For preferential rates to attend this seminar please email: ask@eguk.co.uk
• If you would like to see the key presentations following the event and engage in the post event commentary just complete the short form below and we will be pleased to arrange:

In the same way that workflow implementations often missed the point – so do many BPM deployments.  Typical of BPM deployments is to overlook the reason why technology is needed in the first place and day-to-day management of employees are often overlooked.  Management Information is one element, but if Managers and Teams are to be accountable for performance targets, BPM does not hold all the answers or provide true operations management with true operational intelligence.

Has your BPM project delivered – please lets open this debate up and comment below?

If you would like a copy of the white paper ‘Too much BP but not enough of the M’  just complete the form below.

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 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!

Since Catherine’s post (‘Award winning customer service’) we have been evaluating awards in general.  We posted a question about this in a couple of our groups on LinkedIn and had some interesting feedback – ranging from negative comments such as ‘awards are just media hype’ and ‘publicity stunts’ to positive reasons to enter such as ‘they demonstrate the quality of an organsation’, ‘improve team morale’, ‘raise profile’ and ‘celebrate success’.

Personally I am becoming slightly sceptical of some industry awards as we enter a number of these seeking external recognition for our business, people, products, software development and innovation, yet whilst having been recognised we have rarely won.  This could well be for a whole host of reasons but the fact is we just don’t know.  Feedback or advice on how to improve is rarely given – why is this?

The cynic in me thinks it could be part of the money making machine called vanity and it is the taking part (and paying the hefty entrance or gala dinner fees) that counts – not about industry best practice.

That is why when eg launched its own awards for clients to recognise and celebrate team commitment and reward the hard work and success of Team Leaders, Managers and their teams, the purpose was to raise the bar of performance and recognise outstanding achievements.

I am sure we all know why we need recognition from time to time and the benefits it brings.  The two basic types of recognition are external and internal.

External: tangible, outward forms of recognition – certificates, trophies, awards, etc.
Internal: less tangible; includes pride of accomplishment, self-satisfaction, and member’s personal belief that he or she accomplished, contributed, and did better today than
last week.

The eg operational excellence® awards are now in their 5th year and yes like other industry awards not everybody wins as that would be counter productive.  However, the reasons why clients enter these awards year after year is that:

All entrants are recognised and the demonstration of exceptional achievement and best practice are then awarded.  Feedback is given to every entrant at both a company and organisational level.

This way you know what you have to do to improve, where you fell down and actions that you can take back to the workplace to make it happen and improve.

So lets not have awards for awards sake – let’s hold them and reward for the right reasons or else they won’t mean a thing.

What awards in your industry do you rate and which don’t you rate?  Share your reasons why so we can get some debate on what works and what achieves the objectives of industry awards.

I have been training and coaching operational management disciplines in the UK for over 10 years and recently been working in South Africa too.   I think that regardless of the culture or operating environment the following tips for Team Leaders are the basic fundamentals in achieving operational excellence.

Do you have any other daily tips you think should be added to this list?  Email me: wendyjeavons@eguk.co.uk

1. Keep your measures up to date!  Put in place a quarterly review process to validate all measures including service standards, staff skills and quality.

2. Maximise your available hours.  Produce stretching plans each day to meet individual and team targets.

3. Ensure all team members have a full days work based on their available hours and skill.  Apply the principles of short term scheduling to maintain motivation throughout the day.

4. Communicate daily objectives to the team.  Hold ‘Buzz Sessions’ each morning to energise and motivate everyone.

5. Involve the team in visualising performance throughout the day.  Update a whiteboard to show progress against plan.

6. Manage By Walking About!!  Don’t get stuck behind your PC.  Monitor work completion throughout the day by visiting each member of the team.

7. Actively feedback and coach on personal skills e.g. customer service in addition to technical areas.

8. Manage performance variance across the team.  Be prepared to challenge and don’t forget to recognise achievements throughout the day to maintain pace and productivity.

9. Analyse your results.  Understand the cause and effect relationship between all Key Performance Indicators.  For example the impact of skill levels on quality standards.

10. Undertake process reviews in consultation with your team members and other areas that impact the process.

Following on from Rachel’s update last week, I wanted to share a good demonstration of the positive impact the implementation of operations management software and principles has on customer service, as can be seen in the case of one of eg’s award winning clients.

eg was so impressed with the achievements of an internal customer service programme undertaken by the General Insurance area of Legal & General that we nominated the company in the category of ‘Most Innovative Customer Service Programme’ in 2007.  To our delight, they subsequently won the award.

The project involved a far-reaching initiative to shape the business, improve customer experience and drive cultural change.  This resulted in providing Legal & General with better performance information, increased staff motivation, improved customer service scores and increased operational effectiveness with room for year-on-year opportunities for growth and improvement.

We worked in partnership with Legal & General, implementing the eg operational intelligence® software suite and the eg principles of operational management®.

At the time, Gary Millner, Director of Corporate Relations and Communications at the ifs School of Finance, said:

“The ifs Financial Innovation Awards are now firmly established as one of the most prestigious in the financial services industry. Entries from organisations across the globe combined with a rigorous judging process mean that those who win one of the award categories, such as Legal & General, can take pride in having truly excelled in the industry. Put simply, the awards have again provided a great opportunity for innovators in the financial services industry to gain recognition for their efforts.”

eg enters the Financial Innovation Awards every year and this year has finalists in two categories following a nomination for Legal & General Retail Savings and our own software suite in a technology vendors category:

Most Effective Operations Management Initiative
• Bank of Valletta – The Bank of Valletta Process Management Framework Initiative
• Barclays Local Business (Clearlybusiness) – SPIRIT
• Fortis Insurance – Fortis Claims and Operations Way
• Legal & General Retail Savings – Legal & General Retails Savings
• Lloyds Banking Group – Wealth Planning Service

Technology Vendors – Most Innovative Financial Services Solution
• Algorithmics – Algo Real-time Credit Engine
• Calypso Technology – Calypso Trading & Risk Management System
• eg solutions – The eg operational intelligence® software suite
• Linedata Services – LongView Live

This year’s awards event will take place on Thursday 3 December at the Grand Connaught Rooms, Covent Garden, London.  Hopefully I’ll have some positive news to report on this at a later date – finger’s crossed!

In the meantime, I’d like to know what you think the value is of industry awards such as these?

We organise our own annual awards for clients – the eg operational excellence awards™ – and we get some great feedback, but I’d be interested to know any positive and negative experiences you have had.  Send me your comments via the blog or you can email me directly: catherinestaite@eguk.co.uk.