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 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

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.

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.

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 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’

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.

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.