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

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

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

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

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

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

-Ends-

Contacts

eg solutions plc
Elizabeth Gooch, Chief Executive Officer

01785-715772

www.eguk.co.uk

Bankside

Steve Liebmann, Simon Bloomfield or Andy Harris

020-7367-8888

Arbuthnot Securities Limited
Tom Griffiths

020-7012-2000

About eg solutions plc

eg solutions plc is a global back off ice optimisation software company.  Our software provides historic, real-time and predictive Operational MI. When implemented with our training programme for managers and team leaders to use this intelligence, we guarantee improvements in operational results in short timescales.

The Company, which is listed on the Alternative Investment Market (’AIM’) of the London Stock Exchange, is committed to customer satisfaction and the ongoing development of its operations management solutions.

-Ends-

Contacts

eg solutions plc
Elizabeth Gooch, Chief Executive Officer

01785-715772

www.eguk.co.uk

Bankside

Steve Liebmann, Simon Bloomfield or Andy Harris

020-7367-8888

Arbuthnot Securities Limited
Tom Griffiths

020-7012-2000

About eg solutions plc

eg solutions plc is a global back off ice optimisation software company.  Our software provides historic, real-time and predictive Operational MI. When implemented with our training programme for managers and team leaders to use this intelligence, we guarantee improvements in operational results in short timescales.

The Company, which is listed on the Alternative Investment Market (’AIM’) of the London Stock Exchange, is committed to customer satisfaction and the ongoing development of its operations management solutions.

Following the recent sale of an enterprise-wide software licence to Nationwide Building Society (”Nationwide”), Nationwide has placed a significant additional order for support and implementation services associated with roll-out across all back office functions.

The second order is from a major UK life and pensions company where eg’s operational management software will be rolled out to a further 400 staff to support improved capacity and work flow management and to provide consistent operational management information. The total number of users of eg’s software within this client has now increased to over 2,125 with installations across four divisions and five locations.

The revenue from these orders will be recognised in the current financial year to 31 January 2011.

Elizabeth Gooch, Chief Executive Officer, commented:

“These latest orders demonstrate the potential of generating repeat sales within our existing customer base of substantial UK and international financial services companies.”

ENDS

Contacts

eg solutions plc
Elizabeth Gooch, Chief Executive Officer

01785-715772

www.eguk.co.uk

Bankside

Steve Liebmann, Simon Bloomfield or Andy Harris

020-7367-8888

Arbuthnot Securities Limited
Tom Griffiths

020-7012-2000

About eg solutions plc

eg solutions plc is a global operations management software company. Our software provides historic, real-time and predictive Operational MI. When implemented with our training programme for managers and team leaders to use this intelligence, we guarantee improvements in operational results in short timescales.

The Company, which is listed on the Alternative Investment Market (’AIM’) of the London Stock Exchange, is committed to customer satisfaction and the ongoing development of its operations management solutions.

eg solutions plc (”eg solutions”, “eg” or “the Company”; LSE-AIM: EGS), the operations management software company, is pleased to announce the receipt of new orders from two existing UK financial services sector clients valued at a total of approximately £0.25 million.

Following the recent sale of an enterprise-wide software licence to Nationwide Building Society (”Nationwide”), Nationwide has placed a significant additional order for support and implementation services associated with roll-out across all back office functions.

The second order is from a major UK life and pensions company where eg’s operational management software will be rolled out to a further 400 staff to support improved capacity and work flow management and to provide consistent operational management information. The total number of users of eg’s software within this client has now increased to over 2,125 with installations across four divisions and five locations.

The revenue from these orders will be recognised in the current financial year to 31 January 2011.

Elizabeth Gooch, Chief Executive Officer, commented:

“These latest orders demonstrate the potential of generating repeat sales within our existing customer base of substantial UK and international financial services companies.”

-Ends-

Contacts

eg solutions plc
Elizabeth Gooch, Chief Executive Officer

01785-715772

www.eguk.co.uk

Bankside

Steve Liebmann, Simon Bloomfield or Andy Harris

020-7367-8888

Arbuthnot Securities Limited
Tom Griffiths

020-7012-2000

About eg solutions plc

eg solutions plc is a global operations management software company. Our software provides historic, real-time and predictive Operational MI. When implemented with our training programme for managers and team leaders to use this intelligence, we guarantee improvements in operational results in short timescales.

The Company, which is listed on the Alternative Investment Market (’AIM’) of the London Stock Exchange, is committed to customer satisfaction and the ongoing development of its operations management solutions.

Introduction

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

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

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

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

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

Two key ways of doing this are through:

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

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

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

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

The latest UK Customer Satisfaction Index (UKCSI) results from the Institute of Customer Service show a consistent improvement in service standards in most business sectors.

The most encouraging performances have come from retailers and organisations in the tourism, consumer services, automotive, leisure and banking industries.  Three of eg’s clients who use the eg operational intelligence^® software suite are featured in the Finance (banks) sector.

UKCSI is the national measure of customer satisfaction and the latest results, based on the views of 26,000 consumers, show that overall satisfaction levels have risen to 75 out of 100 – a 9 point improvement since the Index was introduced in July 2007.

“Our latest figures indicate that customer satisfaction is continuing to rise which is great news for the UK service economy and all organisations that focus on their customers,” says Jo Causon, Chief Executive of the Institute.

The recession appears to have had a galvanising effect on service with more organisations understanding that improving their customers’ experience is the only real differentiator in the current tough business climate.

“Companies cannot afford to lose customers and the Index reflects a continuing improvement as organisations realise the competitive importance of delivering excellent service.”

The latest survey results are available at: www.ukcsi.com and are definitely worth a look.

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.

The contract extension, which represents the Company’s third win in the Nordic and Benelux area, is worth £265,000 in the current financial year to 31 January 2011 and a further £300,000 during the full contract term of 5 years.

Elizabeth Gooch, Chief Executive Officer, commented:

“This latest win provides further evidence that major financial institutions recognise that eg’s award-winning software and supporting implementation services are delivering both tangible business benefits and improved customer experience.  Also, by demonstrating the attractiveness of our proposition to existing and new customers, we are continuing to implement our strategy of expansion into selected international markets.”

Under the contract extension, eg’s operational management software and methodology will be implemented within the client’s life assurance and pensions area of the Customer Services division with a view to increasing efficiency and reducing costs.  The project will commence immediately.

About eg solutions plc

eg solutions plc is a global operations management software company.  Our software provides historic, real-time and predictive Operational MI.  When implemented with our training programme for managers and team leaders to use this intelligence, we guarantee improvements in operational results in short timescales.

The Company, which is listed on the Alternative Investment Market (‘AIM’) of the London Stock Exchange, is committed to customer satisfaction and the ongoing development of its operations management solutions.

The contract extension, which represents the Company’s third win in the Nordic and Benelux area, is worth £265,000 in the current financial year to 31 January 2011 and a further £300,000 during the full contract term of 5 years.

Elizabeth Gooch, Chief Executive Officer, commented:

“This latest win provides further evidence that major financial institutions recognise that eg’s award-winning software and supporting implementation services are delivering both tangible business benefits and improved customer experience.  Also, by demonstrating the attractiveness of our proposition to existing and new customers, we are continuing to implement our strategy of expansion into selected international markets.”

Under the contract extension, eg’s operational management software and methodology will be implemented within the client’s life assurance and pensions area of the Customer Services division with a view to increasing efficiency and reducing costs.  The project will commence immediately.

ENDS

CONTACTS

eg solutions plc
Elizabeth Gooch, Chief Executive Officer
Tel + (0) 1785 715772
www.eguk.co.uk

Bankside
Steve Liebmann, Simon Bloomfield or Andy Harris
Tel + (0) 20 7367 8888

Arbuthnot Securities Limited
Tom Griffiths
Tel + 44 (0) 207 012 2000

About eg solutions plc

eg solutions plc is an operations management software applications vendor.  Our software provides real-time, historic and predictive Operational MI.  When implemented with our training programme for managers and team leaders to use this intelligence, we guarantee improvements in operational results in short timescales.

The Company, which is listed on the Alternative Investment Market (‘AIM’) of the London Stock Exchange, is committed to customer satisfaction and the ongoing development of its operations management solutions.