Case Studies
Brief: A new Director had taken over a department and wanted to know how the department operated and where there were opportunities and challenges.
Outcomes:
Processes – We presented an overview of all the activities in the department. This included departmental objectives, roles & responsibilities, decision points & criteria, and how risk is approached. This gave the Director a clear overview of what the department does and how it does it.
Risk – Most of the strategic decisions of the department were made based on risk calculations. Analysis showed that the risk calculations being used were not robust and therefore were not allowing the strategy to achieve the underlying departmental objectives. We recommended a review of the risk profile to ensure that it was effective.
Roles & Responsibilities – There were some roles which took a long time to train. This meant that people often left the organisation before the organisation could recoup the cost of hiring and training them. We recommended a strategic review of the role to reduce training time, ensure that responsibilities of the role were necessary, and increase staff retention.
Consistency – There were some supporting roles that were being inconsistently applied across different units. Senior staff were trained to meet the main objectives of the department. Support staff could carry out some but not all of those responsibilities. Some teams were only using the support staff for basic admin work. We benchmarked the best performing teams and implemented standardisation across units, moving non-productive tasks to support staff. This is projected to increase productive senior staff activity by 20%, generating £400,000 of additional value.
Culture – A passing comment from a stakeholder didn’t align with what another stakeholder had said. Further investigation exposed a cultural issue within one of the teams which was affecting their relationships with other teams. Once exposed, leaders were able to address and resolve the issue.
Brief: Ensure that the app being used by a parter organisation was right for our organisation order to unlock £1m of government funding.
Outcomes:
Risk – A review of the app showed that it was dependant on users logging on and off at the start and end of their shift. This created a risk that if the user forgot, the data would be incorrect. The app also caused a significant drain on phone battery life which may impact users' ability to use their phone during their shift.
Effectiveness – Whilst the app was extremely precise, the organisation already collected less precise data using another device which was only turned on during shifts and had a separate battery. A review of the terms of the government funding showed that the less precise option was accurate enough.
Resilience – The less precise option had been rejected by the partner agency as they believed that the devices were not reliable. Further investigation showed that although devices did occasionally malfunction, there was a process in place to identify and fix these devices within a short time-frame.
Cost – A thorough review of the impact factors showed that the existing less accurate solution would provide the data required and was more reliable, less risky, and more cost efficient. Saving of £35,000 per year in licencing costs and avoided the cost of a project to implement the app. The organisation gained £1m of government funding without spending any money.
Brief: Identify efficiencies in a processing environment in preparation for offshore migration of roles.
Outcomes:
Efficiency – By improving guidance for frontline operators, we eliminated 70% of referrals to second line operators and by extension, those requests being worked a second time by the frontline operators once they received a response. Saving of £70,000 per annum.
Effectiveness – Customer requests were processed quicker by two days as the referral loop was removed.
