Process Improvements With Measurable Results
See Our Results Below: Select an organization or industry based area below to view the related case study.
Organization Based
Broadly applicable to many companies and industries.
Support Groups:
- Finance
- Human Resources
- Marketing
- Information Technology
- Corporate Services
- Shared Service Centers
- Compliance/Audit
- Legal
- Internal Improvement Teams
Line Groups:
- Field Sales & Support
- Customer Services
- Contact Centers
- New Product Development
- Post-Sales Services
Supply Chain Operations:
- Order Management
- Master Data Management
- Procurement
- Materials Management
- Production
- Distribution
- Quality Management
Industry Based
Document operations which are unique to particular business segments and industries.
Services:
- Financial Services
- Media Services
- Broadcast
- Newspapers
- Digital
- Magazines
- Books
- Information Services
- Health Plans
- Telecommunications
- Utilities
Supply Chain:
- Pharmaceuticals
- Chemicals
- Food Production/Processing
- Paper/Packaging
- Industrial Products
- Technology
- Print and Mail
- Consumer Packaged Goods
- Retail and Distribution
- Oil and Gas
Information Technology
Improving IT Group Operating Performance
Midwest U.S.
Project Sponsor:
Project Descriptions:
Organization-wide, self-funding, non-technology-dependent operations improvement effort for the Information Technology [IT] group focusing on technology acquisition, deployment and user satisfaction [1,200 employees]
Scope of Project:
- Application development
- Configuration management
- Architecture identification
- Project prioritization
- Project management
- Quality assurance
- Security management
- IT User Services [help desk]
Improvement Benefits:
- Operating cost 20%
- Annual savings $15M
- Head count 13%
- ROI (12 month) 4.5x
- IT project scope change65%
- User satisfaction20%
Situation Analysis:
ClientCo’s board of directors sought to investigate the savings potential of outsourcing various IT operations to offshore service providers. IT executives knew that significant internal improvements were also available and requested a “gap analysis” to compare both strategies: outsourcing vs. improving-in-place. Improvements-in-place achieved over 70% of the offshoring targets with minimal risk and the board selected this strategy.
Improvements Identified:
Although Information Week routinely ranked the ClientCo IT organization in the “top three” tier for service performance to users, senior management sought further improvement. In eight weeks, The Lab documented all major technology processes and identified over 300 operating and service-level improvements across eight major IT processes:
- Application Development
- Configuration Management
- Architecture Identification
- Project Prioritization
- ITUser Services
- Quality Assurance
- Project Management
- Security Management
- Project Planning Effectiveness - Over 90% of projects changed scope multiple times throughout their duration, creating continued drain on limited resources and lost productivity. Project management tools were inconsistent across business units, were applied inconsistently and delivered widely varying results.
- Resource Allocation - ClientCo ranked slightly above average in overall cost and efficiency performance [head count ratio and revenue per ITstaff]. An additional 12% improvement goal was established by ClientCo leadership along with The Lab.
- IT Strategic Planning - The technologies specified on a “project-by-project” basis were inadequately linked to the ITstrategic planning process, creating consistency issues. Additionally, no standardized process or consistent criteria existed for rationalizing, prioritizing and consolidating projects.
- IT Metrics - Measures for the ITorganization were insufficiently detailed and inconsistently monitored. Aformal measurement system across each process was required.
Overall Results:
The implementation effort reduced operating costs by 20% while improving service and rationalizing the IT-related backlog.