Tag Archive for: Leadership Training Australia

Operational Excellence and Agile Integration - Quality Business ServicesQuality Business Services

Operational Excellence and Agile Integration: Alison’s COE Journey

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When Alison’s company decided to implement agile principles across the whole organisation, there was uncertainty over how this would work in operational teams. Agile had its origins in software development, where it had been effectively used to rapidly deliver software in quick iterations. How would this work in a continuous operating environment? QBS’s Core Operational Excellence leadership development program gave Alison the frameworks to solve this, paving the way for successful Operational Excellence and Agile Integration.

The Issues

Alison was able to leverage the Core Operational Excellence program to identify some key pain points that she could address with an Operational Excellence and Agile Integration:

  • Large customer deliverables were managed in an inflexible ‘waterfall’ approach
  • Negative customer sentiment towards time and cost to build new system requirements
  • Low visibility of team workload
  • Poor visibility of current work status and process performance
  • Single points of failure exacerbated by gaps in process documentation

Actions Taken

With her team, Alison systematically tackled these pain points with some key actions:

  • Addressed process vulnerabilities in a Confluence knowledge base – a one-stop shop for the team
  • Increased cross-skilling and improved capacity utilisation
  • Chunked down customer deliverables into smaller deliverables measured as agile storyboard points and managed in sprints
  • Increased visibility of workload using a Kanban board
  • Established shared workload management meetings with a joint Jira board
  • Created dashboards to give visibility on status and performance

The Results

The results that Alison achieved within seven months are impressive and demonstrate the tangible benefits of Operational Excellence and Agile Integration:

  • Annual OPEX saving of $429k with a different approach to workload management
  • Further 1 FTE saving while managing a 30% increase in workload
  • Double the number of new requirements delivered to customers in the same amount of time (100% productivity gain)
  • More consistent customer experience – approximately 75% reduction in customer issues
  • Greater collaboration between teams and different areas of the business
  • 100% of key roles have succession plans

Her team are now working smarter, not harder, but the journey does not end here for Alison and the team. They now have a different way of looking at their operation and the mindset to improve!

Operational Excellence and Agile Integration in Your Organisation

If you and your leaders would like to sustainably solve your own operational challenges, start here to learn more about Core Operational Excellence and QBS’s other development programs.

Transforming Dispute Resolution: Tim’s COE Journey - Quality Business ServicesQuality Business Services

Transforming Dispute Resolution: Tim’s COE Journey

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As the manager of an internal dispute resolution team in the financial services sector, Tim was a passionate advocate for his organisation’s customers. Any complaints that weren’t resolved within the various business lines became the responsibility of his team.  If his team are unable to resolve the dispute within prescribed timeframes it is escalated to AFCA at significant financial and reputational cost.  Furthermore, a recent acquisition had added further complexity to an already complex business, selling various products through multiple channels.

Tim needed to sustainably improve the dispute resolution process for the benefit of all parties and when QBS’s Core Operational Excellence leadership training program came along, it was the perfect vehicle to achieve this.  He took responsibility to analyse, optimise and improve his own function using proven operational excellence concepts.  

THE ISSUES

Through the lens of operational excellence, Tim was able to identify the priority issues that needed to be addressed:

  • Varied, undocumented complaint processes across the business
  • Insufficient dispute resolution (DR) process documentation – in addition to causing variation, this also placed a reliance on the experienced team members to support the less experienced
  • Highly variable DR team capability
  • Skill gaps within DR team 

ACTIONS TAKEN

With the above issues in mind, Tim was able to drive specific actions to sustainably shift the needle for his business and team:

  • Documented current business complaint processes
  • Dispute resolution processes agreed and documented (by the team, for the team)
  • Skills matrix created to prioritise skill gaps to be closed with team members achieving Society of Consumer Affairs Professionals accreditation
  • Changed the process to ensure team member speak with the customer at the outset and used open ended questions
  • Developed templates and increased standardisation for common complaint types
  • Increased collaboration within the business 

THE RESULTS

The results that Tim achieved within just seven months are astounding:

  • Time to resolve complaints decreased from a median of 22 days down to 17 days 
  • Reduction in complaints escalated to AFCA from 72% to 34% (similar total number of complaints).   Each complaint that escalates to AFCA costs ~$3,150.  This saved the company around $130k in one month alone!
  • Productivity gains from less effort expended on each complaint resulted in 1 FTE headcount reduction
  • Happier customers, happy regulator, happy business!

Next frontier? Work with the business to reduce the number of complaints!

This is a fabulous example of how leaders can improve their operational performance without engaging external consultants – it is usually achieved through a handful of relatively small actions to address the specific challenges in that area. In addition, the skills Tim learnt will be with him throughout his career.

If you would like your leaders to turn their function around without engaging expensive consultants, click here to learn more about Core Operational Excellence and QBS’s other development programs.