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2012 High Performance Virtual Summit

This year's summit on “Creating Real Change” gives you the opportunity to learn from leaders in healthcare and industries who will share their experiences and perspective on improvement and transformation with an emphasis on what really works.

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New White Paper

Enterprise Risk Management: Proof or Promise?

There is overwhelming consensus among financial services executives that the current risk environment has become significantly more complex, dynamic, and difficult to navigate. Some new mandates are expensive and cut into margins and profitability, so there is a real motivation to not only comply but to more effectively manage the response and cost.

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New Article

AMN Healthcare: Providers Re-engineering Healthcare for Greater Efficiency

With healthcare reimbursement becoming tighter and patients expecting more from their providers, hospitals and other health systems are seeking ways to change processes and become more efficient.

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Improving Quality and Productivity While Transforming the Culture in a Retail Lockbox Operation

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Client: A top three U.S. bank holding company with over 80 operations centers in North America
Industry: Financial Services
Service: Workforce Management, High Performance Culture

Challenge:

Prior year 50% volume increase and quality issues
Needed to reduce operating costs by 50% without negatively impacting service levels
Needed to improve accountability of performance of frontline associates and supervisors

Solutions:

Optimized staffing allocation to accomplish the unit cost goals through and Workforce Management modeling
Simultaneously used High-Performance Culture (HPC) to help with the cultural transformation in order to engage the entire organization in realizing quality and productivity goals

Results:

Lockbox site reduced unit cost by 58%
Reduced cycle time by 48%
Improved quality by more than 75%
All goals accomplished in eight months

In the year prior to this engagement, the client consolidated multiple lockbox sites, increasing wholesale lockbox volume by 50%. In order to meet the demand, staff was added. Standard operating procedures were defined and implemented without involvement from frontline associates. Additionally, much of the management team was new following the consolidation.

Processing at the site was done by three shifts – Monday through Friday, plus a Saturday and Sunday shift. Each shift had it own challenges with regard to culture, processing capability and productivity. Most of the weekday associates were full-time while the weekend associates were part-time. The site processes over 600,000 transactions each month with daily and seasonal fluctuations. While quality was under control and the operation was generally meeting customer service levels, their unit cost (cost per transaction) remained significantly higher than other regional operations, and was double the year-end target.

Far too often, transformation efforts focus only on process issues, leaving culture to chance. For that reason, the approach used in this wholesale lockbox operation included High-Performance Culture (HPC) to help change the daily behaviors of the organization and engage the frontline. In addition to transforming the culture, Guidon facilitated four improvement sessions and completed a Workforce Management plan.

The problem-solving sessions brought subject matter experts and front-line associates together to create and implement improvement plans. Employees from wholesale, retail and specialty departments participated in each session to offer fresh perspectives.

Some of the ideas that were generated in the improvement sessions included:

Redesign and standardize workstations, including moving printers to work-up desks which saved a minimum of 40 steps associates walked to retrieve each printed ticket
Combine the quality control function with the stapling function to create a new quality assembly position
Run the end-of-day process before running the image end-of-day process to save time and allow second-shift to enter the system earlier
Implement standard operating procedures for all production functions

Results from the sessions were impressive. Workup cycle time was reduced by 35%, quality control/stapling cycle time was reduced by 29%, and errors were reduced by 42%.

Guidon followed these numerous improvements with a Workforce Management plan to align the new found capacity with work arrival patterns and delivery deadlines. The new staffing plan, intended to match processing capacity to customer demand, gave associates the opportunity to change shifts to meet personal needs, and leveraged part-time associates to minimize idle time while remaining flexible to volume variations.