This writing is about an on-going journey towards transforming Business Operations and extending the framework, lessons, and practices to the other business functions and to the extended supply chain.
In an earlier LinkedIn blog I had written about Business Transformation (BT), what it is, and what it takes towards a successful experience, which in many cases may be cumulative improvements, but also include large bets and high risk initiatives.
The challenge and opportunity was to build a BT capability with the objective of radically altering current business practices. So, the first question was about the current state – where we are; leading to the second, the future state – what do we aspire to be? The in-between would be the “Hows” to the “Whats”. That is, an initial assessment of the current state was needed to define the baseline, and then with a vision and strategic plan, define the pathways and measures of successes.
The current state assessment was an in-depth review of Business Operations – plans, processes, finance, competitive benchmarks, employee engagement, metrics, systems, and audits – for product provisioning by markets. Processes were analyzed (by markets) at the operating level, documented via process maps where needed, checked against existing controls (or noted for lack thereof), evaluated for outcome against existing metrics (or noted for lack thereof), and compared against formal corporate audit results and available competitive financial benchmarks. This assessment revealed current gaps in “people”, “process”, and “technology” categories and was the foundation for creating a forward strategic plan with emphasis on Risk Management, Total Quality Management based processes, Innovation, Employee engagement, P&L improvement, and Repeatable Operations.
Transformation projects, in alignment with the strategic plan were derived from these gaps. Each project has a plan and owner, and all projects are monitored financially and for adherence to established milestones. A critical requirement is demonstrated impact of each project on the functional P&L within Operations and Operations in totality. Governance is at three levels – Executive leadership, Business Function leadership, Project and Operations leadership – and is maintained with an overall structure and management at each level.
A most critical part of a transformation is the establishment of process and metrics baseline. For some projects, available process documentation and metrics have established the baseline; for others, process maps, with appropriate metrics and controls, are being developed while ensuring necessary functional and corporate audit requirements.
The assessment revealed that collecting, understanding, validating, and approving customer requirements was a critical gap and lead to many downstream impacts. Thus an initial focus area is to transform the front-end sequential process with a collaborative and technology enhanced parallel process with appropriate process controls. An example, is the collective (Sales, Product Management, Operations, Vendor) review and approval of requirements. Technology platform upgrades or replacement are also an active part of the transformation.
The assessment also revealed opportunities for right-skilling employees to the job, and in employee training in specific areas. One such area, is in problem solving and root-cause analysis, and to truly understand the differences between solving for symptoms and for root causes. A core group of Operations personnel have been trained in Root Cause Analysis techniques with on-going implementation in Operations to improve processes and reduce defects. The findings are looped back to appropriate areas for full life-cycle improvement, for example improved product definition, or for correcting vendor errors.
Technology is also being used to streamline operations and improve customer experience. One example is the use of mobile SMS messages to alert customers of certain events, such as, scheduled check-ups, or notify them that their health id cards are in the mail. This also has the direct effect of reducing call-center calls, thus, freeing up resources or reducing costs.
The transformation journey continues and results indicate improvement. While it is very challenging it is also satisfying to see a team set and achieve goals with the customer experience always in mind.
These observations are outcomes from work at Independence Blue Cross and was originally published in Linkedin.