Situation
Actions
Results
Return on Investment
Project Details
Situation
A Des Plaines, IL non-profit firm providing health and welfare insurance to over 20 U.S. states had seen a steady decline in sales, morale, and employment over a number of years. The COO selected a MetaExpertTM from MetaOps, Inc. to assist them in establishing a program to improve customer satisfaction and unify the workforce to improve company-wide performance in three key areas – process quality, customer satisfaction, and increased sales. The MetaExpertTM led them to improving volume of sales by 11% the first year and a profit improvement of approximately $7.5 million annually thereafter.
Actions
The MetaExpertTM:
- Conducted a comprehensive organizational assessment to identify current best practices and identify the key areas for improvement opportunities.
- Developed and implemented a customized and inclusive approach to business process reengineering including value stream process improvement through high-performing teams.
- Developed a central guiding coalition team chaired by management and union leadership.
- Established three change goals to drive continuous improvement, including:
- Increasing sales of health and welfare services
- Improving measured quality, and
- Improving customer satisfaction
- Conducted a series of Kaizen events in a learn-by-doing approach to rapidly improve processes in tandem with the workforce learning aspects of Lean Six Sigma.
- Developed a central group of ‘service team leaders’ in a Center of Excellence (CoE)/program management office (PMO) to provide infrastructure to support ongoing continuous improvement efforts.
Results
The transformation resulted in:
- Improved health & welfare sales volumes by 11% over the first full year
- Employment costs fell by 10% through attrition – no one was laid-off
- Measured quality in processes improved an average of 35%
- Customer satisfaction indexes improved 30% to 50% for each measure
- Employee morale improved and grievances dropped to near zero in the process
- Estimated profit improvement: $7.5 million annually
Return on Investment
- 11% sales increase overall and 200% increase over results of prior year in new business
- 10% decrease in workforce through attrition
- 35% measured process quality improvement
- 30-50% increase in customer satisfaction
- $7.5 million annual cost avoidance
Project Details
Client Skills Required: OpEx organizational transformation and Business Process Re-engineering, SOP (standard operating procedures) improvement, continued process improvement, leadership and training in the practice of High-Performing Teams
Contract Length: 8 months
Support by MetaOps, Inc. MetaExpertsTM: OpEx, Policy Deployment, Strategy Development, mentoring, coaching and implementation, and High-Performing Teams development, Kaizen, Lean Six Sigma
