success: financial services
Case 1: Optimization of the claims department at a large European car repair shop chain.
Old situation:
The company was battling a huge backlog of insurance claims. All employees received both simple and complex files indiscriminately through a digital box. This random approach caused inexperienced workers to receive highly complex cases while tenured employees would get easy ones and ended up bored. The bottom line was that the old system caused delays and did not maximize the team's potential.
New situation:
Incoming files are now sorted into complex and straightforward ones and go into corresponding digital archives. A team of experienced people focuses on the complex cases, and another, larger team works on the simpler ones. We established daily goals around processing high record volumes and we put these goals on a score board. This fostered a desire for achievement, involvement, and competition among team members. Within two months, the backlog was eliminated. They achieved this partly because all staff members are now working on bulk items instead of separate (individual) cases.
Records are being processed much faster and the number of complaints has dropped, which took pressure off the complaints department.
Final results:
Operational cost savings, shorter lead times, and increased customer satisfaction.
Case 2: Reducing operational cost for a large insurance company in the Netherlands.
Old situation:
A large insurance company in the Netherlands was lacking overview of the activities of its different departments. It wasn't even clear whether these activities really added value to the primary process of insuring.
New situation:
We conducted organization-wide research to uncover the amount of time employees within different departments spent on specific activities. The results showed overlap between several departments with regard to the same activities. The study also brought to light that many activities were not crucial deliverables in the process of insuring.
Another issue – one that ended up saving millions of dollars once resolved - focused on the efficiency of the supporting divisions in their support of the main processes. Every middle manager claimed to need his own secretary to be efficient. However, we found that the work load generated by each manager could easily be handled by himself. Along the same lines, we uncovered that several secretaries could have supported three managers instead of one. The managers each hired their own secretaries for status reasons and because of a lack of insight into the nature of the work load – including the amount of time the work would take.
Final results:
The company saved millions of dollars by eliminating activities that didn't add value to the insurance process. Another money-saving measure was the introduction of a week-to-week planning tool allowing management more control over upcoming activities and better insight into the required demand for capacity.
- Taurus Concepts is active in these sectors:
- Manufacturing
- Health care
- Financial services
- Retail
- Food & beverage
- Mining
- Obstacles to improvements are:
- Labor pool issues (poor quality of employees, staff shortage or surplus)
- Low morale
- High staff turnover
- Ineffective internal communication
- Complex legislation and regulation
- Misalignment of staff performance and bonus metrics with corporate goals/objectives results in unfair compensation and lower productivity.
- Senior management's inability to implement change results in lower productivity.
- Managers, on average, spend only 11% of their time increasing productivity through active leadership.
- Managers are buried under reports they don't use to manage.
Only 60% of the reports are used to manage. - On average, managers spend 35% of their time on paper work.
For these tasks, 25% of a manager's time is preferred. - Most managers believe they can increase productivity 13.8%.
However, the actual average increase tends to be 9.8%. - The biggest challenge a company can face is that of a culture change.
- On average, 70% of companies is willing to improve productivity.
- These 4 factors are pivotal in achieving organization-wide improvements in processes and controls:
- Management
- Workforce
- Communications
- Training
- Cost reductions can be seized through:
- Business process streamlining
- Effective management control systems
- Extensive training
- The Taurus Concepts approach results in:
- Increased productivity
- Proactive staff behavior
- Strong competitive positioning
- Involvement of company's employees
- Supervisory competence is a key factor in improving productivity.
- On average, managers receive only 6 days of training per year.
- These 3 factors need to be in place to achieve organizational effectiveness & quality, and minimize waste:
- Effective supervision
- Workforce comprehension and support of processes
- Transparent communication
- During the past few years, workforce productivity has dropped to an average of 2 productive/3 unproductive days per week.