Driving Success in Service Delivery

The role of process management is often read as process improvement; lean principles, cost cutting and automation. But process management spans a broader range of impact. For example, when an organisation plans to outsource services or when collaborating between organisations.

Outsourcing

In outsourcing, services that cannot be sufficiently done internally; whether due to resources or expertise, are subcontracted to external parties. Typically, the duration, scope of service and costs are agreed upon. At the end of the day, is that all? Or should there be additional components to your outsourcing strategy? For instance, including a continuous improvement plan in which your organization and the supplier work together on improvements?

It is important to consider that outsourcing services does not mean an organisation is ‘off the hook’, or cannot be held accountable for outcomes. At best, organisations should expect continuous improvement activity from suppliers that look beyond just the service portion for which they are focussed, and should include involvement from the managing organisation to ensure that these are put in practice.

Additionally, services that are outsourced always have hand-over-points: a preceding and following activity from your own, or internal, organisation. It is important to include these transitions in the continuous improvement program and to see how can these transfers and the overall picture be improved?

This is where process management can play an important role.

In establishing a process improvement program, all roles and responsibilities in the value chain (both from your organisation and suppliers), can be clearly identified and documented. In setting clear expectations, teams can meet on a regular basis to explore processes and define current ways of working (AS-IS), while outlining goals that you have for the process, such as cost savings, time reduction or quality improvements. With simple process workshops you can find improvements and visualise these changes to create alternative / improved (TO-BE) processes. Furthermore, with the ability to provide input and feedback throughout this process, continuous improvement can be continued on a regular basis. These activities help to ensure that outsourced services become a viable and sustainable part of your organisation.

Collaboration

Process management also plays an important role when different organisations work together as part of a collaboration. Separate from outsourcing a service, this entails sharing of work between two entities. For example, in the last 10 years we have seen many municipalities starting to work together and collaborate more closely. Often, there is an assumption that this will bring cost savings. However, this is not always the case and in several instances it was found that even as part of a collaboration, teams continued to work in their own way, with their own procedures and systems.

Merging teams presents a great opportunity, but requires further study and consideration. Organisations should first ask some key questions; How do you work? How do we work?

Together, with all of the experiences of both teams, how can we really look to innovate our ways of working moving forward? Talking through these workflows from start to end, and ensuring that staff can refer to those new ways of working in a central resource, or ‘digital handbook’, is an important role for process management.

To provide an example, in a newly created social work organisation, Work and Income activities of two municipalities came together. One year after the start of the collaboration, they began a review of how the work processes were carried out. Despite an earlier improvement assignment, they found that the staff involved were still working according to their previous, and different ways of working. In essence, they were never triggered to really work together. In particular, the handover from the two different municipalities and the handover back to the clients had not been reviewed, standardised or improved. The teams had reverted to the old ways of working within 4 months of the collaborative company being created. A huge opportunity was missed. Whilst the joint-company was created in order to achieve savings for all participating councils and offer better and more direct services to the involved citizens, the operating teams were not challenged to do so as well.

After this was realised a year after founding the company, the teams got together in workshops in which they reviewed their individual AS IS operating procedures and worked on a collective TO BE situation in which best practices of all participants were combined. A powerful team emerged that was able to do more work than before at lower costs.

This example highlights the important role of process management and the foundation it provides in setting organisations up for success when implementing change. Many times, we have seen that being able to communicate the impact of changes and the WHY prior to starting a new way of working can help to create buy-in from staff, creating a culture that is crucial to success.

In summary

In looking for ways to improve service and drive down costs, outsourcing and collaboration are often considered. However, in many outsourcing and collaboration situations the operational processes are often not reviewed. Improving the processes with the operational teams is crucial in achieving the goals that were set out for the outsourcing or collaboration: How will the processes involved be done a little better tomorrow than how we did them yesterday.