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CASE STUDIES

Lean Back Office - Doubled the Cost Savings
 
Scenario


The lean back office project whose aim was to realise £2.5m cost savings by 2015 was failing which started in January; by July 2015 there was no plan to achieve the benefits. At that point in time, the project should have realised half the cost savings; this was very embarrassing for the senior management.
 

 I was asked to review and come up with suggestions for reviving the project

 

Challenges

 

 

After initial analysis, the Lean team was trying to adopt Define, Measure, Analyse, Improve and Control(DMAIC) approach. The identified/defined 50 to 60 back office processes; they were so low level that it has little value on its own and then they measured time in motion study to the nth degree and were stuck in the analysis phase and were guessing improvement opportunities; each of these guesses proved to be a failure. They had split the processes into subprocesses that were very disjoint and hence very difficult to identify any significant wastes and thus improvement. Also, they had not involved the branch staff 

 Approach

 

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I formed a RAPID improved team still using DMAIC lean methodology so not jumping to conclusions.
 

Involved the colleagues who were involved in the day to day branch operations

Identified four significant areas of efficiency gains of which cash handling would give the quickest benefit in the least possible time, the rest were security trials, new devices, assigned leads to manage the rest
 

My principal role was to facilitate the workshops; Used the lean tool like 5s, fishbone diagram, Pareto to facilitate the workshop; most of the improvement ideas came mainly from bank branch colleagues except for IT changes; the operations team then verified them and implemented in pilot branches successfully
 

Also created a structure around the programme, set up governance structure took responsibility for delivering the IT enhancement to the project and delivered it on time,

 

 Results

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  1. Within five weeks all the low hanging fruits were identified and implemented which resulted in £2.5 m cost savings

  2.  a further £2.5M cost savings resulted through small IT changes within three months

  3. The post-implementation survey revealed improved colleague satisfaction, improved customer satisfaction

  4.  End Dec  2015 £5M worth cost savings achieved.

 

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