Note that these are projects I have worked on in a former role prior to The Road Forward.
Client: European Cosmetics Chain
Problem: Manual undocumented processes were used weekly by hundreds of teams to pass data to head office. The processes varied from area to area. It was highly inconsistent and error-prone. This led to lots of unnecessary back and forth communication to verify figures and make corrections.
Our Actions: Discussions and investigations identified the significant issues. A system was designed, developed, tested and rolled out nationally.
Outcome: Many hours saved at different levels of the business resulted from consistent and error-free inputs and significantly fewer queries needed.
Client: UK National Retailer
Problem: A bottleneck in one department had a knock-on effect in another. Weekly HR electronic timesheets regularly arrived late at the payroll department. This caused a delay of sometimes over one day.
Our Actions: Discussions across several teams revealed that an automated process had been redesigned and was taking increasingly longer to run. Technical investigations revealed that a fundamental mitigation was possible. The process was enhanced.
Outcome: This bottleneck was resolved, data arrived on time and the overall process worked as intended.
Problem: A process hitherto fit-for-purpose failed with catastrophic consequences. Serious data loss occurred requiring in-depth manual actions across various teams to retrieve the initial information and recalculate the required data. This lead to significant delays downstream in the business.
Our Actions: Investigations and team interviews revealed that no one was to blame. There was a rare set of circumstances that had not been anticipated and had never occurred before. Safety nets were designed and put in place to prevent this reoccurring.
Outcome: Process reliability was significantly improved and the issue never reoccurred to date.
Problem: An unoptimsed system wasted small amounts of time whose cumulative effects were significant.
Already busy employees were using a data entry system no longer fit-for-purpose.
Our Actions: We found out what the issues were and proposed subtle redesigns.
Outcome: Implementation led to significant time saving, freeing up resources for use elsewhere at no extra ongoing cost.