Many companies assume the optimization of their processes will go hand in hand with their systems. This is not always the case. Processes must be aligned with how employees handle them.
Optimize the people before you begin modernizing core systems and reevaluating business rules and processes. It improves productivity in the short term and gives you more solid foundation future initiatives, claims the management-issues.com website.
Focus on the people optimization
A global life insurer wanted to increase the consistency and efficiency of the way its processing centers around the world worked. That’s why vendors were educated for a core system upgrade. The company realized it would take several years to implement the change and observe any benefits. Furthermore, the organization lacked activity data and documented processes.
Improving people productivity
They started with building an overview to understand how employees were spending their time. Desktop analytics were used to directly capture employee activity. Different applications were categorized as production or non-production-related. It was enabled for the employees to electronically self-document how they were spending time to capture non-application-based activities (meetings, training, lunch). The data was used to create performance scorecards comparing actual time spent in production applications versus time recorded by the employees versus goal.
Downtime identified
A considerable amount of the employees' time was spent idle and many hours were also spent in meetings and training. The organization could investigate the cause of the idle time. A lot of productive time was lost while employees were waiting for work. Realigned shifts and better scheduling of meetings and training reduced idle time dramatically.
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