Customer-Centric Approach
and Efficiency Transform
Shared Services Hub

The company

French bank with retail and investment operations, serving around 30 million customers on five continents. It is on the list of the ten largest banks worldwide, with a turnover of approximately 45 trillion euros.

In 2011, following the merger of two platforms that provided support services to the entire group, a platform responsible for delivering end-to-end services across the financial (accounting, control and reporting), IT and project areas was created. As of today, this platform provides support services for the group’s subsidiaries across Europe, the Middle East and Africa from its hub in Madrid. In addition to this hub, there are two others dedicated to the American and Asian continents.

The challenge

Once the two platforms were merged, it became necessary to absorb the processes of the group’s 76 subsidiaries. The objective was to finish the operations of these subsidiaries and migrate all their processes to the Spanish hub. The fact that the Madrid platform’s NPS (Net Promoter Score) was historically very low highlighted the risks of this migration, which was anticipated to lead to higher costs and worse customer experiences.

The KAIZEN™ methodology was implemented to overcome these challenges and the main objectives were to obtain cost synergies with increased quality and to improve the internal customer experience.

The approach

The first step towards meeting this challenge was the construction of the Continuous Improvement Model that would serve as a basis for the application of the KAIZEN™ methodology to the entire platform. This model was built based on the teams’ processes and by identifying the variables that directly influence their quality and efficiency. As a result of this exercise, the following pillars emerged:

• Monitoring
  Through the construction of more than 50 SIPOCs (a map that allows the visualization of all the processes of a team, organized according to the information suppliers, the necessary inputs, the generated outputs and the process clients), it was possible to design a digital time-tracking tool that allows the recording of the processes carried out by each employee in real time. On the basis of this information, it is possible to measure OPE (Overall People Efficiency), the time spent each month on each of the processes, how many employees carry them out and the concentration of processes for each day of the week or month. The collection of this information guarantees the sustainability of the improvement routine as it serves as a basis for the identification of critical processes from the efficiency point of view.
• Monitoring
  Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, this model predicted a strong digital component in the team’s follow-up routines. To guarantee the basic stability of the teams, a model of daily, weekly and monthly meetings was created to analyze the work plan and evaluate indicators.
• Customer experience
  The fact that these teams work for internal customers has not diminished the willingness to measure and improve one of the main indicators of customer recommendation: the NPS (Net Promoter Score). To this end, a KPI tracking format was defined using a survey that serves as a basis for the launch of improvement actions by the process owner teams.
• Process efficiency
  To improve process efficiency, the Process Design tool was used. The current status of the critical processes was mapped and the vision for each was designed. In order to implement the future state, automation through RPA (Robotic Process Automation) was used often, as well as the creation of a flow with the integration of operations, the reduction of the number of participants, and the elimination of intermediate stocks of information.
• Standardization
  More than 200 operational standards were created which were then integrated into the human resources training plan. To ensure that the standards could be accessed quickly and intuitively, a digital training tool was created which contains the flowcharts of all the processes. For every critical task in each process, it is possible to see which standards are associated with it (work instructions, checklists or videos).

The results

The solutions implemented resulted in a 25% capacity increase. This efficiency increase was used to absorb processes without having to expand the team, representing an estimated gain of around €1.5M. The customer experience component resulted in an increase in NPS from 25 to 54, reflecting a turnaround in the negative satisfaction trend. Furthermore, the continuous improvement and indicator analysis skills development contributed to the cultural transformation of all the teams which developed a mindset focused on the customer and on process efficiency.

#business services #administration and service