Business Process Redesign

Business Consolidation

Financial Information Services

A $100 M information services company led a market consolidation among a set of related players to build a $1.5 B company serving the financial services industry. The company had developed a very compelling technology strategy to deliver the services of all the acquired entities through one suite of hardware platforms, software tools, and networks, thereby eliminating the costs of maintaining multiple incompatible systems and processes. To help the company realize these savings, we developed an orderly consolidation process to sell its customers on the benefits of the new technical environment, install the new technology, and rationalize the multiple sales forces and billing systems that put the entire plan at risk.

Sales and Marketing
Cost-Effectiveness

Telecom Services

One of the largest telecommunications companies was concerned that expenses for sales and marketing were rising faster than revenues and that its cost structure might be higher than that of its principal competitors. After detailed benchmarking of our clientis costs versus those of its competitors, and a careful analysis of where the organization was spending its money, we identified opportunities for nearly $100 M in annual cost savings through restructuring the marketing and sales functions responsible for more than $20 B in revenues. These savings were achieved at the same time as revenue growth has accelerated.

Improving Marketing and Product Management

Online Services

In this assignment, we consolidated highly fragmented marketing and product management activities in the largest division of this $6 B print and online services company. These changes enabled the company to bring a higher degree of professionalism and expertise to marketing and product management as well as to save money by removing one layer of management. In a second division, in which these functions were grossly overstaffed and where there was excessive spending for outside services, we identified a series of specific organizational and budgetary cuts to save nearly $10 M annually. With a third division, we devised a new organizational structure for product management, marketing, and sales to enable renewed business growth after many years of stagnation caused by cost cutting to the point of starvation.

Sales and Service Efficiency

Financial Information Services

We developed a multi-channel sales strategy to help a financial information services company close the more than 50% sales efficiency gap between itself and its principal competitor. We also developed a customer service improvement strategy that addressed both the root causes of high levels of customer churn and the companyis disadvantaged service cost position. As this latter strategy is implemented, our client expects to lower its customer churn due to dissatisfaction by 10 percentage points and lower unit cost for customer service by 20-25%.

New Product Process

Electronic Information Services

A $500 M print and electronic information services company was concerned that, as its organization was transitioning from purely print-based products to a family that mixed both print and electronically delivered output, the new product development process was near breakdown. In short, the technology, editorial, marketing, and sales functions were constantly at loggerheads. We worked with staff in these four functions to develop a revised process, shortened cycle time by a third, and smoothed a process that had operated with so much rancor. In a later assignment, we developed an information technology plan for this client to enable it to focus its limited resources on applications of greatest value. In this plan, we identified which functions could be safely outsourced and which had to be kept in house because of their criticality to our clientis core functions.

Improved Customer Care

Telecom Services

A major telecommunications carrier was concerned that its customer care organization had grown so large and complex that it was no longer manageable. Our analysis focused on dramatically improving service quality as seen by customers and on decreasing operating costs through reduced cycle times and more efficient business processes. In addition, we identified opportunities to recover many hundreds of millions of dollars in working capital through faster service provisioning (permitting earlier billing) and dramatically improved credit and collections processes.

Faster, Cheaper Billing Processes

Telecom Service Company

A major telecommunications carrier was experiencing many delays and interruptions in its billing processes. Billing seemed to be in a constant state of crisis, requiring Herculean staff efforts and several tens of millions in excess costs. Bills were often incorrect, permitting customers to withhold payment, often for months while disputes were settled. In some cases, bills were several weeks late, affecting cash flow quite severely. We conducted a thorough review of billing with a cross-functional team and identified seven areas for improvement, including investments in software upgrades and testing and introducing a process-driven organizational model with uniform, shared process metrics. The company anticipates that these changes will shorten processing cycles by 30-50% and lower unit billing costs by approximately 10%.

Faster, Cheaper Customer Care Processes

Telecom Service Company

A large long-distance company was under pressure because falling prices were eroding margins, and accounts receivable were rising faster than revenues. We were asked to help re-engineer customer care processes to improve ordering and contracting efficiency and effectiveness. We quickly determined that broken contracting, ordering, and dispute resolution processes were the root cause of the rising receivables and were adding more than 1/3 to the customer care costs. With a detailed root cause analysis and extensive work with customer care teams we identified a series of steps which should lead to a $500 M+ reduction in A/R and 50% decline in unit cost for customer care, while improving the customeris experience.

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