Operate Case Studies:
1. The challenge: Information available from the accounting system of a billion-dollar international industrial products company required significant analysis in order to prepare meaningful management information, resulting in a heavily staffed financial analysis function. The controller’s office was challenged to come up with financial information that would facilitate timely management decision-making.

The result: A global system was designed to link transactional information to general ledger accounts and budget and management performance classifications. The result was a significant reduction in the analyst staff, and the turnaround time from financial period closings to management reporting went from 10+ days to 48 hours or less.

2. The challenge: Management was trying to improve purchasing department operations; but, with an organized labor force, they found their efforts were either stalled or blocked by staff who claimed that workloads were excessive and that there was limited, if any, capacity for additional assignments.

The result: A complete reorganization of the procurement cycle, from requisition to payment, was designed and implemented. Staff was reduced with minimal challenge and with a concurrent increase in productivity. Performance expectations were identified, implemented and monitored to ensure continued success.

3. The challenge: An educational trust with five major public venues had a well-developed and tested disaster response plan but the plan did not fully address recovering operations. With heightened awareness following Hurricane Katrina, the Board directed that a comprehensive business recovery plan be prepared.

The result: Tools, templates and a guide were developed to facilitate the development of an organization-wide plan for bringing the operations back up in order of criticality. Group sessions focusing on specific operational functions were facilitated to ensure consistency of documentation, and a cross-functional team representing the entire organization was guided through the creation of an integrated organization-wide plan.

Innovate Case Studies:
1. The challenge: An educational institution with 1500 workers was concerned that new staff often did not have the tools or access they needed to actually begin working on the day they arrived. It could take anywhere from several days to several weeks for relatively standard items or accesses to be setup. This was resulting in unproductive expense (i.e. paying for time/work that could not be immediately initiated), a less-than-professional image (i.e. delays, confusions and frustrations for new staff or contractors trying to perform their jobs), and internal operations that were not customer-friendly or efficient.

The result: A defined end-to-end workflow was designed that ensured the required resources were provided upon arrival or during the first day, and that resources would be recovered upon completion of responsibilities or termination. The new process instituted a customer-supplier partnership for ensuring service and delivery standards, and an integrated performance measurement for monitoring and correction following implementation.

2. The challenge: An international manufacturer of healthcare products was faced with escalating IT investments and costs with questions of resulting benefits. Management was concerned that it was unable to confirm that IT investments did actually support the business objectives.

The result: Policies, procedures and tools were created to support the identification of costs and benefits of IT investment proposals with evaluations of make-good performance objectives following implementation. Organizational and operational structures were developed to establish the IT Department as a service provider, requiring that they perform to the expectations of the internal customer in order to survive.

3. The challenge: A retail organization was preparing to expand its sales channels with sales forecasting that the impact would more than double their revenue in two years. Management was concerned that they did not have order fulfillment operations that would support this growth without commensurate costs.

The result: A complete analysis of current operations, identifying points of delay and bottlenecks, and including productivity and output evaluations was conducted. A facilitated discussion with sales, customer service and strategic planning coordinated efforts to more concretely develop customer expectations, service standards and revenue forecasts to provide a more concrete parameters for designing an order fulfillment process. A phased evolution from the current order fulfillment to a new process was created, coordinating system developments with operational procedures and training, and with customer-centric performance standards.

4. The challenge: The CFO of a cultural institution wanted to lead the organization to embrace more efficient and economical ways of operating, hoping to reduce non-mission related expenditures and allocate those savings into mission-driven programs.

The result: A strategy and execution plan was developed to facilitate change. Training materials, management structures and workshops were created and implemented, building a grassroots awareness and involvement in the organization’s systematic review and evaluation of all administrative and financial processes over a 2-year period. New processes were designed to improve the efficiency and effectiveness. These new ways to work were implemented with cross-functional participation, reducing the fragmentation of silos and building organizational commitment to change.