We apply lean management to improve technology and other service organizations. Lean instruments help us to identify and implement efficiency gains and transform service providers into client-centric and value generating organizations.
 
For us, lean is more about increasing value than just cutting costs. Lean principles help if organizations lack clarity around their mandate, value contribution as well as roles and responsibilities. Some organizations struggle to create transparency around the services they provide, fail to set priorities and are too busy with daily operations to deliver on strategic goals. As a consequence, they typically suffer from poor client satisfaction and low acceptance in the company’s management agenda. We help them by taking five relevant dimensions into focus working together with the teams on the ground:

• Service offering, service quality, business customers and alignment to business priorities.
• Processes, activities, resources, locations, data and tools used for service production.
• Organisational setup and skills.
• Mindset and behaviors of management and staff.
• Steering logic and KPIs used to measure, communicate improve success.

Our approach is pragmatic and easy to understand. We work in close collaboration with management and staff so that we can jointly design their future way of working.
With this, we help organizations to understand and pursue their strategic ambition based on actionable insights.

Drivers for change — A new operating model for the Human Resources function had been designed with the objective to improve delivery on the overall company strategy while leveraging significant efficiency gains. The change was imposed by a strong top-down approach. However, due to missing trust and buy-in of the teams, the new way of working was not properly adapted. In fact, daily management and operational activities remained unchanged which led to frustration in the management and staff. Expected efficiency gains could not be achieved.
 
Project objectives — The project objective was to close the gap between strategy and new operating model and actual operational actions. Management wanted to find ways to mobilize its staff and create acceptance and involvement into the new way of working. Moreover, they needed to find concrete opportunities for delivering on the expected efficiency gains.
 
Project approach — We applied our lean methodology for service organizations in following phases …

1. Introduce and familiarize lean tools with client’s staff so that they were able to create the transparency on the status quo and reveal the underlying issues.
2. Run the diagnostics phase by analyzing data as well as synthesizing and interlinking findings across all 5 lean dimensions in joint workshops to understand the true blockers of change.
3. Run the design phase by developing a common target picture for the organization covering all 5 lean dimensions as well as an actionable implementation roadmap.

Achievements — The approach of working closely with the team on the ground made the client’s staff the owners of their future way of working. This created trust, buy-in and willingness to change across the organization. Moreover, the project revealed significant gaps in the design of the operating model which could now be addressed. This removed important roadblocks that had previously prevented the organization from adopting the change. Organizational setup and interfaces between various departments were simplified, tasks and processes standardized which enabled delivery on expected efficiency gains. The overall steering logic was adapted to better accommodate for business objectives and priorities. Ultimately, the new operating model was successfully implemented. Overall employee satisfaction reached high scores.