A major blue chip organisation,
operating in the telecommunication and techcom industries
Client Goals
- Improve operational employee’s adherence to commercial guidelines
- Reduce lost revenue through sales processes
- Maintain existing performance, with little-to-no impact on current operational processes
Context
Internal management reporting indicated high-levels of non-compliance to sales processes by front line operational employees within the Commercial Operations team.
Despite introducing robust measures and processes, compliance and adherence had not improved.
Challenge
The client’s incredibly successful, high-performing sales function reported non-compliant and inefficient transactions being processed within the contact centre estate.
Daily reporting identified “leakage”; agreements being processed with too much discount, without delivery charges, or with additional discounted products.
These reports were produced by a Commercial Marketing & Finance function and were received by the Operation with scepticism. The data integrity were routinely challenged and, as operational performance goals were set monthly, this became a routine that reset each cycle without resolution.
The client’s approach was to introduce additional governance, reports, and checks to identify non-compliance and address through existing formal processes.
Approach
When the project began, the client believed that improving compliance was the route to improved commercial governance and adherence.
Using our diagnostic approach, we agreed upon a list of primary and secondary goals, and identified what was helping and hindering their achievement.
A core cultural driver of behaviour was located. This was driving unintentional approaches to compliance within the operation; combined with a different interpretation of policy and processes designed to support the front line teams.
The disconnect between the organisation’s core values and the approaches that this driver encouraged were resulting in the (perceived) reduced compliance and additional losses.
The remedial approach included:
- Simplifying the commercial rules, to clarify what is and isn’t adherence
- Moving responsibility for adherence from the Commercial team to the Operation
- Empowering the front line to have more flexibility in the application of the commercial guidelines
- Creation of an Operation-led stakeholder group to manage adherence
Results
People
- Reduced commercial rules and associated knowledge management requirements from >400 pre-initaive to fewer than 40
- Customer query average handling time reduced by 70-seconds
- Reduction in compliance-related HR activity by 85%
Profit
- Process adherence increased to c96%, removing £70k per month risk
- £10-million additional revenue through sales improvement
- 15FTE annualised resource reduction through process duplication removal
Planet
- 90% reduction in written (postal) complaints
