Are you reducing operating costs and headcount or are you using this freed up time to go for growth? Are you measuring the progress? The goal of the session is to encourage you to sit back and question how your business is being affected and indeed whether the effect should be greater.
Headlines
- Tech solutions for the back-office, which increase operational and processing efficiency lead to higher client satisfaction and retention
- Data is the key to develop efficient back office solutions; data warehouse solutions can enable people to easily access and engage with existing data
- Back office processes do not necessarily need technology to make them more efficient, but within the back-office lies the highest efficiency and time gains
- Once these efficiencies are in place firms can think about how to use the extra resources, how to attract new clients and how to grow in other parts of the business
Key themes
One of the challenges to make processes leaner can be the assignment of resources.
A possible solution for this problem is to incentivise staff to think about efficiency gains in their day to day activities. An incentivised scheme at Mastercard for example led to many great ideas by the processing staff and created great efficiencies for the business. But in the end implementation and the will to get to implement leaner processes needs to be a top down approach.
Another factor in the drive for efficiency is the skillset of the staff. Given the rapid technological development, it is crucial that either staff upskill or additional resources are hired to bring in the necessary skillset for handling the technological change.
Another factor for driving change within an organisation might be a more diverse workforce who not only have a diverse background but more importantly bring a more diverse mindset to the organisation.
Data in total and especially data fragmentation presents a difficult challenge to a lot of businesses.
Data consolidation and centralisation is crucial to move forward in operational efficiency. Once that is done the new innovative tools will help an organisation to make further efficiency gains. Nevertheless, there must be a willingness and motivation from the organisation and the workforce to use the new technology.
Another important challenge is getting all the relevant data not only from internal but also external sources at the right time and format. Another difficulty is a greater integration of the internal systems including your platform and your back office.
The support of key decision makers to drive more efficiency is crucial. To make clear how new technology and more efficient processes help an organisation, supported by facts and cost savings, is therefore very important to secure senior management support.
A clear definition of an end goal is also very important. Without a clear idea or path any efficiency project would lose traction and eventually backing. Having a clear idea of what one wants to achieve is crucial.
Conclusions
Making processes on the backend more efficient needs the willingness of senior management to incentivise processing staff to look for solutions within and adopt technological solutions. This can be a daunting and time-consuming effort, which will need the determination of the entire organisation, but once done, one can truly think about what to do with the extra hour.
Expert: Helen Oxley, SEI
