Business Case Studies

Some other examples of different customer service redesign projects I have led or managed include:

Aetna Insurance I/S Group

In anticipation of corporate downsizing of Aetna Insurance, we worked with the I/S group at Aetna Headquarters to help them develop better partnerships with their internal customers by:

  • better understanding the concerns of their business unit customers
  • identifying areas of waste in the department
  • improving response time to customer requests
  • developing productivity metrics for systems and application development
  • devising new I/S offers to the organization.

ABB Carbon, Sweden

To accelerate both the engineering development cycle and the sales of a new power generation technology at this major engineering and manufacturing company, we conducted a program of Business Process redesign and cultural change, resulting in:

  • a re-designed engineering change process to better capture all of the design changes on test plants around the world
  • identification and resolution of major dissatisfactions from a $75 million client
  • a plan to rebuild trust, establish new project management practices and generate new shared standards for assessing satisfaction
  • trained ABB staff to continue doing Business Process mapping and redesign.

Euron – The Research and Development group of AgipPetroli, Italy

To increase the number and speed of new products to market, and enhance the viability of the group, we conducted a Business Process and enterprise design engagement directly with the President of the company, senior executives and scientists. The results included:

  • two new lubrication products successfully completed the design, initial development and testing phase
  • systems and practices were put in place to allow the customer to monitor and evaluate project progress throughout the project
  • product development processes that we put in place identified market and product priorities and eliminated R&D in non-productive areas, reducing waste by 20%.
  • the customers of the group reported a changed attitude of increased cooperation and concern for satisfaction
  • we introduced Lotus Notes and developed a workflow application which increased their capability to quality test oil and gas products. This reduced testing turnaround time from 3-4 weeks to under 1 week.

Frito-Lay

Frito-Lay, the largest purchaser of flexible packaging in the world asked us to analyze the linkage of the customers and performer and recommend ways that they could drive cost and time out of their processes for producing packaging. In an extensive cross-enterprise review we examined the operations of 8 companies within three different industries that interacted with Frito-Lay to produce packaging: film manufacturing, package design, and converting (package printing and production). Within Frito-Lay we looked at processes for purchasing, inventory management, graphic design, marketing and traffic. The results of the analysis and recommendation has resulted in:

  • an emerging new foundation of trust and cooperation between Frito and its suppliers
  • an immediate redesign for their new product development process which has cut the development time to market by 50%
  • a new process for evaluating and maintaining the strategic alliances between Frito and its suppliers
  • more effective and timely collaboration between the various parties using Lotus Notes.

Pacific Bell

Designed and led a 1 year core process reengineering effort at Pacific Bell to define and implement new processes, roles, standards and technology for producing Methods and Procedures documentation (technical instructions used by PB sales force to sell and order products/services). Here we showed managers and their team how to cope and flourish in a rapidly changing corporate environment. The company reorganized this division before the final redesign could be implemented in full, but participants in the process were beginning to see results from their input more quickly, have a clearer understanding o of what was expected of them and could more easily locate the status of their projects and who was currently working on (or holding up) their projects.

Microsoft

Service Quality Program
Leadership in Action
Designed and conducted a year-long Service Quality Leadership program for 60 managers (supervising over 1000 people) within the Microsoft Services Group. The participants improved their leadership skills by designing and implementing a cohesive set of service processes, promises and metrics. The customers of this group noticed a dramatic change in the service attitude and a measured improvement in the service quality provided.

Nike

Internal Service Design
Acted as an executive coach to assist the Director of the R&D Library to develop and offer a set of innovative and strategic information services

Motorola

“Strengthening Our Partnerships and Service” Training Program
Co-created and co-delivered an innovative training program for the Semiconductor Product Segment, “Strengthening Our Partnerships and Relationships”. We provided a comprehensive framework that allowed multi-functional teams of marketing, engineering and production to build an integrated approach to re-building customer trust and partnerships with specific customers.

Warner Bros.

Business Process Redesign
Leadership in Action
Designed and conducted a six-month project on business process re-design while training a multi-functional team to do future re-designs. Taught methodology including: as-is analysis, measurement design, re-design principles, workflow application development and internal marketing. Benefits included improved job status reporting, faster request management and reduced waste and re-work.

Pacific Bell

Business Process Design and Improvement Leadership in Action
Conceived and led a 1-½-year core process reengineering effort to build improvement teams within Pacific Bell. Trained 6 multi-functional teams to define and implement new processes, roles, standards and technology for producing network technical documentation. These on-line instructions are used by the Pac Bell sales force to sell and implement telecommunication services.

Frito-Lay

Conducted Inter-Enterprise Business Process Analysis and Improvement Project Designed and led an inter-enterprise project for Frito-Lay to integrate the purchasing and packaging business processes across four internal departments and seven supplier companies in three industries. This project changed how Frito-Lay evaluated new suppliers and assessed the performance of their current suppliers.

EURON – ENI R&D Group

Innovation Training
Leadership in Action with Italian Executives
Acted as on-site coach for executive team and scientists for an eight month innovation program at EURON, the R&D division for the Italian state-owned petrochemical conglomerate, ENI. This project increased EURON’s ability to listen to customer concerns, allowed the scientists to more quickly assess viability of new product ideas and improved the coordination with customers to test market prototype products and refining processes.

ABB – Carbon

Business Process Redesign Team
Trained and coached process reengineering team for ABB Carbon in Sweden for 8 months. Redesigned processes for making and tracking Engineering Changes for a new coal burning technology being tested in 4 sites around the world. Initiative produced a 28% reduction in cycle time for making design improvements.

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