2008 articles

Five mantras for leaders of lean

Every organisation is trying to get lean - but most are only borrowing practices from the lean pioneers, and failing to get the results they wanted. It's our opinion that lean isn't a solution, or a goal, but a way of seeing, thinking and doing. Grow your own organisation-specific adaptation of the lean essence and you'll be making the last change every business must make: into being a business that lives and breathes improvement.

Putting patients at the centre will transform healthcare

In modern healthcare, attacking waste, confusion and delay is key to ensuring that assets and skills are used to the best possible effect. At the same time, accurately targeting scarce resources is vital to delivering real benefits to patients. It's our opinion that the sector needs to adopt a shared, three-dimensional thought model as a basis for change in the vital area of information systems: it's the only way to increase capacity while saving money, improving clinical performance and enhancing the patient experience.

Why are my customers so disloyal?

The empowered consumer, faced with a multitude of choices about where, when and how they shop, is leading to increasingly high expectations. A competitive retail sector, facing an uncertain economic future is being challenged by consumers to compete for their custom: in this environment, only the fi ttest and those really listening to what their customers really want are likely to survive.

Front-line staff can make an important contribution to Transformational Government

As departments build on their recent investment in improving access and reducing costs by trying to switch customers to contact centres and the Internet, they are shifting their customer focus to personalisation. It's our opinion that the greater intimacy this brings means that front-line staff will have an even greater impact on the quality of experience and service delivered to citizens. The importance of their role is borne out by our recent research.

A simple model for good organisational governance

It's our opinion that the full value of an organisation's capabilities are often not realised because management continues to rely on fragmented systems of governance. As a result, much of what goes on in an organisation remains a mystery to its decision makers until too late. This fragmentation is costly both in terms of lost opportunity and of risk to the success of the organisation.

Optimising IT infrastructure to reduce the cost and risk of compliance

Making sure you meet the demands of the many compliance regulations is complex, time-consuming, and expensive. If you get it wrong, your organisation has a very real chance of ending up in the headlines, causing long term damage to brand value and profitability. It’s our opinion that financial services organisations can reduce both the cost and risk of delivering IT reliant compliance programmes by adopting a framework to guide IT changes that has been developed with compliance in mind.

A pragmatic guide to successful IT outsourcing in retail

Despite the continuing stream of significant contract awards, IT outsourcing has not been able to shake off a reputation tarnished in the retail sector by some high-profile early terminations and moves to bring components back in-house. It's our opinion that, provided four simple rules are followed, outsourcing will generate real value and strengthen the core of any retail business.

Focus on benefit, not just cost

As corporate shared services initiatives become operational across UK central and local government, customers are starting to raise questions about 'lowest common denominator' services that reduce performance. It's our opinion that these are not inevitable, but you do need to give equal weighting in your thinking to the benefits you can deliver alongside the efficiencies you need to achieve.

Make sure that virtualisation pays - and keeps on paying

Once a niche technology for test and development environments, virtualisation has moved into the mainstream as organisations embrace the benefits in efficiency and flexibility that it offers. It's our opinion that virtualisation in itself is neither a quick fix for complex IT environments nor a guaranteed source of bottom-line benefits. It all depends on how you manage the technology - and how you adapt the processes and culture of your organisation to new ways of working.

IT implementations may be hindering the move to flexible working

Several recent reports, culminating in the UK National Audit Office's 'Improving the efficiency of central government's office property', have identified the significant benefits associated with office rationalisation and flexible working. Past implementations, however, have largely been ineffective and disruptive. It's our opinion that modern ICT services can now support a flexible approach to working practices that can help to deliver efficiency and office rationalisation while transforming the working environment for the better.

Why it doesn't work and how to change it so it does

Over 50% of outsourcing deals end prematurely, usually because of poor performance or high costs. But it doesn't have to be that way. At Toyota, for example, their supplier partnerships last for many years and deliver real business advantage to both parties. Remarkably, Toyota deals aren't tight, fixed term contracts, but are open relationships. Both parties collaborate to achieve a common objective, within a framework of joint governance, transparency and sharing of benefits. It's our opinion that this model can be applied to IT outsourcing.

What the rail industry can learn from retailing

The rail industry has seen a steep rise in demand is gearing up to absorb further changes: passenger and journey numbers will climb, while aggressive revenue growth targets will concentrate decision-makers' minds. As it morphs into a modern, massmarket consumer proposition and leaves behind an era of undifferentiated utility service, what can rail learn from the retail sector - a great success story in contemporary business change? It's our opinion that rail organisations are in an ideal position to leapfrog a generation of development and investment by leveraging the best that retailers have done while bypassing the initiatives that didn't make the grade.

Measuring the transformed customer experience

The evolution of retail is marked by increasing customer empowerment. But in a multi-channel world, retailers are in danger of losing their grip on what customers want - and how they want to get it. It's our opinion that retailers must make self-service about customers rather than technology through an integrated customer experience strategy that focuses rigorously on measurement and builds it into every interaction.

Shared services as an effective route to sustainability

Shared services are now rapidly gaining ground as the most sensible way to deliver what are effectively commodities across government: the question has become "why not share?" rather than "why share?" However, with the increased focus on environmental issues, these services must be sustainable too; not just in terms of the huge amounts of power consumed but also in terms of their full, through-life environmental cost. But while most agree that it is important to be "green", it will only happen if there is an economic benefit. It's our opinion, based on our recent experiences in developing one, that shared services can effectively build these two key elements of sustainability into the core of government business.