eg Operational Intelligence Delivers Benefits Within Geoban Collections & Recoveries

Geoban UK, a wholly owned subsidiary of Banco Santander and a non-profit plc registered in the UK, forms part of the Santander Group and manages transactions conducted by the Group’s banks and financial institutions in the countries where it operates. The eg operational intelligence® software suite was successfully implemented within Geoban UK in 2012, together with associated training and support. Geoban UK covers all operational activities for Santander UK and its subsidiaries and are already extensive and successful users of the eg operational intelligence® software suite, as well as the eg principles of operational management®. Both products have helped to deliver cumulative savings in excess of £7m over the last few years. Since the implementation of these modules, Geoban UK identified further opportunities to deploy the eg operational intelligence® software suite into other areas of the business to deliver further benefits, purchasing an additional 765 eg work manager® licences after identifying further roll-out potential in both processing and non-processing areas of the business. eg was invited to conduct a detailed Site Survey review across the Collections & Recoveries teams, which are spread across three sites (Sheffield, Leicester and Milton Keynes), to confirm the suitability of eg’s solutions and the benefits they can deliver. The review evaluated a number of key areas associated with operations management best practices including Work Measurement, Operations Management, Management Information and Forecasting & Capacity Planning. Following a comprehensive review, eg highlighted the following areas for improvement across the Geoban business:

• A single, real-time view of total demand and outstanding customer work
• Fact-based capacity planning and work distribution in line with available skills
• Consistent real-time monitoring of progress and productivity
• Consistent measurement of error rates/level of rework
• Full end-to-end visibility to enhance process improvement activities
• On demand Management Information (MI) to support both operational needs and future forecasting & planning requirements
• Analysis and management of lost time and non-value activity

This confirmed that the deployment of the eg software suite and management methodology would provide considerable improvement to the operational management, work measurement, capacity planning and reporting capabilities within the Collections & Recoveries teams. The completion of the project yielded the below benefits:

• Efficiency savings of 12.42 FTE or circa 21% from within the Front Line teams in the department through being able to identify focus areas to reduce non-value add time. Customer-facing time has increased by 8% since eg work manager® implementation
• eg work manager® data has helped to ensure work is batched and allocated effectively, contributing to the above efficiency savings
•   Customer journey improvements identified through eg work manager® to reduce 172 Service Level Agreements, saving 387 processing days per month, with further opportunity in future years
• Management Information improvements have enabled more specific and meaningful KPIs to be used for individual performance targets, which increases employee engagement with the system and the associated results
• Control for work received and completed has been enhanced and the removal of the duplication of these controls from the various legacy systems has provided a saving of 2.3 FTE in effort
• As the Collections team are now using the same system as other Geoban Back Office teams rather than the legacy systems referenced above, direct comparisons can be drawn between areas and opportunities for linking work and reducing handover risks have been found
• The skill level data provided within eg work manager® has helped to ensure cross-training with 45 single point sensitive tasks removed, resulting in a more multi-skilled and flexible work force

When discussing the success of the project, Kate Lewis, Business Manager across all three sites, said: “"I have been proud of how my team have embraced and embedded eg work manager® into their teams. eg work manager® has not only had a positive impact on efficiency but has given my Team Managers a far more holistic view of how we are achieving at any given time. This helps us work together better as a team despite being across three sites.” Marie Moohan, Command Centre Manager at Geoban, praised the effective collaboration between all parties, concluding: “Active collaboration between eg, Geoban Command Centre and Geoban Collections
 & Recoveries Operations significantly contributed to the success of this deployment. Benefits realisation has been continuous and the effective use of eg work manager® and associated MI shines a light on the areas to focus on for improvement.”