Do you need to accelerate your cost
reduction initiatives?
You are a
senior executive within a financial institution who needs to make a
substantial reduction in your IT or back office operating
costs. You may have a number of cost reduction
initiatives underway but now you are concerned that they may not
deliver sufficient savings or that it will take too long for the hoped
for benefits to be realised. Alternatively, you may have had a severe
budget reduction imposed on you and you realise that 'slash and
burn' cuts may kill the business. Ideally, you are seeking
ways to dramatically improve the underlying productivity of your IT and
back office processes so that your target savings can be realised
without damaging service quality.
Over 25
years, we’ve worked with senior executives like you at: AXA,
Barclays, Capital One, Citicorp and Nationwide.
Like you, our clients have all had fantastic track records of success
in their careers. That’s why your organisation has asked you to
overcome some of the toughest challenges in your business and given you
the responsibility for the delivery of a key strategic business
objective to reduce operating costs significantly.
When to call us? Do these problems
seem familiar to you?
You need to structure a robust
cost reduction programme to deliver significant savings. IT
systems and back office processes within financial institution are
extremely complex and everything appears to be connected to everything
else. So where do you start? You can't afford to set off a damaging
domino effect on service quality by inadvertently cutting out a
critical function. But if you are overly cautious, you risk delivering
too little too late.
You need to be confident that
your overall cost reduction programme is robust and will deliver.
You've 'hit the wall' in terms of
delivering higher productivity in your back office processes.
You've had a great deal of initial success in applying Lean and Six
Sigma approaches to improve productivity. However, now that all the
'low hanging fruit' has been picked, further significant productivity
improvements appear unlikely.
You want to see significant
back office productivity improvements delivered rapidly.
You believe you can deliver
substantial savings through more aggressive use of offshoring.
Offshoring offers significant savings of 20-65% and yet comes with a
substantial risk of damaging service delivery. How can you ensure that
you can transfer further key functions safely?
You want to realise the
substantial cost savings from offshoring without damaging service
delivery.
You want to outsource more of
your IT and back office operations without being held to ransom.
Outsourcing offers attractive savings of 20-30% savings on your current
costs. You're concerned that if you transfer key functions to an
outsourcer then they will have too much negotiating power and hold you
to ransom on 'change requests' and developments you will need in the
future.
You want to secure the
benefits of outsourcing without being held ransom.
You're concerned that you may
have a number of 'failing
projects' within your project portfolio.
The Project Managers are giving you positive reports but your 'gut
instinct' and years of experience are telling you to take a closer
look. To hit your overall
cost reduction target you can't afford to carry 'lame duck' projects
within your project portfolio. You need to know which projects are on
track, those that should
be killed to release precious resources and get the projects in trouble
fixed and put
back on track rapidly.
You want to kill or 'fix and
repair' failing projects within 30 days.
Your largest
operating costs relate to IT infrastructure and yet this is the most
difficult area to tackle. If
you turn for advice to large global technology firms to help you reduce
your significant IT infrastructure, network and desktop costs the
proposed solutions require significant capital investments that are
unlikely to be agreed to by your CFO. IT infrastructure is extremely
complex and yet it could offer substantial savings if you know how.
You want to make
substantial IT infrastructure savings without the need for large
capital investments.
You are concerned that a major
project is at significant risk of late delivery and severe cost
overruns and needs stronger project control disciplines. You
suspect that a major project has governance issues will
undermine a key project's ability to delivered on
time
and on budget for you. You realise there is a distinction between
instilling
proper controls and strangling projects with bureaucratic overkill.
You want to strengthen
governance and risk management to prevent further delays and overspend.
You understand the potential
of automation and
workflow to increase productivity - but these investments have a mixed
track record. Many automation projects end up recreating the
manual
processes they replaced and unsurprisingly the productivity
improvements and cost reductions achieved are disappointing. If you can
streamline and enhance key processes from a customer perspective and
then automate wisely, then you can achieve dramatic productivity
improvements with limited investment.
You want to make intelligent
investments in automation and workflow to increase productivity.
Your need
to reshape your project portfolio to deliver significant cost
reductions earlier. You
would appreciate an independent assessment of the likely cost reduction
impact from the individual projects within your project
portfolio.
Potentially, some well focused "pruning" of initiatives could release
resources to help accelerate delivery of significant cost
reductions.
You want to reshape your
project portfolio to accelerate significant cost reductions.
You are
responsible for the
delivery of a cost reduction initiative that is now at risk because
of its heavy dependence on the delivery of a major IT project which is
falling ever further behind schedule. You understand that
large-scale IT projects
are amongst the most difficult of all business initiatives to deliver
successfully - the failure rates can be as high as 80%-90%. Your cost
reduction initiative is now
in jeopardy because of its dependence on a failing IT programme. So how
can you still meet your cost reduction objectives?
You need to
rapidly develop an
alternative approach and plan you can be confident implementing.
OK by now - you may be wondering are
we compatible?
A great deal of success in life and
business comes down to personal chemistry. It’s hard to define and yet
it can be the crucial difference that determines success or failure.
You are likely to find us kindred spirits and successful working
partners if you are:
Enthusiastic and results
orientated. You have a passion for your job and your
enthusiasm is infectious to those around you. Perhaps sometimes that
can mean that the goals and objectives you personally take on would
scare other people off. You like to see the ball in the back of the net
– the sooner the better. You really want to make a difference in your
life and at work.
Humour & fun.
You set yourself and your team huge, demanding goals – but you don’t
take yourself too seriously. People enjoy your company and good
spirits.
Encouraging to your team.
You have great personal talents yet still know it’s encouraging your
team and colleagues to great things that will really make a difference.
You are Willing to take responsibility and show leadership when the
going gets tough. You know who the real lightweights who talk a great
game but who disappear out of sight when the heat gets turned up. You
can feel the pressure, but you don’t buckle.
Confident in your own
abilities to know when you could do with some help from
others who have useful knowledge and experience they can share with
you. You can tell hype from substance. Some people are easily swayed by
surface glitz and glamour – you can see through this to determine
whether the people around you have real substance and back bone.
Down-to-earth and
practical. If something works you’re interested to see how
far you can go with it and if it doesn’t you don’t get locked into
defending it. You appreciate that a dose of structure & process
can go a long way without getting bogged down in bureaucracy &
red tape.
You don't mind folks with a few grey hairs.
Some firms like to staff their teams with bright young things straight
out from MBA school. We can recall those days but they are a few years
back now. Our typical team member has 15-20 years experience blending
senior management and consulting experience in IT and back office
operations within financial institutions.
I do hope you and us have a shared view of
the world and a passion for the same things. If we do have a lot in
common with you in terms of your approach, attitude and the objectives
you’ve been set then can I suggest you learn more about
HOW WE WORK
with our clients, read about the results we've helped clients deliver
in our
CASE
STUDIES or simply
CONTACT
US to discuss your specific challenges.