Operational Efficiencies

Business Planning Process

200k+ customers • 1500+ employees • $600M+ Revenue

Our client had only ever built an annual operating plan (12 months) so developing a plan for 3 years was a new activity. The company’s existing planning process was completely disconnected from the business and the process itself lacked clarity, rigor, and sequencing and dependency mapping. As a result, there was no buy in from the business about the process or the plan

Business Impact

⊹ Board approved 3 Year Plan with endorsement from all relevant Committees
⊹ Aligned the plan to the company strategy and identified the metrics and investment required to achieve the plan
⊹ Developed group and divisional plans establishing clarity of key dependencies to ensure right sequencing
⊹ Aligned on key metrics to measure with targets and profiles to track the progress along the way

Finance Operating Model

200k+ customers • 1500+ employees • $600M+ Revenue

Our client was acquired by a Japanese manufacturing company and the scheme to buy the business was predicated on the synergy benefits driven from the concept of a unified company that emerges stronger commercially and financially. Post the transaction there had been no integration or centralisation of commercial and finance activities resulting in inconsistencies, siloed approaches, inefficiencies, too many Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and high costs. In order for the purchasing company to maximise the return on sale it was critical that the synergy benefits in the business case be delivered – this would require investment in technologies and enablers to set the team up for future success.

Business Impact

⊹ Reduce overall costs of the Finance department by more than 20%
⊹ Alignment on operating model and how to get the leadership team to work together ⊹ Developed roadmap for technology transformation
⊹ Established a clear vision, mission and priorities for the Finance team to help navigate towards a best in class finance team
⊹ Clarity on roles and responsibilities
⊹ Established simplification initiatives

Systems Optimisation

200k+ customers • 1500+ employees • $600M+ Revenue

Due to the system’s inability to meet the company’s existing functionality requirements, the business avoiding using it because no new processes were implemented for the new system. This created manual work-arounds which resulted in increased errors, inefficiencies through duplication and an incline in labour intensity. The business was utilising 400% of support hours per month and payroll error rates were high.

Business Impact

⊹ ERP system now being utilised by Finance & other departments
⊹ Operating model designed to identify the root cause of issues as they occur to determine if related to system, process or training and plan is put in place each month
⊹ New vendor relationships in place to deliver the required outcomes
⊹ Minimal noise around the ERP system
⊹ Reduced rework in payroll by 45%, and error rates by 25%

Zero Based Budgeting

200k+ customers • 1500+ employees • $600M+ Revenue

Introduced Zero Based Budgeting (ZBB) for a client who recently acquired a new business. They were keen to understand the expenses for each business unit within the new organisation – from overarching down to a granular level. ZBB was implemented to enable all business units to build their budgets from a “zero base” – allowing each function within the organisation to analyse their strategy and associated costs. This approach assisted management in understanding the diverse business activities, alongside the cost structure of operational functions. Once established, the client was able to link key strategic goals to specific functional areas of the organisation to maximise effective output.

Business Impact

⊹ Grouped strategic priorities and focus areas can be achieved more successfully
⊹ Business unit initiatives are more tightly coupled to support aligned objectives
⊹ Annual review ensures initiatives do not continue beyond their productive life
⊹ Efficient allocation of resources, based on needs and benefits - eliminating wastage and out-of-date operations
⊹ Promotes questioning - increasing staff engagement by encouraging individual contributions to the decision-making process

Cashflow Management

200k+ customers • 1500+ employees • $600M+ Revenue

The client had acquired a new business which on paper was profitable, generating revenue and returning good cashflow to previous shareholders. However, the client wanted to maximise the business’ cashflow to ensure every dollar was productive, whether it be investing in the business itself on new capabilities and technology, or maximising debt repayments and shareholder returns.be disclosed in a manner that is inconsistent with this Privacy Policy.

Business Impact

⊹ Significant free cashflow improvements
⊹ Efficient use of funds and improved repayment of borrowings
⊹ Savings in Income Tax payments
⊹ Movement of Vendor/Supplier payments and swifter collections
⊹ Accurate forecasting of cash surpluses
⊹ Streamline of processes and structures
⊹ Reduction in fixed costs as a proportion of total cost base
⊹ Utilisation of excess working capital on other strategic initiatives

Property Optimisation

200k+ customers • 1500+ employees • $600M+ Revenue

The client is a well-established Australian household name, with a large national portfolio of properties to accommodate its workforce; servicing key customers in all geographical locations. The consequence of this structure is a significant, underutilised fixed cost base that is difficult to optimise.

Business Impact

⊹ Sales force moved from being office-based to a mobile model
⊹ Outsourced facilities management
⊹ Strong focus on cost efficiency
⊹ Leasing lower cost collaborative spaces for parts of our business to encourage innovation
⊹ The three year plan will see 20 properties being exited and a final property portfolio of two offices - Melbourne and Sydney

Robotic Process Automation

200k+ customers • 1500+ employees • $600M+ Revenue

The client was a large domestic business offering many products to customers, each with a unique and often manual fulfilment process. The client was cognisant that there were many inefficient processes at play, driving costs into the business. With double (and often triple) handing of activities, existing procedures were resulting in poor customer satisfaction, increases in staff churn, and disengaged employees across the board. Fulfilment processes were complex and required multiple hand-offs points across the value chain. The client was interested to understand how Robotic Process Automation (RPA) could be implemented to produce cost savings and improve engagement within the business.

Business Impact

⊹ Established a lite in-house RPA capabilities
⊹ Deployed first automated process in the cloud-based solution in month 5
⊹ Automated 18 processes over 3 business divisions in first 9 months
⊹ Released 14k hours back into the business for more value-add activities
⊹ Established a framework for assessing and backlog grooming candidate processes

Structural Redesign

200k+ customers • 1500+ employees • $600M+ Revenue

Over the last four years our client’s revenues declined but they managed to stabilise EBITDA as a result of a strong focus on cost savings initiatives. They reached a point where the only way they could further reduce cost was to redesign the business operations to a minimum viable structure without compromising the sustainability of the business

Business Impact

⊹ Transitioned from a federated model to a centralised model
⊹ Narrowed company’s strategic focus and alignment of all business unit strategies
⊹ Significant labour savings
⊹ Simplified technology platforms
⊹ Stabilisation of EBITDA Margin
⊹ Maximisation of cashflow

Transformation

200k+ customers • 1500+ employees • $600M+ Revenue

For many years, our client was predominantly a print based advertising business and their sales, service and operations models were aligned to products rather than customers. As customer adoption for digital products and services increased, customer expectations changed and became more complex and our client was seeing significant declines in their customer base and revenue. Our client realised their product led approach was redundant and it was time to reset their business model to be customer centric.

Business Impact

⊹ Transitioned from a product led business to a customer centric business
⊹ Enhanced the customer journey
⊹ Tailored service requirements to customer cohorts/segments
⊹ Improved customer and revenue retention
⊹ Reduced customer value of customer rebates/claims
⊹ Generated cost savings as a result of technology adoption, creating labour efficiencies as a result of automation of processes

Digital Transformation

200k+ customers • 1500+ employees • $600M+ Revenue

Our client plays in a market that has changed dramatically over the past 20 years, and the business was running on systems delivered in the 1980s. While the platforms were stable, they couldn’t be changed to adapt to the evolution of the digital world to meet the needs of the business and its customers. For the organisation to have a chance at succeeding as a digital business, they needed a platform to enable them to deliver that capability.

Business Impact

⊹ Exited all on-premises infrastructure and now everything has migrated to the cloud
⊹ Enabled new product development outside of its core offerings
⊹ Established omnichannel commerce services
⊹ Encouraged business units to test and trial new ideas in the market before making financial commitments – driving an innovative culture
⊹ Ability to easily engage with customers and stay connected
⊹ Created self-service capability for customers
⊹ The stability and self-healing capabilities of AWS increased productivity
⊹ Significant cost benefit

Optimise Sourcing Model

200k+ customers • 1500+ employees • $600M+ Revenue

The client was facing financial and operational challenges while trying to transform the organization and compete in new customer segments. Attempting to introduce a new sales and service model, while managing a large and permanent labour cost base with sub-optimal productivity, resulted in low customer experience outcomes and a stalled transformation.

Business Impact

⊹ Significant labour costs reductions
⊹ Co-location of different teams, enabling faster learning and job readiness
⊹ Improved productivity through cross-skilled teams, improving turnaround times
⊹ Rapid workforce scalability and flexibility to cater for seasonal workload demands
⊹ Economies of scale and quicker recruitment as our partners have large resource pools ⊹ Able to tap into the industry expertise of our partners

Sales & Service Model

200k+ customers • 1500+ employees • $600M+ Revenue

The client was focused on transitioning from their traditional advertising business model. Involving a large labour and customer claims cost base, this setup resulted in poor net promoter scores and unnecessary expenditure. The goal? Evolve to a more nimble, customer focused, digital advertising business - enabling them to compete with domestic and international players.

Business Impact

⊹ Improved customer experience & reduced customer churn
⊹ Reduced customer claims through early issue remediation
⊹ Improved Sales productivity by segmenting service related activities
⊹ Improved average revenue per acquisition through targeted approach
⊹ Customer segmentation driven workforce planning

Aligning Sales, Service & Marketing

200k+ customers • 1500+ employees • $600M+ Revenue

The silos between the sales, marketing and service functions needed to be removed to promote sales effectiveness. There was nobody in the organisation taking responsibility for the end-to-end customer experience. Sales indicated they were taking the lead on customer experience yet revenue (-29%) and NPS scores (-88) were moving backwards every quarter. Marketing insisted that they were listening to the voice of the customer and focused on lead generation however the leads being generated were in verticals the business could not serve. Service had a company leading episode NPS(+12) result however churn (19%) was at an all time high.

Business Impact

⊹ Sales, service & marketing functions aligned on goals, lead definition, and processes.
⊹ Teams now spend their time more effectively on promising leads and conversions have increased with now common dashboards and tools, including engagement platforms to understand customer needs.
⊹ Revenues increased as a result of clear alignment on customer ROI metrics.
⊹ Improved efficiencies as a result of sales & marketing working together to shorten the sales cycle. This included go-to-market strategies based on segmentation, content development, contact strategy, nurturing, engagement, and customer support.