Sometimes words can get in the way
Many companies have slick advertising, catchy music, and web sites that exude a branding image. In the midst of all the noise, they are trying to get your attention and your trust. Frankly, it may work for some business models but not ours. We choose to learn about our clients' challenges before we claim to have a solution. Give us a call to see whether there is a good fit between our skills and knowledge and your challenges. We will build your trust instead of expecting it.
Our Most Recent Engagement...
Identifying the Challenge
We worked with an extremely large telecom client that had problems with their leased circuit inventory accuracy and wanted to make sure it was accurate and up-to-date. The client wanted to know that they were accruing costs appropriately so that there would be no "surprises." They also wanted a way to accurately reconcile all the billing they received for the leased circuits with their inventory. The problem space is defined by tens of thousands of circuits and hundreds of thousands of billing line details.
Building Metrics
We worked with our client to create a phased solution. First we spent time understanding how they managed their inventory from a process and tool perspective. Then we identified the critical information that often was in error. Using this first analysis, we created a series of metrics and error checks that started to identify incorrect information and bad entries. This allowed us to see where problems originated and trend them for patterns. We created process changes that prevented the errors and were able to monitor the results with our metrics.
Making the Changes
The next step was to convert the inventory of circuits into a forecast (as a function of time) of accruals for the expected and actual costs looking both forward and backward in time. This information was used by the Finance department for budgeting and monthly cost tracking to plan. The engineering data flowed automatically so changes in designs were seen in the forecasts. This capability allowed Finance to accrue costs appropriately whether vendor billing happened on time or not. It provided engineering with cost feedback that allowed them to start making more informed design decisions.
The next phase was linking the inventory to the billing. We worked with one of their vendors to get a daily feed of the billing information and created an automatic sync process that would learn over time how to match each billed item monthly to the element in the circuit inventory. Where mismatches occurred or billing didn't stop after stop-dates, reports and metrics would bring the exceptions to light. We (the client and our staff) again did the analysis and trending to identify whether the problems were caused by engineering processes, ordering processes, vendor errors, or communications mistakes. As we identified issues, we modified processes to prevent the errors from recurring. Where we found islands of information that needed to be shared, we built tools that allowed a constrained interdisciplinary sharing of information. In English, each team could access information from each other's systems through a single search platform. The improved sharing reduced churn time and needless phone calls for help.
Verifying Cost Savings
All told, the project smoothed out the operational flows of information within the client's teams and between departments so everyone could work together more efficiently. The automatic sync accuracy of the inventory to billing went from 51% to over 98%. The project reduced the client's operating costs significantly (millions). It improved the client's ability to project costs into the future and do better planning because they had accurate information. Most interestingly, the tools the client uses for running their business lived up to the promise that other third-party vendors originally touted because the tools contain accurate information. For the small number of issues that still creep in, the client now has processes in place that allow detection and corrective action so even this waste is identified and handled by regular processes. These items, the "noise in the process," are caught by for our metrics, not by any of the third-party systems because they don't bridge the business "gaps." On average, our detection and correction have saved over $3Mil/year just on elimination of business "noise."
This last engagement is a success. When we completed the project, we had trained all the staff so they knew how to continue to expand the metrics as business evolves. We trained their support teams on all the information sharing code we produced. The feeds are now all monitored by the client's staff. In the end, the project lives on as part of the client's ingrained business knowledge and is now part of the day-to-day business practices. That makes our job complete.
According to the client's Finance department the ROI for the project was a minimum of 800% per year.
If that's the kind of improvement you want for your business, give us a call.
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