Our clients get a 10-50% improvement in operating performance
This typically means a financial improvement of 2-15% of turnover or budget
Health and Care
Situation
A County Council in the South of England actively managed their block contracts with key providers and had reduced their void payments to between 5-8% of capacity, one of the lowest levels amongst its peers. Our team worked with commissioners to identify and resolve the remaining voids to root cause.
Achievements
Besides identifying nearly £400k of savings realised by reducing the level of spot purchasing, the project demonstrated how provider income could be protected at the same time.
Impact
The client has the means to meet growing demand at less cost, deliver efficiencies and protect fragile provider markets at the same time.
Situation
Six Brokerage Teams each had different processes and systems, with varying outcomes and provider feedback. Glenesk worked with the teams and their providers to redesign and simplify the core process, restructure the team and reconfigure systems. We provided on-the-job training and support for key people so that they could analyse and address performance issues in real-time and without our help. We clarified team aims and standards, provided visibility of team performance and set up the forums to review team achievements to make this task easier.
Impact
Providers prefer the new way of working as it easier to interact with the team and to get the information they need, Senior Manager get key performance information in real time making it easier to manage demand and capacity across the local care system, staff have less re-work to do and a more even distribution of workload.
Situation
An Adult Social Care team in the South East of England had engaged an external provider to help them develop a strengths-based approach to Social Work practice. This demonstrated promising results and was well received by staff and service users, but the model had proved challenging to implement consistently and at scale. We worked with the local team to make the change stick by redesigning core processes, paperwork, working practices and roles in a consistent way around the new way of working.
Achievements
The changes reduced the amount of work required because call-centre requests were triaged more effectively and efficiently. The administrative burden on staff was reduced which freed up time to dedicate to service users and contact-to-referral times were reduced through streamlined process.
Impact
The local team have a sustainable model of practice in place to deliver more independent outcomes, in less time and with less effort and with better evidence of the impact achieved.
Manufacturing and Supply Chain
Situation
A FTSE 100 Engineering firm had won a significant marine refit and maintenance contract which involved setting up a new maintenance facility overseas. The firm had identified that the core processes of its new operation were not yet mature and would likely delay programme schedules and increase costs unless action was taken.
Achievements
The team redesigned and improved core processes and systems across the supply chain, operations and reverse logistics function to ensure that engineers could undertake work that was right first time with the right sequencing, tools and resources available when needed. Resources required for work on the critical-path were highlighted, prioritised and expedited while systems changes brought supply chain issues to light in sufficient time to be effectively resolved. The team created a near-real time reporting suite that allowed senior managers the ability to accurately forecast timelines and costs and prioritise the issues that affected them.
Financial Impact
The engagement reduced programme delinquency by almost 50% and helped secure £80M of future contracts for the client.
Situation
A Private Equity Firm had recently acquired a Stationery Wholesale Business from a FTSE 250 manufacturing firm. From its due-diligence it had recognised that the operating efficiency of the firm was 3-5% lower than a best-in-class comparator and the owners wanted to see the gap closed.
Achievements
The team identified that the firm’s distribution network was no longer optimised and so presented an alternative network structure that would reduce costs and improve the availability of stock to retailers in the medium term. In the short term, a series of rapid improvement projects was undertaken to improve performance across the business:
In-bound logistics – Improved data capture on the causes of late and damaged goods were put in place and used to resolve the priority issues. Data analysis identified goods-in where the put-away process could be avoided and goods taken straight to the goods-out area.
Warehousing and transport – Loading bays were reconfigured to reduce loading times, software was developed to ensure that hot-pick items were always stored front and centre of the warehouse and new technologies were implemented to reduce picking times. More efficient packing and routing of transport also produced efficiencies.
Stock release – Modelling of stock levels identified the opportunity to reduce stock across several SKU’s and improve procurement protocols without an adverse impact on the business.
Financial Impact
The changes made resulted in a 5% increase in EBITDA and a one-off cash release of £1.2M from a reduction in stock levels.
Legal Services
Situation
Following a series of successful acquisitions, the client wished to drive further top-line and bottom-line growth and reduce their cash-lock up and risks.
Achievements
The Glenesk team delivered two rapid diagnostic exercises that identified over £7M of opportunities across the business. Some opportunities were delivered by the client team and the most complex were jointly delivered and led by Glenesk. We set the governance arrangements to track the delivery of benefits, to time and budget and worked with the local communications team to engage staff across the business to take ownership and help design the changes needed. We used the results of our change assessment to anticipate and avoid many of the implementation challenges in the business.
Financial Impact
Glenesk delivered all the targets set, examples include:
Cost:
- Finance process automation delivered
- Finance process redesign to reduce duplicate payments addressed £700k
Cash-Lock up:
- Identified payment term amendments to be brought in line with industry standards
- Identified improvements to settlement processes for the local team
- Opportunity £2.5M cash release
Risk:
- Introduced tracking of key dates, ATE funding and limitations across the business
- Introduced risk governance framework and policies to manage the above
- £750k reduction in uninsured losses
Situation
As part of a wider industry trend, a Top 40 UK Legal Services Firm faced rapidly increasing Professional Indemnity Insurance, excess and defence costs arising from rare, but costly missed dates, limitations and funding issues.
The firm had made a series of acquisitions whose legacy was multiple systems and ways of tracking key-dates, limitations and funding across the business. Managing these risks had proven challenging given variable data capture, duplicate systems, and different ways of working across the business.
Achievement
The Glenesk team undertook a detailed operational analysis to understand to root cause how and where previous costs had arisen. They then brought together local experts from Risk and Compliance, HR, Internal Communications and each practice area to help design improvements to the way that data, systems, process and people interacted to prevent the possibility that each source of losses could occur again in the future. The design was trialled at small scale to prove its efficacy and iterated before being rolled out across the business, sponsored by local managers.
It comprised three elements:
- Making risk visible: Data quality errors were addressed and fee earners, Risk and Compliance and the Management Team were given a clear, live view of all cases where funding or missed key dates were at risk so they could be effectively managed. Managers could tell where fee earner case reviews had been missed or where temporarily orphaned cases needed to be assigned owners.
- Managing risk effectively: Weekly, monthly and quarterly review cycles were embedded within existing meetings at each level of the business from individual supervision to the Executive Leadership Team. These ensured that any risks were addressed by the fee earner upon notification or escalated if not.
- Accountability and Assurance: A detailed compliance and accountability framework was implemented to give clarity over responsibilities and expectations of each role involved and how breaches were to be managed.
Financial Impact
The project is on track to deliver nearly £1m in financial savings, providing evidence of a lower risk profile for the purposes of Professional Indemnity Insurance and enhancing customer satisfaction.
Situation
A Top 50 UK Legal Services Firm regularly faced problems in producing monthly reporting. These reporting packs were regularly delayed until week 4 of each month, leaving the leadership team with no visibility or insight for the majority of each month, and required a large financial reporting team.
Glenesk identified that 50% of time currently spent consolidating numbers and creating reporting across the business could be saved by redesigning the processes and automating static parts of the reporting. This would: circumvent re-writing of reports; reduce manual time required in producing the reports; and increase the accuracy of outputs.
Achievements
A suite of automated reports were built using existing tools within the business (Power BI), along with the necessary back-end data changes. The creation of this involved: cleansing and analysis of data sources; a collaborative approach with the local finance and BI teams; careful consideration of leadership requirements; and best-practice deployment of Power BI report design and production.
The project was set up to ensure local Power BI experts were engaged throughout the development and were able to take over responsibility for ongoing development and maintenance of these reports long after the Glenesk team handed over. 3 months after handover was completed, a performance health check was carried out to ensure results had been sustained, products were working as intended, and that the local owners and leadership team who used the reports were maintaining the product and were delighted with the visibility and accuracy of the output.
Financial Impact
- £473k per year as a result of a 7 FTE time saving within the finance team
- Reporting teams able to meet reporting deadlines that were previously views as unachievable
- All results reviewed after 3 months to ensure these were sustained and the product was fully maintained by the local team as part of BAU