The Internet Delivers: Vision and Execution Through
e-Enablement
Overview: A global financial services company made significant investments in the Internet with little financial return and turned to Inductis to maximize the financial impact of its Internet approach.
e-Enablement: is Inductis' proven approach to helping enable companies to use the Internet to dramatically reduce the cost of manual, phone, or mail-based interactions with customers, suppliers, and employees.
Situation
While companies have made significant investments in interactive technologies in recent years, many initiatives have yielded little measurable financial impact. A major financial services client asked Inductis to help redefine its Internet strategy to support existing business lines and to deliver quantifiable bottom-line results.
Inductis structured the engagement according to its three-pronged methodology, designed to deliver a fully realized vision for change and concrete results:
1.
Analysis: identify the areas of greatest opportunity for bottom-line benefit
2.
Discovery: comprehensively understand the relevant business functions and work with business units to draft implementation plans
3.
Change management: ensure effective implementation through stakeholder buy-in and successful follow-through
Analysis
of Opportunities
Inductis applied a Profitability Lever approach to identify key areas of opportunity presented by the online channel:
e-Enablement: move current administrative and phone and paper servicing processes, such as letters and statements to clients, to the web
Customer acquisition: book new clients and market additional products to existing clients
Cross-selling among lines of business: convert select customers of one business unit into customers of additional units
Expanding share of business: encourage higher spend from existing customers
Growing a new online business: sell additional financial instruments
After in-depth analysis, Inductis identified e-Enablement as the area that held the greatest potential for high-impact bottom-line benefits.
Discovery:
Brokerage Productivity
Once e-Enablement was identified, the project team moved to a comprehensive examination of each relevant function, including billing and customer service. The team engaged company managers at all levels who had accountability for these areas, ensuring a complete picture of operations and securing stakeholder buy-in.
The brokerage organization faced several challenges. Sales force productivity lagged behind competitors, and its cost structure was not best-in-class. Inductis learned through its analysis that while e-Enablement alone would not completely close the performance gap, it would yield significant benefits.
Inductis interviewed and surveyed 4,000 sales force members to learn how they worked. The results dispelled several myths:
Management was skeptical about a web-based solution, because it was thought that not every sales team member had a computer. In reality, computers were used in every office.
It was believed that the semi-independent sales force would use leverage operational efficiencies to increase leisure time. In fact, interviews showed they would use additional time to solicit clients.
Contrary to common wisdom, sales force members spent only one hour a day courting clients, with the remainder spent on administrative matters and paperwork.
Increasing
Productivity through e-Enablement
Armed with the right time-saving tools and techniques, the sales team could make considerable impact on revenue. Strategic web-based technology would improve productivity, quality, attrition levels, and client quality. Inductis' recommendation: Make the most of high-speed desktops already in place, using this platform for all account initiation, resolution, and monitoring. The result: More time for the sales force to obtain new clients, higher client and sales force satisfaction, lower attrition, and more efficient workflow.
Change
Management
To realize the vision, Inductis led a change management initiative that involved key stakeholders, including several levels of management and the people directly responsible for executing e-Enablement. The teams identified several initiatives, each with specific action plans:
Efficient, end-to-end internal processes - enabled through reengineering of business procedures, policies, and standards - to provide clients, the sales force, and the internal staff with a consistent view of all transactions
Focus on measurable financial impact, with appropriate governance and accountability, using key success and operating metrics
Behavioral change through incentives, training, and compliance to ensure that improvements were operational and sustainable
Usable, well-integrated, robust technology
Inductis concluded that e-Enablement of the sales force, effectively implemented, would yield cost savings of close to $50 million and a revenue impact of nearly $100 million. In addition, e-Enablement is expected to reduce sales force administrative time and increase productivity by nearly 10 percent.
Taking advantage of Inductis' distinctive three pronged approach
analysis, comprehensive discovery, and change management.
The company learned where it needed to go, developed a roadmap to get there, and achieved internal consensus on implementation. The result is a winning Internet strategy that will continue to reap significant bottom-line benefits.
