Workflow
that Works
"I am careful
not to confuse excellence with perfections. Excellence, I can
reach for; perfection is God's business." Michael J.
Fox
The road to excellence is the road
to infinite success. And the key to excellence is to constantly
look for improvements - improvements in customer
experience, internal processes, and
results. All three are inexorably tied
together.
It's important to note the best agencies
utilize technology heavily and let technology drive internal processes. They
recognize that automation is an important tool for delivering value
to their customers. Agencies and companies alike have made
significant investments in technology. All too
often the promise of these investments in technology isn’t being
realized, however. We
continue to do old work in old ways. And often we end up doing
it again the new way, simply adding automation on top of an existing
manual process. For maximum efficiency, customer retention,
and profitability, it is imperative to begin to do new work in
new ways, capitalizing on the capabilities of existing technology.
You can reduce
the costs associated with processing work - new business, endorsements,
or renewals - by as much as 35%. Even very well run, efficient and effective agencies have seen
savings of over 10%. While reducing costs, you can also significantly
reduce elapsed time which is the time required from the start
to the finish of the process, delivering better service to customer.
It's time to discard
obsolete rules and tap the skills and creativity of the people
in your agency - the
people who know the workflow best. Make
sure your workflow works - for you and your customer.
Following
a simplified process, you can design new work methods, fix
broken processes, implement workflow best practices and substantially
improve client satisfaction. Moreover, redesigning workflow
can help build continuous improvement into your culture, positioning
your agency to thrive, not just survive, in the 21st century. Critical Success Factors If
you have tried improving workflow before with mixed results,
you may have been missing one of the following critical components. 
| Management commitment--It's
critical that management be willing to commit the
time, energy and resources necessary to redesign
process and implement changes. Remember,
workflow redesign will only be as important to your
staff as it is to you.
| | | Understanding
customer needs - Knowing your customers – what’s important
to them and how the agency can meet their needs - should
be your central focus. Remember,
the customers are not just a part of
your business; they are the core of
your business. See Customer
Focus Initiatives for tools to help
you focus on your customer.
| | Driven
from the desk level - Workflow redesign can’t be a
top-down initiative. Even though the leaders of the
agency must be totally committed to the process and heavily
involved, the people who actually do the work on a day-to-day
basis must drive the change process from start to finish. Staff
must become part of the solution in order to be able
to effect positive, lasting change. |
With
these critical success factors in place, there are 5
simple steps that will help your agency not only streamline
workflow, but also make sure it really works for your
customers.
1. Look at yourself from the customer’s perspective. Identify
what your customers want out of a given process
- whether it is new business, a renewal or a
claim. Don't
assume that you know. Ask your customers. Then,
determine how well you are meeting those wants
and needs. This helps focus on those items
that are truly important from your customer's
perspective. Tip: be sure you
consider the indirect effect on your customers,
too. Ask yourselves, "Does the customer know
we do this and would he be willing to pay for
it if he did?"
2. Analyze the current workflow to identify inherent
problems. Mapping
the current process will identify loops in
the process causing duplicate effort, redundancy,
high labor costs, elongated elapsed time and
other points of dysfunction that do not serve
either the customer or the agency well.
3. Brainstorm solutions and set priorities. Use
a team approach to identify and evaluate potential
solutions based on the benefit to the customer
and/or agency. Set priorities based on the cost,
difficulty, and length of time it will take to
implement changes.
4. Streamline the work. Design
a new, improved workflow focusing on those key
issues that are really important to the customer. It
truly becomes a win-win situation - greater efficiency and profitability
for the agency; greater customer satisfaction for
the client.
5. Ensure results. To
ensure results, you need to define goals and measures
and establish milestones to recognize achievement. Celebrate
success! Much
of the efficiency gain to be realized is a direct result
of effectively utilizing automation tools readily available
in almost every agency today. Even greater efficiencies
are attainable through full utilization of emerging
technologies such as imaging, the Internet, electronic
mail and new automated tools provided by the companies.
Make
the commitment today to workflow that works! |
