The BPO Inc is a multinational company that deals in offering professional services to clients that ranges from the risk or insurance management and the management consulting. The company operates in over 100 different countries of the world and has over 500 offices distributed in these nations with over 5000 employees. Currently, the organization is headed by the president called Larry Watts. Under him, is Jim Regit who is the group’s chair. Further, it has other board members and the senior management team that leads the organization.
BPO’s service structure is made up of three main divisions through which the company offers its services to the customers. Firstly, the company has the Risk/ Brokerage management unit which provides services of helping other companies to establish and access the risks that prevail them and develop appropriate management strategies to curb them. The second division is the human resource consulting which offers the services in Human Resource Outsourcing (HRO) and Business Process Design (BPD) and the management consulting. The third division is the compensation consulting division which offers services in helping other companies to develop effective compensation and reward strategies. Thus, through its structure, the organization has managed to get a bigger marketing share in this industry.
The BPO case study unveils the operational issues that exist in BPO Company. In the case, HA is one of the clients of BPO, which handles of the compensation issues of the company. Sam Reagan, the CEO of HA had an issue that needed the support of BPO; HA’s BPO service provider, where Sam wanted his former wife to be removed from his benefits. During this event when he needed help, he got a bad service experience which was below his expectations from the business partner. Thus, he raised concern over this issue and wrote a mail to Allan Lauren, the BPO. He also instructed the human resource chief, Kacy Scott, to conduct an audit of the services offered by BPO.
The mail raised the alarm in BPO and had to involve the board because Sam had sent a copy of the mail to company’s chairman. In his mail, he mentions that the company risks the business partnership if he audit reports reveal the inefficiencies the process. Allan calls for a meeting with the leaders of the processes involved, Ethan and Jerry to discuss the issue at hand. Their discussion reveals various shortcoming that exists in their process operations which must be lowering their quality of services to the clients. Further, in their discussion, the three proposes various solutions to the problems that are facing the organization. Therefore, there is need to restructure the organization’s processes to ensure that the company attains maximum efficiency in its services.
The current BPO’s Health and Welfare Service Delivery process has the issue of the increased number of call escalations. The participant sub process receives and handles issues that regard the health and welfare services of the employees of the client companies. Thus, there is need to reduce the number of escalations received in this section to increase its efficiency (Pardeep & Pyare, 2012). The main cause of increased escalation number in the participant division is because the customer service representatives lack sufficient knowledge and skills to handle the issues that the customers raise. Their insufficient ability to handle the customer concerns has made them escalate most of the issues to the higher authority level; the benefits administrators (BAs).
The increased number of the escalation in the Health and Welfare Service Delivery division has many effects on the organization. The effects can be generalized as inefficiency, both in time and resources. The high number of escalations wastes time that could have been used in some other better way. Both the CSR, the Benefits Administrators (BA) and the customers spent a lot of time in cases of escalations. The CSR spent time explaining the issue to the BA’s to handle the task, then communicate back to the CSR who in turn give feedback to the customer. Therefore, escalations wastes time for the organization’s labour (Chase, Jacobs & Aquilano, 2007).
Escalations affect the customer experience. When the client reaches the CSRs for support, they expect an immediate response to their concerns. This shows that the customers feel unsatisfied when their issues take a long time due to escalations. Thus, they reduce the quality of services that the company offers to is its customers which in turn ruins the organization’s reputation in the market. The ruin of the brand reduces the market share of the company (Manuel, Lam, Thu & Zbignew, 2011). Escalations also increase the cost to the company which lowers the organization’s profitability. Thus, increased number of escalations lowers the process efficiency, reduces customer satisfaction level and lowers the organization’s profitability (Hussein, Sameer & Axel, 2009).
There are various ways that BPO Inc. can apply to handle the issues of an increased number of escalations at the Health and Welfare Service Delivery Process. Firstly, just as suggested by Ethan, the company needs to conduct a piece of training for the CSRs. The training will help the team to get sufficient knowledge and skills to handle the complaints and request that come from the participant subprocess. When the CSR understands how to solve and handle the customer issues, the number of escalations will reduce by a large extent. Thus, BPO should conduct training for the CSR to equip them to have the customers comfortably with little escalations. The training should cover the process refresh for both the Participant subprocess and the Database Update sub-process, together with the common customer issues and requests and how to handle them.
Besides, as a way to increase the efficiency, there is a need for BPO to introduce a new Case manager position who will work as a link between the CSRs and the BAs. This will help manage the necessary escalations to ensure that the operations are efficient and also work, to reduce the time taken to handle escalations. Thus, the case managers will play a critical role in solving increasing the efficiency by coordinating the two parties. This is critical in optimizing the operations on the process.
Underutilization refers to the failure to use the existing resource to its potential. Most processes and sub-processes underutilize the resources due to poor planning. Some of these resources include the human resource, where the labour is not used to its capacity, space and other materials that could otherwise be used to a higher capacity to add productivity to the company. Usually, inefficiency accompanies underutilization since inefficiencies in the organization are caused by underutilization. These two aspects have detrimental effects on the company since they reduce the profitability of the organization.
The current situation of the BPO’s Health and Welfare Service Delivery division shows that there are aspects of inefficiency and underutilization in its operations. The database update subprocess in inefficient and underutilized (Ainola & Aben, 2009). For example, the database update subprocess has many issues that need improvement. The subprocess entails loading data into the main frame computer, the process takes 80 minutes, at times 5 hours yet it has been observed in other cases that can take a shorter time of 20 minutes. These among other aspects in the sub-processes reveals that the process is inefficient (Heizer & Render, 2011). Thus, the activities can be done within a shorter time. This shows that there is overstaffing especially for the 31 CSR.
Inefficiency and underutilization bring about many effects to BPO. The company gets weak performance from the employees, which reduces the profitability of the business (Hossam, Baher & Mohamed, 2010). Also, the inefficiencies in the operation process reduce the customer satisfaction level which comes from low-quality services. Such a case may make the company lose customers and also reduce their market share. This is detrimental to the enterprise because it will lower its profitability and reduce its competitive advantage (Krajewski, Ritzman & Malhorta, 2013)
The solution for the inefficiency and underutilization Health and Welfare Service Delivery Process of BPO is through scheduling. This is the best strategy that the company can adapt to help manage the resources both human and others to deliver the best results. Scheduling entails planning and controlling the workloads to optimize them for efficiency (Abachizadeh & Tahani, 2009). The schedule will help the company review the duties and jobs that people perform to ensure that they are highly optimized. It will help the business ensure that the all the resources are utilized in the best way possible. Thus, this optimization of the operations through scheduling will help the company to get more productivity from the employees, which will, in turn, help BPO to deliver quality services.
Scheduling is likely to benefit the BPO in many ways. It one of the high touch low-cost approaches for use. This is because BPO will incur a low cost to implement yet powerful in optimizing the process operations. Scheduling will ensure that the job is done within the shortest time and with the least resources possible (George, Mark & Hundley, 2007). In the current system, there are many activities that BAs and the CSRs are taking a long time to implement yet they can be managed within a shorter time. The current state in the Health and Welfare Service Delivery division can be changed to a large extent the approach is implemented in the best way possible (Johnston, Clark & Shulver, 2012).
The BPO’s Health and Welfare Service Delivery division lacks integration which is a critical, essential aspect of the efficient operations of the company. Usually, integration issues arise from poorly coordinated workflows. The discussion of AJ, Ethan and Jerry reveal the existence of the integration issues in the Health and Welfare Service Delivery division. Jerry openly says that he faced challenges in developing the roadmap for the integration of the Database Update subprocess, which is usually done in the batch mode and the Participant Care subprocess carried out daily.
Besides, Jerry identified a software issue whereby the company expects the system to record the whole time taken for during the call with the customer, yet it does not add the time on hold. This makes it difficult to get the reports for monitoring the process. Lack of frequent updates mainly causes the software issues. Updates help the developer to sort out the issues through releasing the software versions. Thus, there are many chances that BPO is facing software issues due to lack of frequent software updates (Ahmad & Al-Zubi, 2010).
The integration and software issues affect the Health and Welfare Service Delivery process in many different ways. The software issue increases the time that is involved in performing a duty (Hamza, 2008). The CSR spent extra time recording the time on hold because the systems do not do it automatically, which has lowered the product the productivity level of the CSR. Also, the lack of integration makes it difficult to optimize the process because the related activities cannot be coordinated and managed easily. Thus, integration and software problems bring about issues which affect the quality of the services produced (Hendrickson & Tung, 2008).
There are various strategies that BPO can put in place to ensure that it curbs the issues that it is facing currently regarding the software and workflow integration. Firstly, regarding the software, BPO should work hand in hand with the vendors to ensure that it integrates the new software shortcomings and requirements through a new software version. Failure of the system to record the calls on hold means the system has an issue that needs to be resolved. The company should audit the software systems thoroughly and identify other weaknesses that may be existing (Branson, 2011). The full enhancements and bugs should be communicated to the software vendor to work the system and sort out these issues. If the requirements and bugs are all gathered well, the system will perfect and thus, reduce the operation problems in the process.
On the other hand, BPO can solve the integration issues through the restructuring of the existing workflows to ensure that they are integrated. When the Database Update and the Participant Care Unit are integrated, the company will attain an optimized Health and Welfare Service Delivery process. The integration process entails understanding the two subprocesses and then restructuring them to work together and have relationships. Therefore, the two sub-processes are essential to be integrated because they help in optimizing the operations and increasing the efficiency (Arthur, 2007).
|
No |
Objective |
Action |
Risks and transparency |
Time |
|
1 |
To reduce the number of escalations from the CSRs to MAs |
· Conduct training of the CSRs, highlighting the process flow, the common requests from the customers and other related issues · Recruit the Case managers who will interface between the MAs and the CSRs |
· The company will incur training costs, and that required to remunerate the new case managers |
20/10/2017- 04/6/2018 |
|
2 |
To solve software and integration issues |
· Identify the loops in the software system, develop the requirements and enhancement document, and contact the vendor for the changes · Analyze and restructure the workflows of the Database update subprocess and the Participant subprocess |
· The company must contact the software vendor. · The organization will incur the software update costs and those required to restructure the processes |
05/06/2018-14/12/2018 |
|
3 |
To reduce inefficiency and underutilization in the operation process |
· Review all the workflows and process of the Data Update module and the Participant module · Establish the minimum resources required to complete the task and the most efficient way to do each and relocate the excess resources. · Select and adopt the best strategies identified in the process above and document to make it a formal resource required for the job. |
· The company will incur the costs required to undertake the exercise. · There is need to relocate the resources that are in excess, which may lead to some employees losing their jobs |
16/12/2018-13/03/2019 |
It is recommended that BPO considers certain considers various aspects of its operation to improve and optimize the Health and Welfare Service Delivery process. Apart from the solutions discussed above regarding the way to curb the operation’s issues discussed above, the company should also consider adopting creativity and innovation in the process (Moss, Berner, Savell, 2007). Adopting creativity and innovation is likely to help the company to the device the optimal operational strategies, which is a key aspect in delivering quality services to its clients. Currently, organizations are using creativity and innovation as a tool to gain a competitive advantage over other players in the industry.
Also, it is recommended that the company adopts motivation strategies to increase the efficiency in operations (Montgomery, 2012). Motivation is important and makes employees work to their level best, thus, delivering quality in the services. The motivations could be promotion, for example, some CSRs can be promoted to the newly created positions of the Case Managers. This will motivate them to work hard to increase the operations efficiency and quality.
Finally, BPO should consider coming up with a way to combine implement the best strategies to improve the process. The best approach for effective policy implementation is through integration in the corporate culture (Dong-Suk, 2010). This is powerful and communicates in an effective, thus leaving a greater impact. Therefore, BPO can deliver and implement the operation objectives through the approach. Thus, the company will attain optimal operations for the Health and Welfare Service Delivery process.
Conclusion
In conclusion, optimizing the processes is one of the key aspects for the success of business organizations. Failure to optimize the process operations lowers detrimental effects on the organization. It lowers customer level satisfaction, increases operational cost, reduces the productivity resources and other problems. Therefore, unoptimized operations in businesses can lead to reduced organization’s profitability and reduce the competitive advantage of these companies.
The process of optimizing the operations entails identifying the issues that are prevailing in the service process, then establish the effects that it has on the organization. This helps to get a clear understanding of the problem and then design a solution that will suit the scenario to optimize the process operations. Thus, optimizing the operations is important because it brings about many advantages in the organization which make it increase its income, and increase its market share, which is important for its sustainability.
References
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Ahmad, A. & Al-Zubi, I. (2010). “Six Sigma In Libraries: A Management Perspective, Canadian Journal on Computing in Mathematics Natural Sciences, Engineering & Medicine Vol.1, No. 3.
Ainola, L. & Aben, H. (2009). Fringe patterns in integrated photo elasticity. Journal of the Optical Society of America A-Optics Image Science and Vision, 26 (7), 1714-1720.
Arthur, J. (2007). Lean Six Sigma Demystified, McGraw-Hill.
Branson, R. (2011). Business Stripped Bare, London, Penguin.
Chase, R., Jacobs, F. & Aquilano, N.(2007). Operations Management for Competitive Advantage, (11th Edition), McGraw-Hill.
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Hamza, S. (2008). Design process improvement through the DMAIC Six Sigma approach: A case study from the Middle East. Int. J. Six Sigma. Competitive. Advent., 4: 35-47.
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Hossam, A. Baher, A. & Mohamed, W. (2010). Multi objective Optimization for Multimodal Evacuation, Transportation Research Record, Vol. 2196, pp. 21–33.
Hussein, A., Sameer, A. & Axel, B. (2009). MEBRA: Multi objective Evolutionary-Based Risk Assessment, IEEE Computational Intelligence Magazine, Vol. 4, No. 3, pp. 29–36
Johnston, R., Clark, G. & Shulver, M. (2012). Service Operations Management: Improving Service Delivery (4th Ed). London, England: Pearson.
Krajewski, L., Ritzman, L. & Malhorta, M. (2013). Operations Management: Processes and Supply Chains (10th Ed.). Pearson. ISBN 978-0-13-280739-5.
Maleyeff, J. (2007). “Improving Service Delivery in Government with Lean Six Sigma,” IBM Center for the Business of Government.
Manuel, B., Lam, Thu, B. & Zbignew, M. (2011). An Adaptive Approach for Solving Dynamic Scheduling with Time-varying Number of Tasks – Part I, in 2011 IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC’2011), pp. 1703–1710.
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