Cost Reduction and Service Level Improvement
Together with managers and their staff we analyse activities and costs to determine where value is added or eroded. Using methods improvements and value for money analyses we rebalance resources between departments and achieve an overall service level improvement but with reduced total costs. Core activities add value. Support activities enable core activities to take place. Diversionary activities add no value, but arise from a failure somewhere in the organisation. We work with staff to seek and fix the root causes of problems in one department that cause diversionary activities in others, and propose improvements to methods and procedures and the use of IT to lower unit costs. We use external and internal customer surveys to test the organisation's assumptions about current service level requirements and the risks and benefits of changing them. Some of the cost savings are rebalanced to other departments to improve the quality of their outputs or to generate additional revenue greater than the additional cost. The final outcome is an overall enhanced level of service but with reduced total costs.