Case Studies - Value Management in action

JANET(UK) provides one of the world's leading research and education networks serving 18 million users. Operating as JANET(UK) the company is constituted as the JNT Association, a company limited by guarantee and owned by the four categories of members: the UK higher and further education funding bodies, the higher education institutions and research councils, the further education colleges and individual members. Accountability is derived through an annually reviewed Service Level Agreement with the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC).There are several reasons why JANET(UK) needed to change. Most critical was the growing pressure to reduce the cost of service provision from both the Government, committed to stringent cuts across public funding, and user institution customers who, in a challenging financial environment, become increasingly discerning in what they require. In response to these shifting market dynamics, JANET(UK)'s CEO, Tim Marshall, was driving the transition from a largely centrally funded model to one where there may be a variety of variable revenue streams.Tim and his team were clear what was needed to achieve this change: understanding and acting upon customer needs through high trust relationships, driving the market through innovation, value-driven partnerships with customers, suppliers and staff and delivery on promises. The Board was equally clear on the essential programmes needed to effect the change, which spanned customer intimacy, product development, delivery processes and culture.A primary component in achieving the shift to a commercial model was the development of a Balanced Scorecard to reflect the new value dynamics, with which to track and correct performance across the company. It was decided to build a Dynamics Model with which to define and quantify the most critical performance measures. The model evolved through a number of workshops with senior JANET(UK) staff.

Our client was one of the largest UK high street banks undertaking a £60M programme to transform the Bank’s operating model in order to retain and enhance their market dominance during and beyond the subsequent five years.  The key challenge for the Bank was to deliver competitive responsiveness to the fundamental market shifts, demanding increased product differentiation whilst significantly reducing the cost base and maintaining diligent legislative and commercial control on risk.  The requirement was for a financial appraisal of the proposed Target Operating Model (TOM) to provide the level of certainty demanded for sanction by the Board, together with a means to track and ensure value delivery during and after implementation.  The Value Management Toolset? was used to build a Business Case which linked major programme deliverables dynamically to the Net Present Value (NPV). This Value Model was then exposed to several exhaustive stakeholder workshops spanning both Retail and Business Banking and the financial case tested to destruction with the Financial Director prior to being used as a primary input for Board approval.  As a direct result of the certainty provided by this process, the Financial Director was able to state to the Board during the approval meeting that he was not only confident of the financial case but that the Value Model would provide clarity and direction during implementation. The programme was approved and went on to be one of the Bank’s most successful strategic initiatives.

We have applied Value Management to the design and financial appraisal of new Command and Control systems for two of the UK largest police forces.The challenge for police forces was, and still is, to deploy limited resources most effectively to prevent, detect, prosecute and deal with the consequences of crime, whilst simultaneously meeting increasing demand for statistics and legal compliance; no mean feat. Precise, timely and shared information is critical to effective policing and Command and Control is a key support system for this purpose.The challenge for our police clients was to select Command and Control systems that matched their specific needs whilst returning measurable financial benefits which could be channeled into more front line policing.Working in partnership with a team of senior uniform and detective officers, a Value Model was built to quantify the financial effect of applying intelligence, made possible by the Command and Control systems, to target resources more precisely in the crime life cycle. This wealth of experience, combined with structured workshops, exposed specific points in current practice which accounted for most waste and where greatest improvement was possible. For example, there was massive leverage in preventing car theft by acting on the ability to predict likely targets for criminal behaviour using a technique called Crime Pattern Analysis.After rigorous scrutiny, the Police Authority approved the preferred option immediately and in entirety. This was as a direct result of the capability of the Value Model to demonstrate not only the magnitude but also the time criticality of the financial case.

Our client was a global office equipment and stationery supplier for both commercial and domestic customers. The business model for this high variety, mixed volume and next day supply operation relied on precise customer targeting, sound merchandising and containment of logistics costs.With the aim of addressing a problem of reducing margins despite increased sales, our client was undertaking a portfolio of strategic change programmes spanning all aspects of the business and needed to manage intended performance improvements more precisely.To this end, we developed a Balanced Scorecard which reflected the most critical causal relationships driving value within the business and linked this with a Business Case for the programme portfolio, built using the Value Management Toolset?, so that projected benefits could be tracked and corrected.The urgency meant that speed was critical and the Balanced Scorecard was completed and operational within a newly formed Programme Support Office (PSO) within five weeks through a series of workshops and interviews with the business benefit owners. Targeted improvements were achieved and the Balanced Scorecard, originally intended as a proof of concept toolset is still being used over three years later.

The Housing Services within one of the largest and most culturally diverse London boroughs comprised sixteen separate Neighbourhoods, all with their own offices and staff and was designing a new centralised contact centre to serve their social housing customers more effectively and efficiently.The borough council was responding to a recent Audit Commission report heavily criticising the high cost, waste and poor service levels of the existing provision. The new contact centre would have to deal with a large mix of enquiry types, durations, specialist demands and over 100 different languages.Our assignment was to size the centre to quantify resource requirements for telephone, email, post and walk-in contacts, plan shift patterns and optimise organization and processes whilst allowing for extremes, such as cold winters or terrorist attacks.The high mix and specialist nature of enquiry profiles rendered conventional, simple call centre models, based on high volumes of similar contacts, insufficiently precise. Consequently, we combined an Erlang model, capable of handling the high mix, with computer simulation to fine tune call routing and corroborate projections.The models were used to plan the precise number and skills mix of resources for the entire contact centre, which proved to be within 1% of the subsequent actual requirement, and enabled specification of the supporting technology.