Latitude IT completes CRM contract

LATITUDE Information Technology assisted a leading Financial Services Company in South Africa to do a Business Process Improvement exercise in an area that constantly focuses on delivering world class Customer Service to customers.

Within their organisation, the Mail Distribution Centre (MDC) plays a critical role in providing client service by sorting and routing client communications (faxes, mail and internally imaged documents) to the rest of the organisation. Any inefficiencies within the centre are passed on to the rest of the organisation, but similarly any increases in efficiency and quality are also passed on.

The productivity and effectiveness of the MDC had declined in the recent past. This had made the MDC a bottleneck in the effective servicing of clients and this had a knock on affect to many other parts of the business. Angie Simkins, CRM Consultant at LATITUDE Information Technology said, "Through time the MDC had been dealing with all the mail anomalies that did not fit anywhere else in the organisation. Each disparate function had its own system or processes with very little integration. Consequently, there was much duplication and rework and things began to fall between the cracks or move through the MDC far slower than they should have."

Angie Simkins and Margie Pekelaar, CRM consultants from LATITUDE Information Technology were called in to do an investigation and analysis of the MDC`s functions and processes. A business case was developed to highlight the potential process improvements, detail the costs and the potential savings and to recommend a project approach and team. The business case was key to laying the foundation for the succeeding project.

The decision was made that the business needed to be re-engineered on all fronts; the people, processes and technology. This was required in order to build an automated, integrated and logically structured MDC that would be friendly to its people whilst increasing the quality of the work generated. The re-engineering needed to create end-to-end processes to replace the old fragmented ones, with the technology and people to support them.

The project team used a unique build cycle approach to compliment the existing project management methodologies and guidelines. The solution was built incrementally with user testing and business reviews happening at the end of each cycle. These reviews were identified by the business sponsors as a highlight in the project lifecycle because it gave them a good idea of what the final solution would look like very early in the life of the technology development. This process also allowed for a significant amount of consultation between business and the project, with the final solution being the result of several discussions and a lot of `give and take` from both parties. The end result is a business that all involved are proud to be associated with.

Said Pekelaar, "The biggest challenge for both management and the MDC team has been the "right-sizing" of the business area. There is no doubt that the big focus placed on BTM within the project helped make this process more palatable. People were taken seriously and were dealt with dignity and integrity. The two way communication flow and transparency of the process was key to ensuring the process improvements were implemented successfully not only from a technology point of view but from the people aspect."

The project achieved improved client service, cost reduction as a result of a 50% reduction in staff, a 400% increase in productivity, improved quality and crucially, a stable and consistent solution.