Case Studies / Business Process Optimization
University Improves Efficiencies and Customer Responsiveness through Business Process Transformation
Higher Education
Scope
- An administrative department of a major university was experiencing increased work volumes and handling intervals.
- Work assignment structure, manual work steps, and multiple handoffs created sub-optimal processes. Customer responsiveness and operational effectiveness suffered.
Results
- Northridge was engaged to examine baseline operations, assess against best practices, identify improvement opportunities and create a roadmap for implementation.
- Identified root cause of process issues by determining primary work drivers; analyzing y/y volume changes, with trends by month, team member and function; and examining metrics for processing intervals.
- Designed process improvements to minimize manual steps, reduce handoffs, create a less paper-intensive environment and more effectively utilize existing system capabilities.
- Created a “force to load” staffing model and redistributed work functions across team members to enable greater flexibility in handling peak periods and more effectively address backlogs.
- Established improved tracking and reporting of performance metrics, creating superior management visibility.
- Within two months of project completion, team role revisions and process changes were implemented and manual steps were reduced by 38% in Process A (shown in the graph to the left) which dramatically reduced backlogs and improved job satisfaction and customer responsiveness.
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