The most obvious benefits from implementing a back office optimisation solution are enhanced performance management and improved customer experience for competitive advantage. Yet by promoting greater collaboration between front and back office, and giving managers the tools to manage more effectively, the following secondary benefits can be just as compelling.
Improved Performance Management
Back office optimisation tools give managers the insight and clarity to make sound evidence-based decisions. With the right information, managers can assign the right tasks at the right time to the right people with the right skills. This not only optimises productivity but also quality of work for greater compliance in line with internal polices and procedures to reduce risk and deliver greater quality of service for the customer.With historical performance data readily to hand, managers can identify performance issues, highlight development opportunities and devise coaching plans to ensure individual and team skill-sets are aligned with workloads.
Enhanced Customer Experience
Although, as the name suggest, back office optimisation solutions are focused on the back office, this doesn’t preclude integration with front office processes. In fact, a back office optimisation solutions can promote greater collaboration between the front and back offices, bringing them together via a single platform that links all operational staff in real time. Deliver that, and you’ll achieve more efficient processing, accelerated query resolution, precise resource planning, and greater transparency around workflow management and performance metrics.
Continuous professional development
Improved clarity and transparency of individual and team performance gives managers the ability to quickly identify skills gaps. Yet more than simply highlighting development opportunities, back office optimisation tools enable managers to introduce team members to learning opportunities in a controlled environment, one where mistakes in task completion won’t immediately feed through to customers. This is particularly important in dynamic environments where work requirements change frequently, and team members need to get up to speed with new tasks very quickly. Managers can develop their teams in a highly targeted way, up-skilling team members through appropriate coaching and training, whilst monitoring performance metrics and ensuring team capabilities match incoming workflows.
Staff motivation
Staff motivation may not seem an obvious benefit of a back office workforce optimisation initiative, but it is a natural product of a system that doesn’t put undue pressures on employees, that provides valuable training opportunities, and helps staff to feel empowered to make sound decisions. By aligning resources with work, teams can manage workflows more effectively, and by supporting them to deliver high quality service provision, they gain a greater sense of achievement. The ultimate benefits of this are seen both in improved staff retention, and also in performance, which has a positive effect of customer service quality.
The cumulative effect
The result of all these elements coming together results in significant reductions in cost. Driven by factors such as rework, reduced cycle time for delivery of service or product to the customer, increased efficiency and productivity of staff. Continual removal of operational waste generates bottom line savings or increased capacity enabling your organisation to do more for less. It’s this cumulative effect that means back office optimisation solutions deliver significantly more return on investment than individual optimisation programs.
