Fortune 500 Business Process Improvement and Organizational Consolidation Roadmap
The Client
Fortune 500 financial services company providing insurance and investment products to North American retail and institutional customers.
The Challenge
Our client's retail product marketing group works with numerous producer channels, each of which had their own marketing literature fulfillment and inventory management processes. The marketing group managed a portfolio of disparate physical and on-line fulfillment processes which created inefficiencies and redundant costs. Process inefficiencies resulted in literature fulfillment delays which directly impacted revenue streams. End-customers were lost due to lack of product information, and producers were lost due to frustration over process inefficiencies which ultimately impacted their revenue as well. In addition, each producer used different systems to support the fulfillment cycle, and each of these systems integrated with one of three back-office inventory systems. The complex integration of multiple systems resulting from the introduction of new producers to our client’s business created further process and IT management inefficiencies and escalated costs. In order to protect its revenue streams and realize scale cost efficiencies, our client sought to consolidate fulfillment centers and to streamline the literature fulfillment process through centralized technology and processes that could be used by all administrators and producers.
The Solution
HighQuest Partners developed a business case and execution roadmap for the implementation of a single centralized web-based material ordering system, supporting processes, and consolidated physical infrastructure that is expected to generate a 2-year ROI of 17% and a 5-year ROI of 35%. The execution roadmap outlines the consolidation and integration plan for facilities, processes, and systems. To support short-term implementation, the roadmap identifies tactical “quick win” opportunities and details supporting project plans. The roadmap also identifies long-term strategic opportunities which are supported by high-level project roadmaps and optimization models for inventory, processes, and systems. To supplement the roadmap, HighQuest also provided a reusable decision-making framework for the analysis of build vs. buy vs. reuse strategies. Initially used to analyze our client’s inventory management system alternatives, the framework empowers our client with a tool for the analysis of future projects.
The Results
The business case and roadmap provided our client with an opportunity to increase the operational efficiency of its organization. The client ultimately did consolidate there fulfillment vendors and systems as the business plan recommended. Our client has been able to leverage the decision-making framework to develop strategies for numerous initiatives. The framework has facilitated strategy analysis, and has expedited project planning.
