An electricity and gas distributor, was seeing increasing cycle times for new customers to receive installations, leading to a delay in receiving recurring revenue. Additionally, they were spending excessive amounts on training without seeing an equivalent upside.
Opportunities discovered during the assessment included:
- The process for managing the backlog was insufficient to complete orders in an acceptable time frame
- The flow of information between regional and central departments decreased visibility to upcoming work, created barriers to communication, and added transit days between process steps
- Service order flow between regional and centralized locations was poor and increased the cycle time
- Training was mainly based on whether it fit in the budget rather than filling a skillset gap
Carpedia partnered with the client to design and optimize internal processes to reduce the cycle timeand improve training.
Key changes included:
- Improved process handoffs and inefficiencies to decrease order cycle time
- Improved regional accessibility to work to increase worker utilization, lessen idle time, andcomplete higher volumes of work orders annually
- Improved installation scheduling methods to better meet customers’ expectations
- Designed and Implemented a corporate training policy that focuses on improving the employees
- Provided managers with methods of identifying skill gaps and created training budgets to resolve those gaps at a reasonable cost
The Results
At the conclusion of the engagement, the client had seen improvement in productivity and cycle time, leading to an increase in recurring revenue. The client is confident that the process changes that have been implemented and the benefits that have been achieved are sustainable over the long term.
Key results included:
- 3.4:1 Return on Investment
- 48% improvement in productivity
- 57% improvement in cycle time
