Background

Our client, a fast-growing healthcare, approached us to provide services to design and operate a network of approximately 50 field-sites and 4 contract processors. To be successful, the client needed to be able to monitor demand, respond rapidly to changes in capacity at each processor, and to ensure compliance of subcontractors with service level agreements (SLAs).

The Challenge

• Supporting the expansion of the client business utilizing the existing business process required dedicating approximately half a person-day in each field office to track and report shipments and a full-time analyst to assemble the information. For a total of approximately 26 full-time equivalent people.
• The client also needed information from each of the subcontractor's shop-floor control systems to monitor compliance with SLAs, detect anomalies and respond to changes in capacity. At the start of the engagement, this information was exchanged via email and lacked standardization.
• To complicate things further, most of this work was carried at the end of the day when staff was more focused on going home than on producing a high-quality result and supporting the process during weekends, holidays, and through absences and employee rotation was very challenging.
• Time was of essence, the client business was booming and the costs of non-compliance -both economic and reputational- were very high.

The Solution

• Given the time constrains we developed a two-phase solution. In the first we would triage the labor required at the field offices and make some small but indispensable adjustments to the existing reporting from subcontractors but not change the way of delivery. In the second phase, we would streamline the information flow.

Engagement Model

• We set out a 5 work-session engagement: In the first session, we defined in detail the requirements for subcontractors SLA management. In the second and third sessions, we mapped out the business process and identified the best sources of data. On the fourth session we engaged with the third party logistics companies to integrate to their data-feed. On our fifth and final session we egaged the processing subcontractors to understand the information available in their systems and adjust their reports.

Results

• We provided the client with a solution that provided visibility into subcontractor SLA performance, early detection of anomalies, and significant savings in manpower required.
• Leveraging data from the third-party logistics companies, we were able to eliminated the need for personnel at the field offices, a reduction of 25 full-time equivalent personnel.
• Our digital agents pulled the data together, monitored SLA performance, alerted us to anomalies, and even sent advanced shipping notifications to the subcontractors so they could better staff their operations. The process worked 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, without interruptions for absenteeism, holidays, or employee rotation.