Detailed Case Studies

Forward-thinking organisations are reviewing their business processes with a desire to improve customer satisfaction, internal efficiencies and drive down costs. Speed of delivery is critical. Ease of implementation and modification is also paramount. Procession provides the feedback and enables continuous process improvement, driving down customer-experienced defect levels to the Six Sigma Target.

Procession provides these organisations with solutions which easily satisfies these needs and provides their business with the agility they require in today's ever-changing environment.

"We chose Procession because of its flexibility - we need to be able to introduce and modify processes very rapidly", said Liz Nicholl, UK Sport's Director of Performance Services, "and we liked the friendliness of the software."

Project description

UK Sport was established by Royal Charter in January 1997, to focus directly on high performance sport at the UK level, with the aim of achieving sporting excellence on the world stage. The work of UK Sport is targeted towards developing and supporting a system capable of producing a constant flow of world class performers. The Government had given its commitment to making UK Sport a Lottery distributor in order to:

Streamline the application process for UK and GB level governing bodies for World Class Performance funding.

Give UK Sport a stronger co-ordinating role in supporting governing bodies in their efforts to bid for and stage major events.

Provide general support to the Governing Bodies of sports.

They required a customisable CRM system that would allow them to manage applications, means testing, awards and payment of funds. The system had to be signed-off by the National Audit Office and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. Due to the regulations, every interaction had to be tracked through the system and available to be audited by external auditors.

Key success factors for this project

The system met their needs at the time of implementation and has continued to flex to their changing requirements over the years.

The project was delivered on time and to budget, and was also able to deliver some additional change controls as they surfaced during the build phase.

The system was deployed rapidly and the unique capabilities of Procession, which include the ability to see and re-configure the existing system in a visual environment, thus ensuring no interpretation gap, the ability to alter any aspect of the process without coding, and the ability to deploy changes without adversely impacting any processes in progress, have painlessly enabled continual change and growth in the organisation, without any negative impact on the users of the system.

The system has allowed UK Sport to reduce its administration headcount. Only four administration staff are now required to handle 1500 customers, whereas previously twenty administration staff had struggled to handle 350 customers.

Prior to the implementation of the system, it was taking 120 man-days (six weeks' work by four people) to create the end-of-year finance reports. This process is now possible by pressing one button.

Reporting is now very easy and based on up-to-the-minute information. They are now able to respond quickly to very challenging ad hoc reporting requirements from key stakeholders, such as the Department of Culture, Media and Science

Impact on internal workflow & process

Many processes were previously handled manually and used an extensive collection of paperwork and spreadsheets. All processes are now fully computerised, closely integrated, easy to manage and fully auditable.

All their information is now stored, accessed and managed centrally.

Workflow is all automatic, with automatic approval levels, and it is possible to see exactly what is where in the process.

They are able to reassign work ‘en masse’ when required. For example, if a member of staff is unable to come into the office.

The number of calls to the call centre has been reduced by over 50% and those calls that do come through are handled more efficiently.

The level of process automation is high. When a new opportunity for automation is identified, it is absorbed into the system very quickly. For example, inflation proofing of all payments was built into the processes in just 10 days, from the time the requirement was indentified, to the time of the changes going live.

The organisation and the system are able to painlessly adapt together as legislation and other internal or external forces require it.

Efficiency levels are very high, despite a huge amount of variables that have to be dealt with. The system has removed a lot of the pain from managing the organisation.

Impact on customer engagement

Customers, suppliers and partners are delighted with the efficiency, effectiveness and level of interaction provided by the system.

Customer interaction is now more effective and efficient, and the quality of customer service has increased, whilst the number of staff required has actually been reduced.

All applications are processed quickly, any questions can be answered speedily, and all queries are dealt with successfully

All parties know exactly where they are in the process, and communications to the customer have been completely revolutionised

Live Grant Management Demo       UK Sport website

Given the success of the UK Sport implementation, Procession was also selected by the UK Sports Institute for their Athlete Medical Scheme system. This Scheme, which is run on behalf of the UK Sports Institute by the British Olympic Association (BOA) with full web access to the Sports Institute, monitors the health and medical treatment of over 700 of the UK’s top athletes, all involved in World Class programmes and Events.

Project description

The British Olympic Association is the National Olympic Committee for Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Its mission is to transform British lives through the power of the Olympic values and the success of Team GB.

The BOA’s role is to prepare the ‘Best of British’ athletes for, and lead them at, the summer, winter and youth Olympic Games. The BOA delivers extensive support services to Britain’s Olympic athletes and their National Governing Bodies to enhance Olympic success and is responsible for championing the Olympic values and brand in the UK.

Part of their remit is to provide medical support and advice to athletes, particularly to help them rehabilitate following an injury, and thus ensuring that they are able to compete at their very best. This is achieved via funding that is provided by the government. Twelve staff were struggling to manage their customers’ needs and they wanted a more efficient way to manage their internal workflow and enable more effective customer engagement.

They were therefore looking for a new system that could:

Track claims against injuries, ranging from in-patient stays in private hospitals to physiotherapy provision

Allow them to track and manage the invoices being received for services from up to 70 different hospitals

Manage all correspondence, including generating letters from templates, but allowing staff to add further information as required, and storing the data for tracking purposes

Enable them to clearly understand and authorise payments, and easily inform the chosen hospital to go ahead with the treatment.

Help them easily manage ongoing, protracted treatments that are required for chronic conditions

Improve the levels of customer service and customer relationship management

Provide easy-to-use financial reporting tools, including budgets, and a full audit trail

Provide scalability, as the new process needed to be able to sustain growth up to and beyond 2000 athletes, as Governing Bodies begin to use the process

Provide a method to easily maintain reference data, including: estimated cost of claims, operation and diagnosis codes, orchid codes, and doctor’s details

Be used over the Internet and provide easy electronic data interchange to other partner organisations

Key success factors for this project

The system was delivered quickly and they felt that it met their needs perfectly

The organisation’s productivity level has been greatly increased - 7,524 athletes with multiple claims have been handled with a minimum of effort

The system is considered fast and extremely reliable

Up-to-the-minute information is now easily accessed by all users of the system

The level of efficiency has drastically improved, allowing a reduction of administration staff

The system is very flexible and has been readily enhanced when required, without any impact to their day-to-day operations

Impact on internal workflow & process

Able to work in a very structured way through all workload, and can easily see what stage each claim is at, and who is working on it, and which ones are now overdue or require escalation

Customer enquiries can be responded to instantly

All information is now available centrally to all stakeholders, with an enhanced range of reporting facilities

The process-based architecture of the system has allowed the organisation to easily adapt to changing regulatory requirements

The end-to-end process as deployed is clearly mapped and understood, yet remains adaptable

Impact on customer engagement

A better relationship now exists between BOA and their customers, as they are better able to understand their needs and expectations

Customers feedback consistently shows that they feel their queries are always dealt with quickly and effectively

More time can now be spent dealing with the customer not dealing with the system, and so customer service has been increased

UK Sport website