Insight How to Improve Services with Fewer Resources

24

NOV

How to Improve Services with Fewer Resources

24 NOV 2011 | Posted in agile business change, business strategy, business transformation, business value, NFP | Author Alex McLachlan | 1 Comment

There were three excellent presentations at yesterday's NFP seminar, and a stimulating and interesting debate about how to get the best out of what is likely to be diminished funding levels in the future. Summary notes and the presentation slides are:

Achieving More for Less

David Brown - Chief Executive IChemE - discussed the changes and challenges IChemE has to improve relationships with members, achieve increasing growth and revenue plans whilst reducing staff numbers and operational costs.

David illustrated this with a case study on what they have achieved with their "Membership Application Review System" (MARS) process automation project. Their MARS project has implemented a number of workflow systems to automate their membership application processes, turning what was previously a paper-based, manual process into an online self-service process supported by online networking for IChemE's membership election panels.

They have taken some brave decisions along the way, including making special interest group membership free rather than paid in order to increase member engagement. They have also changed the tone of the organisation, turning it into a customer friendly partner for those with a passion for Chemical Engineering rather than being the "gatekeeper for a gentleman's club".

David described an interesting ratio - the number of staff per 1,000 members and showed how it has declined from 3.4 staff per 1,000 members ten years ago to 2.0 now. An issue for IChemE though is that this has been counterbalanced somewhat by a decline in revenue per member. This gives a further reason for process automation - to ensure that adminstrative cost per member is at least in line with revenue per member.

Presentation slides

David Brown: Achieving More with Less

Trends in the NFP Sector

Stephen Cook - Editor of Third Sector Magazine - reviewed the key trends within the not-for-profit sector and how the sector is changing. He highlighted the key areas for organisations to consider going forward.

His view as a senior and experienced journalist in the sector is that:

• The three sources of revenue - statutory funding, voluntary funding and commercial funding and revenue - will all decline significantly and are unlikely to recover to pre-recession levels. The "golden decade" for NFP is over.
• The overall drop in income is likely to be of the order of 15% over the sector (but with significant local variations).
• The game is changing in the sector and there will be no return to what previously was considered "normal".
• The current government is using a variety of transitional schemes in essence to smooth the decline of the sector.
• A number of charities got carried away with the commercial opportunities that were available under the Labour government and need to re-focus on their core values; to re-shape their strategies.
• Although mergers are likely to be considered by some charities, it is extremely difficult to implement mergers between charities and to achieve efficiency savings.

There was considerable debate on a number of these points, particularly on the role of government in funding charities, with (mostly) agreement that government will withdraw from a number of areas of funding that are not really appropriate.

Presentation slides

Stephen Cook: Current Trends in the NFP Sector

Less is More

Anthony Flack - Senior Consultant at IndigoBlue - described the main areas to consider when embarking on change programmes and delivering efficiencies and improvements.

Following on from Stephen's talk, Anthony pointed out that there is more that organisations can do in reaction to the decline in funding than to "batten down the hatches".

He said that IndigoBlue's experience is that across the NFP sector there are capable people with good ideas, but that there were also a number of common problems:

• Often there are a number of "point solution systems" within organisations that are not integrated fully (or sometimes at all). The investment needed to integrate these systems properly is normally much smaller than the initial investment in the separate systems, but the returns can be considerable. It is important to get returns from your existing investments.
• Systems can get stuck in an "almost ready to go live" status and lose momentum. Anthony mentioned an example where re-focussing on completing a system resulted in a project that had been stuck for 2 years going live within 6 weeks.
• Paralysis by risk analysis can be an issue. The solution to this is to break the overall problem down into more manageable chunks, where the risk for an individual chunk is much lower and also the level of investment needed. There are very good approaches to incremental business change that can be used.
• Relationships with suppliers need to work for both parties. There can sometimes be a reluctance to discussing problem areas with suppliers. In most cases suppliers want a good, effective relationship and would much prefer that issues were aired and resolved.

In many of these areas, the best approach is to ask the question "what generates value?" and to do these. Self service is very often a really good area to explore for value generation, as demonstrated by David Brown's talk.

Anthony's conclusions were:

• Efficiency is always critical
• Doing the right things and doing the right things consistently
• The right things can be big things and small things
• Big things are easier to do when broken into smaller parts

Presentation slides

Anthony Flack: Less is More

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