Designing & Implementing a Payroll & Expenses Transformation Programme

MEDIA

THE CLIENT

Our end client was one of the world’s largest broadcasters, based in the UK but with a subsidiary worldwide brand. Their HR services were outsourced to a large BPO provider and they needed to reduce costs across HR.

The HR function housed 170 FTE and supported reward services for 20,000 directly employed staff globally and around 5,000 independent artists and contributors.

These staff were based in three locations between India and the UK.

THE CHALLENGE

The end client had expressed dissatisfaction with the levels of service, innovation and efficiency within the outsourced HR function. Internal colleagues were often complaining about mistakes with payroll and expenses payments and the effort required to resolve these mistakes was time consuming.

In addition, certain errors reoccurred month after month, leading to frustration amongst staff. An internal measure of Net Promotor Score (NPS) gave a result of -88%, which evidenced the dissatisfaction.

The end client wanted to see rapid improvement in the last six months of the BPO contract or would consider using an alternative outsourced service provider.

THE SOLUTION

1. Reinvigoration provided consulting and expertise to both the operational and account management teams.

We identified areas of improvement and quantified the potential benefits to all payroll and expenses processes (including sub-processes). These improvement opportunities included:
- delays in answering payroll queries
- poor SAP workflow resulting in lots of manual workarounds
- poor communication / collaboration between different teams who form part of the end-to-end process
- mismatch between team resourcing profiles and the monthly demand spikes
- large amounts of work in progress with no clear strategy to reduce and manage it
Following on from the detailed analysis into issues, we designed a transformation roadmap that would meet the requirements of the end client and commercial needs of the BPO provider. This roadmap prioritised and organised the improvements required into a sequence that would benefit all

2. Once the transformation roadmap was agreed, we kick-started a training programme to upskill operational staff and internal consultants. This was key to ensuring the success and sustainability of the improvement programme.

We delivered formal training sessions to around 200 FTE as well as coaching sessions for managers and SMEs involved. The training focussed on two key areas:
- teaching an improvement mindset including problem solving
- teaching managers the disciplines of effective operations management
This training, over 100 hours in total, was delivered face-to-face and included coaching for managers back at the workplace

3. Rapid diagnosis and design work was carried out at the same time as the training.

Using tried and tested Lean-based techniques including Value Stream Mapping, demand flow analysis, skills analysis and waste analysis; each of the three operations were quickly able to begin diagnosing and improving their own ways of working
Within 7 weeks teams were beginning to critically analyse business processes

4. Concurrent organisational analysis compared current staffing levels with those from other successful organisations, enabling a redesigned TOM supporting a successful re-bid.

THE RESULTS

The engagement led to the delivery of a multi-tier transformation which allowed the BPO to deliver improvements that met the end client’s needs whilst fitting in with internal ROI requirements. We were delighted to have supported the BPO throughout this improvement journey that ultimately led to them securing the renewal of their contract with their end client.

40% of operational costs were cut, with no impact on staff morale or customer satisfaction
Circa 200 individual changes were made across the three operational sites, all of which helped to improve NPS; service delivery; quality or staff morale
A Target Operating Model was defined to allow the transformed HR function to continue to innovate and improve, more fitting with the end-user’s vision

HAVE A SIMILAR CHALLENGE?

Get in touch to discuss how we can help you transform your service operations.

Designing & Implementing a Payroll & Expenses Transformation Programme

THE CLIENT

THE CHALLENGE

THE SOLUTION

THE RESULTS

HAVE A SIMILAR CHALLENGE?

Chris Dando

Ryan King

Graham Turnbull