The premier banking arm of an international bank was looking to grow by 100% and needed to standardise payment, inbound telephony and customer service processes to enable this. With 17 back office admin centres operating different processes, Diane successfully re-wrote the business operating model, and managed the integration of the 17 centres into 5 to a strict deadline and budget.
Diane initially wrote and presented two business plans with differing timescales, risks and associated costs. The board chose the shorter stretch plan option, presenting Diane with challenging but achievable milestones – her exceptional planning and implementation experience enabled her to meet every one. In completing the project, several challenges arose, including a serious recruitment problem that threatened to derail the project. When it came to recruiting staff for a key admin centre, there were severe difficulties in attracting high calibre candidates. Diane negotiated with HR to incentivise people in their redundancy consultation period to move from other centres and upskill existing and newly recruited staff.
When Diane discovered that a core IT system was being managed by an unstable 3rd party, untenable with the ambitious growth targets, she persuaded an internal IT team to take on the project. In just one week, she renegotiated the contract with the 3rd party, lined up the in-house IT team and moved all the equipment on site without disrupting business as usual. She made further savings of over £2 million through preventing the installation of appointment booking software that was overly complex and functionally rich, choosing instead to adapt existing systems to meet the business’ requirements.
The bank now has consistent payment, telephony and customer service processes, and is on target to realise their growth targets. Diane has brought this project in 8 months ahead of schedule, saving £3.6 million against an initial change budget of £7.2 million. Throughout the process she has significantly upskilled key stakeholders, communicated progress to the wider business and hit every milestone.
The Managing Director said of her impact: “Diane took over a major change project with a de-motivated team that was struggling. She turned it around, mentoring and motivating the team to deliver a piece of work that was ahead of schedule and under budget.”
