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Linkedin Monthly Webinar: What is Lean Six Sigma?
Welcome to the Linkedin Monthly Webinar Series! January Webinar: What is Lean Six Sigma? This webinar answers the question of what lean six sigma is…
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You can afford to become Balanced Scorecard certified this year!
Balanced Certification for $700.00? Too good to be true! TPMG is providing Performance Management Balanced Scorecard certification training for $700.00. This promotion is TPMG’s regular…
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You can afford to become Lean Six Sigma Black Belt Certified this year!
Lean Six Sigma Black Belt Certification for $799.00? Too good to be true! TPMG is providing lean six sigma black belt certification training for $799.00.…
Robotic Process Automation – It is all about delivery!
Since 2018, the appeal for digitizing the workplace has grown dramatically. According to Google Trends, interest in technologies like Robotic Process Automation (RPA), Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) has grown at an average weekly rate of 23% since the beginning of 2018. It stands to reason interest in technology has increased so dramatically in the last few years. The fact that one minute of work from an RPA program translates into 15 minutes of human activity means employees can be released from the “prison of the mundane” to work on higher priority tasks.
Today its not just theory. Companies are seeing real “hard dollar” cost savings by leveraging the technology. According to Leslie Willcocks, professor of technology, work, and globalization at the London School of Economics’ Department of Management, “The major benefit we found in the 16 case studies we undertook is a return on investment that varies between 30 and as much as 200 percent in the first year!” She has also found incredible benefits for employees, too. “In every case we looked at, people welcomed the technology because they hated the tasks that the machines now do, and it relieved them of the rising pressure of work.”
The clear advantages of big data, artificial intelligence and machine learning are likely to change the nature of work across a wide range of industries and occupations. According to a recent Oxford University Study, THE FUTURE OF EMPLOYMENT: 47 percent of total US employment is will likely be automated or digitized over this decade.
But not everything is coming up smelling like roses. Despite widespread global interest and adoption of RPA, a recent conducted study by Ernst and Young has revealed that 30% to 50% of initial RPA projects fail! While critics blame the underlying technology, this is seldom the case. Usually, the root cause lies in the inattention to risk and internal control considerations in design and deployment of the bot technology. And that is what this article is all about, how to mitigate the risks involved in RPA deployment and generate greater yields of bot deployment success.
It’s All About Delivery
At TPMG Global© we added digital technology, like RPA, to our Lean Management and Six Sigma service offerings in 2018. We found the technology to be a natural extension of our value proposition of delivering better, faster, and less costly value streams for our clients. For those unfamiliar; lean management is all about clinically analyzing internal processes to find and get rid of waste. Six Sigma, on the other hand, is all about defect reduction and standardizing the ruthless pursuit of perfection. The natural outcome of both methods is improved productivity and lower cost (output per unit of input).
Without the technology, a well deployed lean six sigma system helps companies improve their operating margins by 25 to 30%. With the technology, companies experience tremendous speed and consistently shorter cycle times. Shortened cycle times and fewer defects in core value streams help companies get rid of order-to-cash backlogs, rapidly deliver to their customers and increase their recognized revenue per quarter by more than 47%.
Above, we mentioned this article is about how to mitigate the risks involved in RPA deployment and generate greater yields of bot deployment success. Below we have outlined 3 simple steps our obsessive and compulsive lean six sigma black belts use in the deployment of Robotic Process Automation.
Step 1 – Be Clinical
Our lean six sigma black belts think of themselves as doctors and client organizations as patients. They unbiasedly and unemotionally view the internal operations of a company like the internal systems of the human body – inextricably linked and interdependent. Before thinking of deploying RPA, they obsessively and compulsively analyze internal value streams from end-to-end. They examine each step, assess data flows, evaluate the roles of people & technology, and reconcile everything to current methods and procedures. Like super sleuths they not only search for waste and defects, but they also seek and find the agents responsible for creating both. This diagnosis serves as the basis for the treatment they use to perform corrective action and mitigate certain types of risks like data security and compliance issues.
Step 2 – Treat the Patient
Once our black belts examine the patient they create and standardize future state solutions that cure the patient of waste and defects. It is then and only then they pinpoint and examine the requirements for the job functions of interest for automation.
Step 3 – Test the Technology for Repeatability and Reproducibility
No one knows better than a lean six sigma black belt that achieving perfection is impossible. Despite accepting this reality, TPMG black belts take confidence in the fact that by only pursuing perfection can they catch excellence. We take this fatal attitude with us in the development and testing of bot technology. TPMG uses a methodology called Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) to ensure functional requirements are translated into technical requirements which are programed and rigorously tested. As the programming goes through user acceptance testing (UAT), TPMG black belts ruthlessly take developers, employees, and testers through cycles of improvement to maximize the RPA Bot’s ability to repeat and reproduce defect free work for which it is designed. All jobs have their exceptions. The routine cycles of repeatability and reproducibility work to minimize the impact of the risks written about above.
Step 4 – Hypercare
Once the bots are developed and ruthlessly tested, TPMG deploys the bots into production and puts them through a process called “hypercare”. Hypercare is an anal-retentive form of bot operating monitoring where bot functions are monitored for unintended consequences.
Is your organization interested in learning more about Robotic Process Automation?
In which one of these areas are you personally convinced there is room for improvement in your company: scaling for growth, productivity improvement, cost effectiveness, or cycle time reduction? If you are curious, TPMG Process Automation can not only help you answer this question but can also shepherd you through a no risk/no cost discovery process. We can partner with you to identify a job function and set up a complimentary proof of concept RPA bot. As an outcome of the discovery process, you can: 1. benefit from a free cost/benefit analysis, 2. demonstrate the value of RPA for your operation, and 3. discover if RPA is a good fit for your organization.
Contact TPMG Process Automation
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Gerald Taylor is TPMG Global© Managing Director and is a Certified Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt
Improving HCAHPS Scores and The Patient Experience
Gerald Taylor, MBA
Patient satisfaction is an important and commonly used indicator to measure the value of health care. Across the United States, shifts in health-care policy have tied hospital and physician compensation to patient experience measures that focus on patient engagement. As of late, understanding and improving the patient experience has become almost a burning platform for U.S. healthcare executives. The patient experience survey, Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS), serves as a remarkably effective guide for the success of doctors and hospitals.
Res Ipsa Loquitur – Facts About the Patient Satisfaction
According to McKinsey & Company, many health systems make large investments in initiatives to improve the patient experience but fail to achieve their desired objectives.
Here are some interesting facts about patient satisfaction:
- Performance on the HCAHPS survey can affect up to 33% of a physician’s reimbursement.
- 25% of value-based purchasing reimbursements are tied directly to HCAHPS scores.
- In fiscal year 2020, 55% of the approximately 2,800 participating hospitals received approximately $1.9 billion in CMS value-based purchasing program incentive payouts – roughly $1.3 million per hospital.
- Health system executives find that roughly 70 percent of their patient experience initiatives fail.
McKinsey also concludes that hospital in-depth data analysis and research can be better at pinpointing which factors most strongly influence patient satisfaction levels. Moreover, TPMG Global® research has discovered more than half of healthcare facilities across the United States find the most difficult barrier to improving HCAHPS scores is focusing on the right drivers of “Would Recommend Hospital.” And that is what this article is about.
In this piece we will discuss how to pinpoint the drivers that most strongly influence “Would Recommend Hospital,” and how to overcome common flaws which wreak havoc in patient experience initiatives.
Improving HCAHPS Scores and The Patient Experience
Many in the healthcare industry believe there are few financial rewards for improving and sustaining respectable HCAHPs scores. However, according to a study by the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions: Hospitals with excellent HCAHPS patient ratings between 2008 and 2014 realized an average net margin of 4.7%, as compared to just 1.8% for those with low ratings.
At TPMG Global, we believe improving patient satisfaction is not about making patients happy – par se’, but about improving the patient’s entire experience across the continuum of care. The patient experience encompasses not just the clinical aspects of care delivery, but also the administrative, operational, cultural and behavioral characteristics of the entire care delivery system. The object of improving the patient experience is to yield greater value by not only producing higher HCAHPS scores, but to also maximizing a facility’s reimbursements and sustaining meaningful improvements in real patient satisfaction.
To that end, we offer a simple 5 step method for improving the patient experience.
- Put the HCHAPS survey into the field
- Conduct the appropriate data analysis
- Pinpoint the drivers that most strongly influence “Willingness to Recommend Hospital”
- Conduct the appropriate qualitative analysis
- Implement a plan, do, check, act test of change
This article will provide you with two easy step-by step data analysis methods that will pinpoint those drivers that most strongly influence a patient’s willingness to recommend a hospital.
An HCAHPS Case Study – Hospitals in the Same System are Not Alike
A large hospital, part of an even larger system: HCAHPs Survey Analysis 2014 – 2018
Case Study Problem Statement: This healthcare facility is part of a larger healthcare system on the eastern cost of the United States. For more than 4 years they have not been able to improve their stagnant patient satisfaction scores. The head of the facility’s patient experience team instinctively knew the patient satisfaction driver report they received from their system’s central office was not focusing on the right factors. They needed a change.
Baseline Analysis: Since 2014, their HCHAPS “Willingness to Recommend” score has averaged 77.32 – ranking the facility between the 50th and 75th percentiles. Though their scores are better than both the state (69) and national (72) results, the baseline analysis covers a serious weakness. The facility’s scores fall below the national ratings almost 17% of the time and its performance misses the 90th percentile mark of 84 (their goal) 94% of the time.
Interpreting HCAHPS: Pinpointing the Determinants of Patient Satisfaction
To pinpoint the right drivers that most strongly influence willingness to recommend, there are 2 kinds of analysis you must perform. The first type establishes linear cause and effect relationships between the drivers of patient satisfaction and their willingness to recommend a hospital. The other proves dependencies between those drivers and the same outcome. Most importantly, the data analysis must be “statistically significant” to have the predictive power and confidence needed to ensure an initiative will generate a strong return on the time, hard work, and capital invested.
The Results: Drivers of Patient Satisfaction – Linear Relationships
| Drivers of Willingness to Recommend | Relative Strength |
|---|---|
| Governing Strength | R – Square: .74 |
| Drs Explained Things Understandably | Impact -0.40 |
| Treated w/ C&R by Drs | Impact 0.35 |
| RNs Listened Carefully to You | Impact 0.50 |
| Told What Medicine Was For | Impact 0.30 |
| Treated w/ C&R by RNs | Impact 0.42 |
| Received Phone Call at Home | Impact 0.14 |
| P-Value | 0.000000021 |
The table above identifies 6 statistically significant drivers of the patient experience that best determines Willingness to Recommend Hospital. The key performance indicators suggest the following:
- R-Square: the subset of characteristics, outlined here, are a 74% driver of patient satisfaction. Other variables (26%) may also drive Patient Satisfaction but may not be captured by the survey.
- P-Value: we can be 99.9999979% confident these are the appropriate drivers of patient satisfaction for this facility.
Critical to Satisfaction Characteristics
The model indicates, a one-point improvement in “Treated with Courtesy and Respect by Doctors” drives Willingness by 0.35 points; a one-point improvement in “RNs Listened Carefully” drives Willingness by 0.50 points etc… (Linear Relationships)
Drivers of Patient Satisfaction – Dependent Relationships
Now that we have determined the fundamental drivers of patient satisfaction, we move forward to discover the extent to which patient satisfaction is dependent upon them. Here, we evaluate the relationship between the attribute “Treated w/ C&R by RNs” and “Willingness to Recommend.” The approach tells us the extent to which Willingness to Recommend is dependent on Treated w/C&R by RNs.
The basic idea of the method is to compare the observed performance of the driver with its expected performance. If there is no dependent relationship between the potential driver and outcome, the actual frequencies at which willingness to recommend is observed will be close to their expected frequencies (in the norm).
Conclusions
All other things remaining equal – the analysis indicates that we can be 99.995% confident – patients punish Very Good performance but reward Excellent performance in this category. It appears performing very good in this category is not good enough. The hospital must be excellent to be rewarded with a willingness to recommend rating. For Very Good performance, patients are 59% less likely to “Definitely Recommend Hospital”. For Excellent Performance in this category, patients are 89% more likely to “Definitely Recommend Hospital”. Only 23% of patients give an excellent rating for this category!
At the end of the day, we can safely conclude Willingness to Recommend Hospital is not only strongly driven by Treated with Courtesy and Respect by RNs, but it is also dependent on the driver for improvement. In addition, the opportunity for improvement (OFI) is substantial! The charter for the patient experience initiative should include an objective and key result (OKR) for this driver, like: Improve the percentage of respondents for “Treated w/ C&R by RNs” with an excellent rating by 77% (predicted target date – here).
I trust this article has provided you with insight and approaches that can help you pinpoint those drivers that most strongly influence a patient’s willingness to recommend a hospital. If you are interested in learning more about using these methods, contact us at: TPMG Global® – Improving HCAHPS Scores and The Patient Experience
Gerald Taylor is the Managing Director at TPMG Global®
Improving Patient Satisfaction Via Lean Six Sigma
Lean Six Sigma in Healthcare Learn how The Juran Institute used Lean Six Sigma to help a medical telemetry unit in a medium-sized hospital, increase their HCAHPS percent ratings.
Problem Statement
A medical telemetry unit, in a medium-sized hospital, reported HCAHPS percent ratings below the competition for “Overall Unit Rating” and “Would You Recommend This Hospital.” The baseline scores of 9–10 responses on “Overall Unit Rating” were 56% and the percentage of “Definitely Yes” responses for “Would You Recommend This Hospital” was 61%.
Project Goals
The team defined the project goal to meet or exceed the highest percent ratings in the county for “Overall Unit Rating” and “Would you Recommend This Hospital” by:
- 0 – 20% improvement by November 2009
- 20 – 50% improvement by January 2010
- 50% improvement by March 2010
Project Team
The team was composed of representatives from the Telemetry Unit, Physical and Occupational Therapy, Pharmacy, Food and Nutrition Services, Respiratory, Care Coordination, Environmental Services, Transportation, Materials Management, Organizational Development, and Center for Nursing Practice.
Project Scope
The project scope was unsecured patient accounts. The beginning boundary for the project was the time a patient arrived in the E.D. The ending boundary was when the patient was discharged from the E.D. and financial responsibility was secured.
SIPOC Process
The team proceeded to develop a SIPOC (Supplier, Input, Process, Output, and Customer) on the “admission to discharge” patient process. This high-level process map is used to identify suppliers at the front end affecting the process, materials and inputs entering the process, materials and outputs exiting the process, and ultimately, customers impacted by the process.
Understanding the Needs of the Medical Telemetry Unit’s Audiences
The team conducted patient, family, and staff surveys and interviews to collect voice of the customer data on the patient’s experience. The team understood the importance of engaging the patient and family in the design of their care.
They acknowledged that it is not about the organization behind the services, rather it is about how the patient receives those services. In other words, it is all about the patients’ perception of their experience. The team took verbatim voice of the customer (VOC) data and translated it into themes and critical-to-quality requirements (CTQs). CTQs are defined as measureable customer needs and are considered by the team as solutions are designed and implemented.
Below are examples of the voice of the customer data from a patient’s perspective.
Several patients and family members commented that they have never been
asked before what is important to them and what the staff could do to provide the best experience. The team translated voice of the customer to key themes/issues and identified a critical to quality measure for affinity groups.
Understanding the Process
The team created a current state value stream map from the time the patient was admitted to the floor until discharge. Mapping proved to be challenging for the team due to the variation in care processes.
Understanding Non Value Added Work
The team analyzed the current state value stream map from the time the patient was admitted to the floor until discharge. The analysis helped the team identify non-value added work, bottlenecks, and issues impacting the patient experience.
Generating Solutions
Solutions were generated, prioritized and ranked by the Team. Five design teams were created: Patient Hospitality and Comfort, Discharge Preparation, Patient Education, Staff Education, and Noise Level. The project teams designed their solutions around key patient-centered design principles.
Shared Decision-Making
Patients vary widely regarding how much information they want and how much of a role they wish to play in making decisions. The Patient Discharge Team developed several robust strategies to encourage shared decision-making. With input from patients and families, the team created a patient communication board which serves two purposes: first, to provide information to the patient and family such as activity level and when the next pain medication is due, and second, to provide an opportunity for the patient to communicate with caregivers and physicians things that are important to them during their stay. It also helped to plan for discharge by recording the date and time of expected discharge. Patients and families are oriented to the board during the admission process (example board is shown below).
The team also designed patient discharge rounds every afternoon with the Care Coordinator, Unit Director, and Manager in order to identify patients for early discharge the next day. In addition, a discharge checklist was instituted.
Patient Education About Their Disease Process
The primary purpose of this education is to increase the patient’s understanding and responsibility for care. The Patient Education Team developed a Patient Guide on Congestive Heart Failure. The guide provides a roadmap for patients regarding what to expect each day during their hospital stay. The team also developed a list of questions for patients to ask upon admission and included them in the Patient Admission Guide.
Patient Engagement in the Design of Their Care
Patient and family needs were considered by the Patient Hospitality and Comfort Team. The team developed a tagline: “Going the extra mile to make our patient smile” and implemented the following solutions based on expressed needs:
- Waterless shampoo
- Hourly patient rounds to improve patient comfort and safety
- Scripting: addressing patients by name, sitting during conversations with patients and asking the patient upon leaving the room, “Is there anything else I can do for you before I leave? I have the time.” Also, telling the patient when you will return.
Staff Engagement in the Patient’s Care
The Staff Education Team developed a monthly newsletter to enhance communication amongst caregivers, management, and physicians. The newsletter discussed new clinical practices, changes to processes, educational offerings, and a story about a key contact. The staff also developed a Unit Performance Excellence Scorecard so that everyone understood what quality metrics were being monitored, how often, and the current status of performance. The language on the unit changed and staff began to link solutions to performance metrics.
Patient Centered Environment
The Noise Team was tasked to reduce the noise level on the unit and improve the cleanliness of the environment. The team implemented more frequent room checks, nursing and environmental manager morning rounds to identify areas that needed more personal attention, quiet hours from midnight to 5 AM, lowering ring tones on desk phones, and the use of Spectra Link® phones and OptiVox® to standardize patient handoffs.
Ensuring Long Term Solutions
The Control Phase provides the necessary methods and tools for an organization to hold the gains and continually improve the patient experience.
The team completed the necessary plans and transferred ownership of the plans to the Unit Director.
- Control plan: Provides roadmap of actions to hold the gains and continue improvement.
- Communications plan: Describes how and when information of process changes will be disseminated to staff and other key stakeholders throughout the organization.
- Training plan: Defines the training content, schedule, and outcomes for training staff on new process changes.
- New and revised policies and procedures: Documentation representing revised processes.
Results
Perseverance and commitment by the team to meet on a monthly basis following two rapid improvement events resulted in their exceeding all project goals. The team is likely to see even greater results in the future as they continue to listen to the voice of the customer and implement new solutions.
HCAHPS scores for “Would You Recommend” have shown a steady increase since September of 2009, improving nearly 35% in 5 months. The Standard HCAHPS Overall Average scores have shown an increasing trend over six months, culminating in a high score of 93.8%.
Upward trends for each of the HCAHPS measures are evident as of February 2010. Each measure has an improved score when compared with the initially recorded scores in September 2009.
I trust this article has provided you with insight and approaches that can help you pinpoint those drivers that most strongly influence a patient’s willingness to recommend a hospital. If you are interested in learning more about using these methods, contact us at: TPMG Global® – Improving HCAHPS Scores and The Patient Experience
Ensuring Successful New Products and Services with QFD
By 
Hans Hjort
When was the last time you reached into the refrigerator for a King Cola, 7Up Gold or Pepsi Blue? Remember pizza at McDonald’s or Heinz chocolate-flavored French fries? From the Ford Edsel to the XFL, history is littered with costly product and service failures. While failure can occur for any number of reasons (e.g., poor quality, excessive cost, late to market, superior competition, etc.), many times it results from an inability to provide better value for the customer. Organizations can lessen their chance of failure by focusing on several key areas where mistakes are likely to occur.
Start at the Beginning
An organization focused on increasing revenue may immediately jump into developing a new product or seek a new market for an existing product. The development is rushed into motion as teams are assembled, market data is collected, designs chosen and prototypes built. The result can produce a poorly planned product that does not coincide with the business strategy, differentiate itself from competitors or deliver value to the customer. Instead, the effort can waste money and resources.
The initial steps to develop a new product should include determining if an opportunity exists to provide better value than is currently available from an existing product. The new product should also fit with the organization’s business plan. Next, the organization should gain a thorough understanding of the market and its characteristics. This will help determine the expected profitability of the new product before expenses associated with engineering, production and marketing are incurred.
Unfortunately some organizations shortcut these critical steps, precluding them from effectively capturing and understand the voice of the customer, prioritizing customer requirements, determining trade-offs when requirements conflict (i.e., lightweight, yet sturdy) and translating vague requirements (i.e., easy to use) into specific targets.
Utilize Best Practices
A relatively simple and inexpensive process has emerged to bring structure, organization, weights and measures to the decision making process. Quality function deployment (QFD) is employed throughout a growing number of product development and service industries to guide the planning process. QFD is largely credited as a key force behind the radical transformation of the Japanese automotive industry in the 1980s.
The QFD chart organizes and assigns weights to desired performance parameters allowing organizations to clearly see the trade-offs and compromises that often take place when deciding what features to include in a new product.
Once the performance parameters are defined the organization is poised to set specific targets. This process includes consideration of many factors such as product strategy, technical competitive assessments, development costs, and investment risk. At the end of this activity, the organization can generate new concepts that best meet key customer and business requirements.
To produce successful products, it is essential that the entire organization share and effectively communicate the role of the customer. The product team should collectively own the strategy for addressing customer needs, applying technical know-how and resources and applying a shared understanding to evaluate and select the best solutions. QFD serves this purpose and is most effective when applied to three types of activities – planning, evaluation and deployment.
The Planning Matrix: The starting point for a planning matrix is a crisp definition of the customer segment. The objective is not simply to develop performance parameters and targets, but to enable the organization to form a strategy for approaching the customer. The combination of this information drives the determination of significance for each performance parameter and identifies which parameters are critical for product success. The critical few parameters form the content of the design scorecard to monitor success.
The Evaluation Matrix: Before each product solution is accepted, it must pass a filter of set requirements such as industry regulations and basic functionality. This process identifies solutions that provide the desired competitive advantage without violating any expectations. The evaluation matrix includes a description of the expected technology needs for the new product. Organizations should carefully consider the impact of the technology as it may require a time schedule that misses the window of opportunity to match customer requirements. If too much time passes between collection of the voice of the client and implementation, the client requirements may have changed.
The Deployment Matrix: The deployment matrix identifies which subsystems are involved in delivering specific targets and to what degree they are involved. The matrix provides visibility to the connectivity of key deliverables derived from customer needs.
Conclusion: A Tool for Success
The benefits of QFD are numerous. Employing the QFD process aligns team members and management by providing visibility and buy-in at each step before moving forward with the project. It enhances management support by tying project decisions to strategic direction and prevents teams from operating in a vacuum since their activities are tied to the enterprise planning effort. In addition, QFD enhances the effectiveness of Six Sigma by providing clear visibility to critical parameters and maintaining a connection with the initial market strategy at all levels of the development effort.
Traditional product planning starts with analyzing the performance of an existing product and improving its features. The QFD tool can play a key role in transforming products to meet continually changing customer needs.
Quality Function Deployment for Competitive Advantage
In today’s business environment, companies cannot just assume they know what customers want – they must know for sure. And once they know what customers want, businesses must then provide products and services to meet and exceed customers’ desires. Business leaders have struggled for years to meet this challenge. Having the ability to truly listen to the voice of the customer (VOC) and respond to it appropriately is one good definition of a successful business, a business with a competitive advantage.
Companies which use Six Sigma employ the voice of the customer – internal and external customers – as a key element in implementing their business strategies. So important is VOC data, that no Six Sigma project should proceed without first ensuring it is real, factual, relevant and correlates with the goals of the business. There is a useful and structured tool that helps to translate both spoken and unspoken customer requirements into key business deliverables. This tool is quality function deployment (QFD).
Focusing on ‘Positive Quality’
Many quality tools focus on “negative quality” – the things that disappoint the customer. One of the key distinctions about QFD is it focuses on “positive quality” – things that delight a customer. It looks at the items that please the customer and expands upon them. QFD is useful for cross-functional teams which have to agree on what is important.
QFD is useful in a number of different scenarios. Some examples are when:
- A business knows the customers’ requirements but does not have adequate internal measurements relative to the requirements.
- The internal processes and practices of a business cannot meet the customers’ requirements.
- A large investment is required for a new product or service.
- There is a lack of agreement within a business organization on how to proceed in delivering customer requirements.
- There are competing alternatives for market segments.
QFD Around for Nearly 40 Years
QFD is not something new, but a tool that has been in existence for quite some time. Japanese professors Yoji Akao and Shigeru Mizuno developed it in the late 1960s. Their goal was to develop a tool that would design customer satisfaction into a product prior to being manufactured. Most other quality control methods of the time focused on fixing manufacturing problems after the fact.
QFD was first introduced to America and Europe in 1983. American automotive manufacturers, Ford Motor Company and General Motors Corporation soon adopted it. Later, other American companies such as General Electric, IBM and AT&T started using this tool and reaping the benefits associated with it. QFD has been successfully used in all types of industries and business functions with great success. For instance, it has been used in sales organizations to improve their top line growth.
How does a company apply the methodology of QFD? The most important step in doing a QFD is to properly select the team. The size of the team is not as important as the quality of the team members. The team should be cross-functional and should consist of all of the necessary stakeholders crucial to the team’s success. In addition, it is important to have the customer participate in the team. In doing so, the company will ensure that the customer’s needs and wants are clearly understood and addressed. The QFD process tends to be dynamic in nature. Hence it is wise to consider changing the team members as the company cascades through the four different houses of the QFD process.
Completing the QFD Process
The QFD process typically consists of four steps:
First House of Quality – House 1 is the customer house. In the customer house, the primary goal is to translate the voice of the customer into unambiguous and clear language. A business must understand what measurements the customer is using to determine if it has met their requirements. Next, the company must identify it’s internal metrics which determine if it has met the customer requirements.
Key elements that are critical to completing the first house are:
- Customers’ needs.
- Measurable characteristics of the customers’ needs.
- The relationship between items 1 and 2 measured in high, medium or low.
- An understanding of how the company compares to competitors (from the customers’ perspective).
- Competitive benchmarking.
- Preliminary measurement targets that will meet the customers’ requirements.
Once the company has identified the key elements above, it can perform a correlation between the measurable characteristics of the customers’ needs and their relative strengths. Finally, the company should analyze this first house to determine what improvements can be made.
Second House of Quality – House 2 is the company’s house. This house is typically constructed during the Measure and Analyze phases. The goal of completing the second house is to determine specific action items that the company can take to meet the requirements of the customer.
Third House of Quality – House 3 is the process house and is typically constructed during the Analyze phase. The goal of completing the third house is to determine which processes (that have data) can be used to meet the customers’ needs. It is possible that the process does not exist, so it may need to be developed.
Fourth House of Quality – House 4, the process control house, is typically constructed during the control phase. The purpose of constructing this house is to identify the control variables that are being used to meet the customers’ needs.
It is not necessary to construct all four houses every time that a QFD is performed. Judgment is needed to determine which houses are needed.
Conclusion: Helping Satisfy the Customer
So why should a company use QFD? It should be used because it is aimed at satisfying the customer throughout the whole business process from product/service development to delivery. It helps organizations reach agreement on measurement systems and performance specifications that will meet customer requirements. It is designed to improve a company’s strategic competitiveness. It also prioritizes the steps that a business must take in order to satisfy the spoken and unspoken requirements of the customer.
Improving Business Efficiency with Robotic Process Automation
Gerald Taylor MBA
What I hope to achieve in this article is to get you to consider one very important question, “Is your organization truly getting the most productive use of its employee’s time and talent?” If I can get you to think in that direction or ponder this notion, then this article has achieved its objective.
This article features how you can improve business efficiency and scale for growth with a relatively new technology called Robotic Process Automation (RPA). In it, I will describe what RPA is and provide an example so you can leave with a good understanding of how the tech works. I will also demonstrate how RPA is combined with lean management to eliminate waste and re-engineer a more cost effective and productive future state. Finally, I will illustrate method you can use evaluate its potential in your organization.
What is Robotic Process Automation (RPA)?
Robotic Process Automation is an inexpensive software-based technology. The programmed bots in RPA work on the desk top by interacting with your applications and technology platforms performing human tasks at a rate 10 – 15 times faster than a person. RPA performs such tasks as re-keying data, logging into applications, moving files and folders, copying and pasting and much more! RPA bots are capable of performing most human-computer interactions to carry out an extra-ordinary number of error-free tasks. In fact, if you have employees serving as a quick fix to interoperability; meaning they are taking data from an old legacy system and inputting it in to a CRM like Sales Force or taking data from a main frame and inputting it into another application, RPA is perfect for these activities….and it does so with zero errors or zero defects! Both public and private sector organizations find value in RPA as a solution for streamlining and automating repetitive, low added value work. It is also a very attractive alternative to lengthy system overhauls and transformations. But..whereas a picture is worth a thousand words, I believe a quick 2 minute media example can better explain what RPA is and its usefulness.
Growth in Process Automation
According to our research group, TPMG Analytics, growth in interest of RPA has been extraordinary. Since 2017, interest in RPA has grown at a average weekly rate of 27%. RPA is the first step into an emerging industry of artificial intelligence and machine learning and is expected to grow at a compounded annual growth rate of 36% over the next 3 years.
Humans working side by side with robots is no longer something of science-fiction. Before we know it, RPA will be to routine administrative tasks what robots are now in high tech manufacturing. Automation algorithms can now be designed to ruthlessly satisfy larger and larger ranges of tasks and the unbiased decision making of machine learning represents a competitive advantage over human operators. Over the next 5 to 10 years productivity will be explosive, and people will be freed to work solely on higher priority, value generating tasks. According to a recent Oxford University Study, The Future of Employment, over this decade, 47 percent of total US employment will likely be automated or digitized.
Is RPA a Good Fit for Your Organization?
The cost of sub-optimized workers imprisoned in low-value added tasks has been estimated at 30% percent of operating cost. It is a hidden cost. RPA is well suited for high volume processes with the potential for high human error rates and where human beings are subject to the law of diminishing marginal returns. The fact that one minute of work from RPA translates into15 minutes of human activity means employees can be released from the “prison of the mundane” to work on higher priority tasks.
Tremendous success stories are common with the technology. RPA enhanced a banks ATM dispute resolution by reducing the turnaround time from 48 hours to 2 hours. An insurance company was able to reduce its document processing time from 16 minutes to three…while improving overall productivity of processing by 87.5%. A leading healthcare system was able to reduce its resource cost by 50% while at the same time improving its quick verification response time by more than 70%. And a financial tech company was able to reduce its data inspection and verification time by more than 83% while being able to redeploy 57% of their complement to open job requisitions and higher priority tasks. The healthcare industry is showing incredible potential for automation. Let me re-iterate, these types of success stories are common with the technology. Which leads us to our final question.
How do I now if RPA is a good fit for my organization? This is where the practice of lean management and process engineering comes into the picture. Your first step is to identify the process you believe to be a candidate for automation. Your next step is to conduct a waste walk; a direct observation of the work as it is done along with a series of individual interviews to construct a straw model of the process. After creating the straw model, you want to conduct a red flag analysis to identify inherent weaknesses that create a drag on productivity. You will find repeating quality and accuracy checks, manual tasks ripe for automation, duplication of effort, collection of non relevant data, and blatant mismatches between job need and employee skill. Afterwards, you want to capture and record legitimate opportunities to automate in time and motion studies via Zoom or WebEx. It is a very simple activity where you can calculate minutes per task, cost per minute, cost per task and multiply the result by the volume of work to generate a cost benefit analysis Reviewing the related financial models should provide you with a proof positive or negative picture of an automation impact.
What is your Improvement Priority?
Is your organization truly getting the most productive use of its employee’s time and talent? In which one of these areas are you personally convinced there is room for improvement in your company: scaling for growth, productivity improvement, cost effectiveness, or velocity? If you are curious, TPMG OpEx can not only help you answer this question, but can also shepard you through a no risk/no cost discovery process. We can partner with you to identify a job function and set up a complimentary proof of concept RPA bot. As an outcome of the discovery process you can: 1. benefit from a free cost/benefit analysis, 2. experience the value of RPA in your operation, and 3. discover if RPA is a good fit for your organization.
Contact us today! TPMG OpEx – Operational Excellence
Gerald Taylor, MBA is the Managing Director of TPMG Consulting and a Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt
What is a good Net Promoter Score? And how does it vary across industries?
Jon Gitlin – SurveyMonkey
What a good Net Promoter Score looks like
According to our global benchmark data, which accounts for the NPS of more than 150,000 organizations, the average score is +32.
Here’s a closer look at the global benchmark numbers:
- The lower quartile of organizations (or the bottom 25% of performers) have an NPS of 0 or lower.
- The median NPS is +44. (Half of organizations have an NPS below this score, and the other half have a score that’s higher.)
- The upper quartile of organizations (or the top 25% of performers) have an NPS of +72 or higher.
Comparing yourself to all of the other organizations isn’t always the best representation of how you’re doing, since the customer experience can vary (a lot!) by industry. For example, according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index, subscription television service providers offer a significantly worse customer experience than internet retail businesses.
So what is a good Net Promoter Score for organizations in your space? Here’s a breakdown across 3 common categories: professional services (legal, financial, etc.), technology (telecommunications, computer manufacturers, etc.), and consumer goods and services (retailers, restaurants, etc.):
| Industry | Professional services | Technology companies | Consumer goods and services |
| Average NPS | +43 | +35 | +43 |
| Median NPS | +50 | +40 | +50 |
| Top quartile | +73 (or higher) | +64 (or higher) | +72 (or higher) |
| Bottom quartile | +19 (or lower) | +11 (or lower) |
As you can see, organizations categorized as professional services and consumer goods and services tend to deliver a similar customer experience—minus subtle differences in their top and bottom performers–but technology companies are slightly behind in every NPS calculation.
Whether you need to catch up to your industry’s average NPS or keep a leading position, there are several ways to raise your score.
3 ways to improve your Net Promoter Score
1. Develop a systematic process for tracking your NPS and reacting to it.
The customer experience is constantly evolving. If you can keep your finger on the pulse of your customer sentiment and take steps toward addressing their feedback quickly, you’ll be more likely to have loyal, happy customers.
Learn how surveys can help you track—and act on—your NPS by reading our ultimate guide to running a customer feedback program.”
2. Give the entire team a chance to engage with customers.
Whether your colleagues know it or not, their work can influence the customer experience. The better they understand their impact, the more likely they are to tailor their work to best benefit customers—and your NPS.
You can empower your team to learn from customers by adopting customer interaction reports. They involve asking employees to have a conversation with a customer (as short as 5 minutes) and then fill out a survey to summarize the conversation. Sharing these results on a platform any employee can access can inspire the team and give them insight into what customers care about.
3. Invest in your customer-facing employees.
Every customer interaction shapes the client’s perception of your organization. In fact, roughly a third of customers, on average, plan to switch to an alternative company after a single case of poor customer service.
Prevent your organization from losing customers by building a first-class customer-facing team. Invest in trainings and product/service-related resources they can refer to in order to answer customer questions as quickly and effectively as possible.
NPS®, Net Promoter® & Net Promoter® Score are registered trademarks of Satmetrix Systems, Inc., Bain & Company and Fred Reichheld
Research by Adobe shows that 8% of repeat customers are responsible for 41% of total online revenue in the U.S., 26% of total online revenue in Europe and 16% of total online revenue in the U.K.
Customer retention, loyalty, or willingness to recommend. In which one of these areas are you personally convinced there is room for improvement?
Contact us today and arrange a complimentary voice of the customer business case analysis.
TPMG CX – Translating the Voice of the Customer into Revenue Growth!
What is the Net Promoter Score?
SurveyMonkey
The Net Promoter Score is the world’s leading metric for measuring customer satisfaction and loyalty. It goes beyond measuring how satisfied a customer is with a company; the Net Promoter Score system is designed to gauge their willingness to recommend it to others.
Now that you know what the Net Promoter Score (NPS) is, let’s review how to calculate it.
The Net Promoter Score scale
The score comes from the NPS question, which is:
“On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely is it that you would recommend our organization to a friend or colleague?”
Based on the number a customer chooses, they’re classified into one of the following categories: “Detractors,” “Passives,” and “Promoters.”
Score breakdowns:
- 0 – 6: Detractors
- 7 – 8: Passives
- 9-10: Promoters
You can think of the NPS system as similar to a four-star system on an online review, but the NPS scale gives you a broader way (and a more accurate method) to measure customer’s opinions.
How to calculate your company’s Net Promoter Score
Let’s say you’ve sent out an online poll with the NPS question and the 0-10 scale, and you’ve received 100 responses from customers. What do you do with the results? Is it as simple as averaging the responses? Well, not quite. But it’s almost that easy.
The NPS system gives you a percentage, based on the classification that respondents fall into—from Detractors to Promoters. So to calculate the percentage, follow these steps:
- Enter all of the survey responses into an Excel spreadsheet
- Now, break down the responses by Detractors, Passives, and Promoters
- Add up the total responses from each group
- To get the percentage, take the group total and divide it by the total number of survey responses
- Now, subtract the percentage total of Detractors from the percentage total of Promoters—this is your NPS score
Let’s break it down:
(Number of Promoters — Number of Detractors) / (Number of Respondents) x 100
Example: If you received 100 responses to your survey:
- 10 responses were in the 0–6 range (Detractors)
- 20 responses were in the 7–8 range (Passives)
- 70 responses were in the 9–10 range (Promoters)
When you calculate the percentages for each group, you get 10%, 20%, and 70% respectively.
To finish up, subtract 10% (Detractors) from 70% (Promoters), which equals 60%. Since an example Net Promoter Score is always shown as just an integer and not a percentage, your NPS is simply 60. (And yes, you can have a negative NPS, as your score can range from -100 to +100.)
Performing these calculations might seem overwhelming, but it’s well worth the effort. Numerous research studies prove that the NPS system correlates with business growth. In fact, studies by the Harvard Business Review and Satmetrix have found that companies across industries earn a higher income when they improve their Net Promoter Scores.
So, if you’re looking for a more scientific way to understand your brand’s strength, the NPS is a straightforward system to use. And if you’re looking to contextualize your score, you can benchmark it against others in your industry.
- Looking to run a survey that uses the NPS question?
- Have you run a survey and looking for ways to identify the drivers of your company’s Net Promoter Score?
Contact us and and we will show you how: TPMG CX – Translating the Voice of the Customer into Revenue Growth!
6 Steps to Building a Better Workplace for Black Employees
30 Sep 2019|by Dina Gerdeman
When Barack Obama was elected president in 2008, some saw it as proof that the color of one’s skin could no longer hold people back from achieving important leadership roles in the United States.
Not true, says Harvard Business School senior lecturer Anthony J. Mayo. “Obama’s election created this false illusion of a post-racial society, where many people thought we had transcended issues of race,” he says. “But that was not the case at all.”
It certainly wasn’t the experience for many of the black business executives included in the book Race, Work, and Leadership: New Perspectives on the Black Experience, co-edited by Mayo, University of Virginia Professor Laura Morgan Roberts, who is a visiting scholar at HBS, and David A. Thomas, president of Morehouse College and a former professor at HBS.
“These African American executives never reported feeling, even during the Obama years, that race was no longer relevant or that we had somehow collectively moved beyond race in the workplace,” Roberts says.
The picture that emerges from the essays in Race, Work, and Leadership echo the same message: Race not only still matters in the American workplace, but it remains a powerful barrier that prevents African Americans from ascending to leadership roles.
The data is indeed bleak. While an increasing number of African Americans are earning bachelor’s and graduate degrees, the number of black people in management and senior executive positions remains scarce and stagnant. Today, there are only three black CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, and not one of them is a woman.
What doesn’t help, the authors say, are recent incidents in the news, including the 2017 white supremacist march in Charlottesville, Virginia, and the 2018 arrest of two black men at a Philadelphia Starbucks after employees called the police to complain they were trespassing, even though they were just waiting for a business acquaintance.
“Given the racist rhetoric and vitriol in the air right now, racism is more prevalent today than we would have hoped,” says Mayo, the Thomas S. Murphy Senior Lecturer of Business Administration. “We’ve made some progress in the workplace, but we still have such a long way to go. It’s more important than ever to discuss what organizations can do about it.”
The book describes the experiences of African American workers and offers advice to black employees who seek to advance in their careers. It also provides these recommendations for companies that are intent on building diverse workplaces:
1. Encourage employees to talk about race
After two fatal police shootings of black men in 2016, Tim Ryan of PwC asked his staff to gather for a series of conversations about race. Two years later, when one of PwC’s own black employees was shot to death by an off-duty police officer, Ryan emailed his employees with a plea to keep talking.
Yet, the explicit discussion of race is considered taboo at many companies, and, more often than not, business leaders remain silent on the issue. That cloak of silence from the top tends to enfold all employees. Ellis Cose, an author of several books about race and public policy, writes that young black professionals who aspire to advance to senior leadership positions typically adopt the strategy of remaining silent about race and inequality to avoid being labeled “agitators.”
In a 2017 study by Sylvia Ann Hewlett and colleagues, 78 percent of black professionals said they have experienced discrimination or fear that they or their loved ones will, yet 38 percent felt it is never acceptable to speak about their experiences of bias at their companies.
All that hushing of the topic can make African American workers feel as if companies are not willing to address their concerns that their talent is being undervalued or squandered, which can leave them feeling less engaged with colleagues, less satisfied with their work, and less loyal to their companies, according to the book.
2. Help white colleagues contribute to the race conversation
Black leaders shouldn’t be the only ones talking about race, the authors say. It’s time for their white colleagues to stop pretending racial tensions don’t exist and start initiating conversations at work, even if they worry about feeling uncomfortable or saying the wrong thing.
“We can’t just rely on the small percentage of black executives who reach the top to wave the flag. That’s an unfair burden,” Mayo says. “If real systemic change is going to happen, it has to come from the white majority who often are in positions that give them greater leverage to change the environment. That being said, white employees may worry about their ability to effectively discuss race, but if they approach it with a sense of openness and learning, they can play an important role in advocating change.”
Managers must learn to create safe spaces at work to have these conversations and let employees know it’s OK to talk about incidents in the news, like police shootings of black people, by asking them, “How does that make you feel?”
“When black employees bring their full identities to work, they bring a set of stories and experiences that can be both painful and powerful, yet it can be hard for them to let their guard down and connect,” Mayo says. “So, creating the psychologically safe environment to have these conversations is important, with managers learning how to provide the proper support during these discussions.”
3. Tackle systemic inequality, starting with the corporate culture
Many organizations have created diversity and inclusion programs in an attempt to recruit and retain more minorities, but the initiatives often fall short, the authors say.
The problem: These programs tend to focus on helping black employees fit into the status-quo culture, rather than eliminating systemic inequality within their organizations. Companies should focus on managing injustice, rather than “managing blackness,” Courtney McCluney and Veronica Rabelo write in their chapter of the book.
[Read an excerpt from Race, Work, & Leadership.]
Companies can start by using data analytics to assess whether employees feel included on their teams and are treated fairly within their larger organizations. “These surveys should be broken down by demographic categories, including race and gender, to identify certain populations that have a lower engagement or sense of commitment to the organization,” Roberts suggests.
4. Keep confronting racial bias in hiring
Companies should train managers to root out racial bias from their hiring and recruitment processes. They should also invest in retaining black professionals, in part by reinforcing the message that race will not be a barrier to advancement.
“Some of the most difficult conversations about creating racially diverse organizations are getting sidelined.”
That’s especially important today, since inclusion programs have shifted in recent years toward recognizing more forms of diversity—based on gender and sexual orientation, for instance. Employers need to make sure that discussions about race aren’t getting lost as they work to make other groups feel like they belong.
“It’s good that we’re recognizing more forms of diversity,” Roberts says. “But, it seems like we’re talking more generally about belongingness now, and some of the most difficult conversations about creating racially diverse organizations are getting sidelined. We have to make sure we aren’t erasing race from the conversation.”
5. Support employees so that they can be themselves
Research shows that minorities at work feel pressure to create “facades of conformity,” suppressing some of their personal values, feeling unable to bring their whole selves to work, and believing they should nod in agreement with company values, according to the book.
Mayo says creating opportunities for people to bring their authentic selves to work boosts engagement and helps employees contribute more to the organization.
Creating a support network for workers can go a long way. Research shows that when professionals from diverse backgrounds have solid relationships with their managers and co-workers, they’re more satisfied and committed to their jobs. These relationships can grow through day-to-day work interactions, but also through informal get-togethers.
For instance, employees at one consulting company started a book club that focused on black writers and coordinated visits to African American museums and historical sites. And when American Express was looking to gain a better understanding of its African American customers, company officials tapped black employees for their insight, which helped signal that race is important, the authors say.
6. Be mindful of the “mini me” phenomenon
Managers should also check themselves when they evaluate their employees’ performance and advancement potential, taking a hard look at whether they’re choosing a “mini me” when they hand out a plum assignment or consider promotions, Roberts says.
“A lot of managers will say, ‘This guy has potential because he reminds me of myself when I was younger.’ Some people get a pass, and there’s a lower bar to being given an opportunity, while other people have a higher bar based on their identity,” she says. “So, it’s important to be race conscious when evaluating people’s potential to make sure these decisions aren’t biased.”
Once that potential is identified, managers should coach their workers, provide regular feedback, and champion them, showing them they have their backs as they learn and even make mistakes.
“With an underrepresented group, you need to have managers in your corner who are going to have some skin in the game, put themselves out there, and support you in your career, just as they would support your majority counterparts,” Mayo says. “They’re not just going to throw you into the deep end of the pool and expect you to survive on your own. Instead, they’ll stick with you to provide the support you need to succeed.”
About the Author
Dina Gerdeman is senior writer at Harvard Business School Working Knowledge. [Image: PeopleImages]
Edward Jones Adds Robotic Process Automation with Lean Six Sigma
Robotic process automation (RPA), commonly referred to as “bots,” is a type of software that can mimic human interactions across multiple systems to bridge gaps in processes that previously had to be handled manually. RPA software applications can be integrated with other advanced technologies such as machine learning or artificial intelligence. But at the most basic level, they act like super-macros following a detailed script to complete standardized tasks that do not require the application of judgment.
Why Combine RPA and Lean Six Sigma?
Replacing manual work with bots removes the possibility of human error, reduces rework and quality checks, while also increasing accuracy. Bots can work much faster than humans and at any hour of the day so long as the underlying systems are operational. The potential to reduce overhead costs and increase process cycle time is vast. Bots also provide enhanced controls for risk avoidance.
Bots can serve as a foot in the door to gain traction for a quality program. Senior level executives get excited by the potential of this relatively affordable technology. By incorporating a thoughtful Lean Six Sigma (LSS) process review into a company’s bot deployment strategy, quality programs will gain additional visibility and leadership support.
Effective Bot Deployment at Edward Jones
Edward Jones is a financial services firm serving more than 7 million clients in the US and Canada. Their operations division began exploring RPA in 2017 and subsequently implemented their first bot into production in November 2018. Since then, they’ve deployed 17 additional bots, yielding 15 full-time employees in capacity savings, which in turn generated more than a million dollars in cost avoidance. While still at an early stage in this journey, the operations division has developed a structured approach using LSS tools to assess process readiness for automation, minimize or remove non-value-added work steps prior to development (abandonment), and redesign the process to fully leverage the benefits of RPA.
LSS Process Review
Using a questionnaire to begin their intake process, business areas submit critical data regarding process volumes, capacity needs, system utilization and risk level. This data feeds into a prioritization matrix that allows them to decide where to focus energy and time. Once a process is identified for RPA, a member of the quality team engages the business area for a LSS process review using familiar tools such as a project charter, stakeholder analysis, SIPOC (suppliers, input, process, outputs, customers) and process maps.
After thoroughly understanding the process’s current state, the practitioner and corresponding business area redesign the process for robotics. Next, they complete an FMEA (failure means and effect analysis) and business continuity plan to ensure process risk is being adequately controlled. After this LSS process review has concluded, a broad group of experts – including robotics developers, internal audit staff, risk leaders and senior leadership from all impacted business areas – are brought together to jointly review the robotics proposal and agree on a go/no-go decision.
A critical component of this process review is thorough documentation of every step along the way. Using an Excel playbook to organize all the tools in one place enables a smooth transition as the effort moves from the quality team to the robotics development team. Then, this comprehensive documentation is retained by the business area for ongoing maintenance. Specific elements of this documentation include a systems inventory, a record of all sign-off dates and approvals and a business continuity plan for disaster recovery. Having complete documentation enables the business areas to take a proactive approach when faced with upcoming system changes or unexpected work disruptions. It also equips business areas with any data points required for routine internal or external audits.
Deployment Pitfalls to Avoid
There are some specific areas of concern when it comes to RPA.
- Communication: Provide clarity to business areas about what RPA can and cannot do, and what processes fit best with this technology. Without an accurate understanding of the capabilities of RPA, there will be an influx of unsuitable requests for this new technology and, as a result, many disappointed business areas and wasted effort spent putting together their business case. At Edward Jones, the most common misunderstanding was regarding the lack of reading ability for the specific RPA vendor being used. While the bots can recognize characters in static fields, they are not able to interpret characters in an unstructured context. This ruled out many initial RPA requests. Additionally, while comparing RPA to macros was initially an effective way to explain the technology to business leaders that were not knowledgeable about technology development, this comparison created an unfortunate misconception that coding and implementing bots was as fast and easy as creating a macro. Business areas were not expecting development time to take four to six months for what they perceived to be a simple request.
- Change Management: Incorporate thoughtful change management throughout the deployment at all levels of the organization. Leveraging bots will take away manual tasks being completed by employees. Some employees may welcome the automation of monotonous tasks, but others may view this technology as a threat to job security. Supervisors will need to adapt and grow their skills to include oversight of the RPA technology. Strong people leaders often don’t have the same level of competency in the technical space, and they will need to quickly increase knowledge and skill to effectively manage their automated processes. Senior/C-suite leaders will need to consider the inherent risks associated with using RPA, the infrastructure and skills needed to support an RPA program, and how to obtain the needed resources and talent.
- Human Resources: Bots may create job redundancy, creating the potential for job loss reassignment. Engage human resources early to navigate these situations.
- Governance: Balance senior leader involvement so they feel comfortable with automation without extra levels of required approvals that slow the development process down.
- Don’t Force a Problem to Fit the Solution: RPA is not the right solution for every bad process. In the early phase of bot deployment, it is easy to let excitement about the new technology lead to poor choices around when to apply RPA. This leads to disappointing results that could undermine the entire bot deployment. Identify clear criteria regarding when bots are an appropriate solution and use a disciplined approach to evaluate each new process improvement opportunity. Consider non-bot solutions before a final decision is reached.
- Vendor Approvals: Any third-party vendors must permit bots to interface with their systems. Review vendor contracts or have new contracts signed to ensure bots are legally allowed to interact with vendor systems and web sites before beginning development.
- Resource Constraints: Set clear expectations with business areas about the work involved and resources needed to design and implement an RPA solution. The quality team and technical developers do not have the knowledge required about the specific processing steps to complete this work without a subject-matter expert from the business area being heavily involved throughout the project life cycle.
- Results: Heavy focus on capacity savings only tells part of the story. Identify other meaningful methods of communicating value from RPA implementation, such as risk reduction, faster cycle time, improved client experience or increased accuracy.
Case Study: Automating Retirement Disbursements to Charities
An example of an RPA implementation at Edward Jones involves the process of receiving, validating and executing on client requests to send monetary donations from qualified retirement accounts to charitable organizations. Prior to implementing the bot, the Qualified Charitable Distribution (QCD) process required 11 hours of manpower each day to get through the volume of donations – and the number of requests had been doubling each month.
The process had five to 10 errors monthly due to the manual data entry required, which in turn took one to three hours of leader or senior processor time to resolve. A bot was designed and implemented that would validate the original request (quality check) and then enter the appropriate data into a computer screen to issue the check to the selected charity.
Stakeholder Analysis and SIPOC
After the project charter was created and agreed upon by the project Champion and project team, a stakeholder analysis was conducted to identify any additional individuals or business areas that were upstream or downstream of the process or might be affected by a change to the process. These parties were consulted or communicated with throughout the effort to ensure process impacts were understood and considered as the automation opportunity was identified and designed.
Next, a SIPOC matrix was created to understand all the process inputs, including systems, data files and end users. Together, the stakeholder analysis and SIPOC are essential in ensuring all critical components of the process upstream and downstream are identified early in the automation effort so no processing gaps are created during RPA development.
| SIPOC Analysis: SIPOC for the QCD Automation Project | ||||
| Supplier | Inputs | Process | Outputs | Customer |
| Client, branch team | Clilent instructions, intranet form message | Branch team sends form message with client instructions for QCD | Unexcuted client request in the retirement department queue | Retirement support team |
| Retirement support team | Form message, client account information, IRS rules, client request | Retirement associate reviews client request for QCD to confirm eligibility | Validated client request | Retirement support team |
| Retirement support team | Validated client request | Issue check | Executed request, issued check | Client, branch team |
| Retirement support team | Client request, issued check | Close client request on system | Completed client request for QCD | Client, branch team |
Current- and Future-State Process Maps
The next step was to create detailed current- and future-state process maps. The current-state process map must include enough detail to highlight all the data sources required by the process, and where that data must be entered to move the process forward. The future-state map must incorporate all of those critical points, while also accounting for the limitations of RPA technology (inability to “read”) and the advantages of RPA (directly ingesting data files, speed and accuracy).
For the QCD process, the client verification step needed to be handled differently for RPA than in the original process. Previously, an employee was comparing client names between the original client request and the account registration referenced in the request to ensure a match. Names can be difficult for RPA to match because the technology doesn’t understand common nicknames that might be used interchangeably with legal names. For example, “Bill” and “William” would flag as a mismatch by the robotic technology, while a human processor would recognize those as referring to the same individual. To avoid large numbers of false positives from the bot flagging mismatches caused by nicknames, an alternative form of identification matching was used, in this case a social security number.
In a typical Six Sigma effort, the goal is to achieve a more streamlined future-state process map with less processing steps and fewer decision points. One key difference between process maps for an RPA effort compared to a more typical Six Sigma improvement effort is that the future-state process maps may contain more, not fewer, steps and decision points. This is normal and shows that the automation capability is being fully utilized to provide a higher level of accuracy. Since the bot processes at a speed much faster than a human can achieve, these additional quality checks do not add to the overall process cycle time. Each decision point with RPA represents a quality assurance checkpoint, allowing for the final output to have higher accuracy than the original process achieved.
Figure 1: QCD Process – Before BPA
Figure 2: QCD Process – After RPA
Risk Assessment
Once the future automated state has been identified, conduct a risk assessment to understand the risks associated with the current process and how the process risks may be affected by RPA. The largest risk associated with the QCD process was the manual nature of the process and likelihood of human error. This risk was eliminated by using bots.
However, automation adds different types of risks, including system failures and coding errors. By identifying potential risks and using control reports to quickly identify and remediate issues, these risks can be effectively managed.
Business Continuity Plan
The final element of the process review is a business continuity plan, specifically focused on failure of RPA to successfully perform the programmed tasks. Consideration should be given to a failure of the bot itself but also any underlying systems that the bot needs to interact with to obtain data or execute requests. Planning should include how to perform the work if the automation is not operational for a particular timespan as well as how to identify and resolve errors made by the bot if the programming becomes corrupted.
Through this planning exercise, a critical aspect of the QCD process was identified that may have led to future bot failure had it not been remedied. Volumes for this highly seasonal process rise drastically at year end, and a single bot was unlikely to keep up with the work at this peak. Programmers were able to proactively solve this issue by diverting process volume onto three separate bots to stay on top of the surge of work during these high-volume time periods.
Results
The QCD bot was implemented in September 2019 and immediately realized 11 hours of capacity savings with no errors. The total project cycle time from the initial continuous improvement analysis, through the bot design, development, testing and implementation took seven months. Since implementing RPA on this process, 100 percent of the process has been automated with zero errors. Process risk was reduced by one point on a 10-point scale by eliminating human error from manual work steps.
During routine follow-up six months after bot implementation, the project team learned that the benefits received from the automation had grown significantly. The volume of client requests for charitable distributions had increased rapidly, so the bot was now performing work that would have taken 34 hours – or five employees – to complete each day.
Conclusion
Don’t short cut the methodology when leveraging RPA and other new technologies. Technology masks a bad process, so clean up the underlying work steps first to maximize the benefit of RPA.
Knowledge Space 