Agile working practices saved £350k of management time in 4 months for Financial Services firm.

Success highlights

  • Faster project delivery

    Reduced internal project cycle from 6 months to 5 weeks.

  • Saving management time

    Saved £350,000 of management time in 4 months.

  • Gaining buy-in

    Achieved full buy-in and proactive support to major transformation project within 3 months.

  • Bridging cultural differences

    Successfully bridged cultural differences across functions and business units.

  • Staying on track

    After 18 months, the transformation project remains 98% on target.

The issues

The initiative to transform by a Financial Services provider who wanted to “go digital” had stalled in the face of internal resistance and lack of cultural change:

  • Powerful leadership in different business units could not agree on a unified approach to and common principles for change.
  • The businesses worried about forecasts estimating a 15% loss of market share.
  • Cultural differences and varying technical capabilities undermined change efforts.
  • Conflicting priorities wasted estimated £150,000 of management time in the previous 3 months.

Our approach

  • Creating an agile mindset:

    We coached the team in developing agile thinking and working, cutting down on time spent in meetings and improving the speed of decision making.

  • Breaking down silos:

    Co-created initiatives to break down functional silos and foster collaboration across multi-disciplinary teams. It improved the internal customer feedback, leading to shorter product development times while improving product robustness.

  • Practising empathy:

    Equipped the team with the tools to gain empathy for the needs of different cultures quickly and approach potential conflicts with business objectives in a results-orientated way. This reduced resistance and created greater support from the different country locations, bringing the project back on track.

  • Improving cross-team collaboration to support in times of pressure:

    We coached the teams to self-create aligned definitions of success that supported both: achieving the desired business outcomes and recognising the different aspirations and cultures of the teams & their team members. As a result, different teams supported each other, alleviating pressure in sales and product development teams allowing for a better customer experience, leading to positive customer feedback and higher sales.

  • Realigning focus on customer service makes customers happy:

    Taking the team through practical exercises to enhance their ability to develop empathy for their customers’ needs, enabling them to find suitable solutions quicker. For external customers, this lead to shortening of the sales cycle, for internal customers it meant less time in meetings, more acceptable solutions and less rework.

Business results achieved

  • On day two of the program, the client reported that applying agile problem-solving method helped resolve an 18 months old internal issue within a two-hour meeting,  
  • The initial team spread their capability beyond their functional teams, resulting in widespread buy-in to the transformation project. 
    After 18 months, the portfolio of internal projects remains 98% on track for program, budget and benefits. 
  • Participants in the program report a high degree of confidence in applying the learnings in their work, resulting in greater productivity for themselves and their teams. 
  • Teams report a greater level of initiative being taken at all levels to support the transformation, with less time in meetings.
  • The estimated cost saving is £350,000 for 4 months period alone.
       

Based on the estimated management time saved, the team achieved an ROI of 21:1

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Get in touch

email us at wecare@coincidencity.co.uk or click to drop us a line