Optimizing Operational Management Investments: An 18-Month Action Plan

The assignment content presents a suggested 18-month action plan to bring about an effective change in the growth and sustainability of a customer care services organization. The plan involves assigning a case-manager, developing a system for managing existing issues, training Customer Service Representatives (CSRs) on activity-related issues and time management, implementing 'on-job training' for CSRs, and providing advanced training for CSRs and Business Associates (BAs). This action plan is expected to improve the organization's customer service and revenue. The content also highlights the importance of performance information and regular assessments in ensuring the sustainability of the implemented changes.

Running head: BUSINESS MANAGEMENT AND PLANS
BUSINESS MANAGEMENT AND PLANS
Name of the student
Name of the university
Author note

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Executive summary:
The aim of this report was to analyze the operational issues existing in the provided case
study along with an analysis of suggestive measures and directly implementing an action plan
accordingly. A web survey helped to achieve the objectives. The results, based on literature
indicate the underlying issues and the methodologies possible to resolve it. This report
concludes that the conduction of the audit was a correct measure alongside recommending a
possible plan to exhibit the suggestive ideas to sustain the profitability.

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Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION:....................................................................................................................3
DISCUSSION:...........................................................................................................................4
Current Situation:...................................................................................................................4
Analysis of the Current Prevailing Situations:.......................................................................4
Operational Problems in the Organization:............................................................................6
Analysis and Development in Recommendations-Set:..........................................................9
The Suggested 18-Month Action Plan:................................................................................10
CONCLUSION:.......................................................................................................................11
REFERENCES:........................................................................................................................12

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INTRODUCTION:
Business process outsourcing (BPO) was introduced in the phase when the business
world witnessed an escalated rate of competition regarding the market or a brand position,
directly demanding an improvement in the service level with a simultaneous decrease in the
investment costs involved in the entire business management. This procedure in the business
forum activated a new methodology to provide services by exporting business activities via
specialized service providers (Sengupta & Gupta, 2012). This procedure involved
outsourcing of services inclusive of the fields like manufacturing, human resources, finance
and accounting involvements, information technology and as an important aspect marketing
(Jain & Cooper, 2012). Allen, the executive vice president of BPO, Inc, had the responsibility
of Employee Benefit Outsourcing (EBO), who needed an audit report regarding the
efficiency output of Health and Welfare Service Delivery Process, based on the E-mail
received from Sam Regan as a critique to the provided services from the organization. This
became an issue to be addressed as it pondered the query of whether a proper service is
conducted on a regular basis to meet the needs of a client. This report introduces the
underlying limitations in the operational management of the system and recommendations
that are suggestive to be followed as an 18- month plan to improve the efficiencies in the
process, from the analysis of the provided literature review about the audit that had been
conducted to increase the profitability of the process. The Health and Welfare Service
Delivery Process was responsible for medical, dental, vision and survivor benefit proclaims
ranging over 18 Firms constructed for clients all-over.

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DISCUSSION:
Current Situation:
Considering variant options in context of replying the client Sam Regan, it was
commendable on Allen’s end to conduct a meeting addressing specific individuals involving
Ethan Ekans, who was the appointed senior vice-president of the operations department, Jerry
Small, the assistant director of the quality segment and finally one Six Sigma black belt
candidate (Malik & Blumenfeld, 2012). This set up was solely dedicated to receive the
updates related to the Six Sigma project, which was dealing with the improvement of the
efficiency issues of Health Welfare Services, which as pre-mentioned holds the functionality
related to the welfare measures of the clients in various fields (Presbitero, Roxas & Chadee,
2016). This matter gained its priority the instance Allen observed that the mail copy was also
destined to Jim Regit and Larry Wills, the chairperson and president of the BPO. This
induced a high-level of concern regarding the operational management activities as the fact
emerged that although it had growing revenue of 30% annually still it is persistent to loosing
of about $5 to $10 million average an year. With satisfaction that he has assigned the correct
person Jerry to conduct the process, he proceeded towards the answers to the queries and the
possible mitigations to limitations (Sugumar, D., Kumaran, Raj & Xavier, 2013).
Analysis of the Current Prevailing Situations:
Prior to the analysis of the service provided by the organizational firms, it is necessary
to witness and reveal the infrastructure of the BPO, INC and the included services it is
responsible to address. The BPO ranges in providing services listing from risk management
or insurance brokerage to management consulting. The operation management displayed over
100 countries with 50,000 employees, working in 500 offices (Pereira & Anderson, 2012).

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Various exhibits are presented in the literature review provided, out of which each
exhibit focuses on specific agendas and insights features addressed by a BPO. Exhibit 1
imposes the three divisions and the transparency to operations the systems provides. These
are likely, firstly, the risk management segment, which helps the organization know about the
existing risk profiles and introduces possible solutions for the management of the same and
provide the options to minimize the existing vulnerabilities for a sustained growth. Secondly,
is the Human Resource segment, designed to provide the services inclusive of human
resource outsourcing, Business Process design and consulting all the management issues
(Cascio, 2012). Third is the compensation consulting unit, providing services related to
efficient compensation and rewarding system.
Among the listed services, HRO comprised of Employee benefits outsourcing and the
Employee processing outsourcing. The EBO was potentially a growing unit due to the fame it
received due to the outsourcing activities and included three prime services as tabulated
below in this section of the report.
SEGMENTS BENEFITS
Defined Benefit Formulated the pension and retirement plans of
employee
Defined Contribution Administration of retirement plans subjected to
employer contributions
Health and Welfare Contributed to the services in the dental, vision
and survivor benefits fields
Table: 1
Revenues amounting to about $40 million from the contribution services were
neglected. HRO clients seemed interested in the cost savings linked to the outsourcing
procedures. The analysis provides an insight that these services provided were merely

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accepted as commodity, which resulted in soliciting bids from the contemporaries involved in
the category and pitting the service providers against each other. The coupled factor to this
was the expectation of high-level services, which made it a crucial task for the BPO
companies to sustain the profitability.
Operational Problems in the Organization:
The HRO process comprising the EBO, related to the health and welfare delivery
segment received a critique as per the E-mail copy provided in the literature, thus, this require
an analysis to deal with the underlying limitations of the operations involved in the welfare
services. The major area to reflect for this segment is to update any company related benefit
plans and the information relative to any changes and answering the query of the coverage
involved (Kleibert, 2014). To enquire about the limitations involved a brief analysis on the
infrastructure is a priority, which provide a descriptive view to the two-level client
organization interfacing. At the organizational level, the EBO was responsible to provide a
database relative to the employee details; this helped the EBO to determine the eligibility
criteria for the employees. At the participant level, EBO provided the service of directly
helping the employees on the benefit plans and its related updates or queries. Related to this
very service, there exists an operations responsibility of a set time interval of 6 minutes that
remains an internal metric which the service level between the client and the BPO range to a
level corresponding to the answering of 80% of calls in almost 20 seconds (Jeston & Nelis,
2014).
Two prime sub-processes are involved in the health and welfare delivery services, the
database updating the employee benefits on a weekly basis while the other sub-process was
the participant care focused on providing the direct service to the clients’ queries. A
substantial example the enquiry of a customer was highly dependent on the weekly database
entry, which provides the view that these two sub-process are highly co-related as a necessity.

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This facility in turn benefited the benefit administrator, as they would utilize the participant
sub-process to update the employee benefits (Marasigan, 2015).
The benefits Administrators (BA) processed a client’s week in and week out based on
the database entries as is shown in the exhibit 3. On analysis it is witnessed, BAs are
personalized in cases as it the tabulated data shows 15 among the 18 clients are dedicated to
one BA while three corresponded with other two BAs. The data Jerry collected corresponded
to an issue indicating a an operational fact, that updating on an general account took about 80
minutes while this process was conducted within a duration of 20 minutes alongside another
recorded duration was of 5 hours. Next operation oriented in this process was contacting with
the clients, which according to jerry’s suggestion was supposed to take around 10 to 60
minutes in 95% of the allotted cases while a 5% showed a diverse result as the contacting
period stretched to 150 to 90 minutes. This is another operational issue that needs to be
addressed. The next step involved the auditing of the reports, which took a duration ranging
from 5 minutes to 5 hours. The BAs are potential to make any changes corresponding to any
detected errors in less than 10 minutes while according to Jerry’s analysis it, at times ranged
to about 85 minutes. Processing of the data from the clients are able to be performed via web,
providing the BAs the facility to download the reports. Another step involved was the client
eligibility detection via the information available. Jerry while auditing found this process to
range from 5 minutes to 5 hours on some of the clients’ parts (McHenry, 2013). Next in the
operation department was to generate reports based on the participant database, which
according to Jerry might take about 40 minutes, but the analysis of the situation presents that
it ranges from 5 minutes for a client while 2 hours for others. Next step is situated around the
importing and executing of the queries in a file, which in accordance to Jerry’s analysis
should take about 5 minutes but in the real-time situation, it took 1 hour or at least 25
minutes. Next to this is the auditing that is analyzed to take an addition of 45 minutes while it

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took less than 25 minutes in few cases and 3 hours in the others (Christopher & Tanwar,
2012). Final step surrounded the uploading of the employee benefits database, which was
expected to be within 3 hours but was observed to take about 495 minutes in few cases. This
section thus highlights some of the operational issues involved in the processing of the data
(Lacity & Willcocks, 2013).
The next sub process corresponds to the Participant Care relative to which, the exhibit
4 highlights the Customer Service Reps (CSR) in various recorded cases. The calls of 15 out
of 18 clients were accepted from 8A.M to 6 P.M while the call-centre remained available for
the other three clients until 8 P.M. the call volume is a measure that should be dealt with
priority. This section deals with customer issues with the two available choices in a self-care
attempt, using either the voice process or the telephone. Corresponding to Exhibit 5, the call
volumes can acquire an analysis. CSR services according to Jerry’s anticipation and records
took 0.75 to 1.5 minutes in logging the calls to the system. One of the major issues to be
noted was that 20% cases were difficult for the CSRs to solve without the detailed
information about the client. This needed a backup from the BAs which in 40% cases was
found to be delayed with a duration of 45 to 60 minutes, while this research can potentially be
done within 5 to 10 minutes. Once the escalations have been notified by the BAs, it is
expected and recorded in cases that CSRs are able to leave a voice message within 30
seconds but errors were witnessed that corresponded to 5 to minutes in 25% of the cases
(Borman, 2017).
Few other noted issues surfacing this sub processes involved four points, firstly the
absence of any located difference between the call timing of the CSRs that they addressed
and the ones they made to BAs, in few cases it was detrimental while in others there was a
long gap. Secondly, the new calls were more appreciated than the existing ones. BAs stayed

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limited to the job of updating rather researching for the CSRs. Updating the database is found
to be more difficult than researching, reviewing the literature (Guerci & Pedrini, 2014).
The operational management issues surfaced in the audit process, which are charted in
exhibit 6 that reflects, the operational issues noticed have an adverse effect on the
profitability growth and the service provided via health and welfare segment. The major
challenge surrounded the integration methodology involving sub process of updating the
databases (Sugumar et al., 2013).
Analysis and Development in Recommendations-Set:
Jerry introduced few suggestive measures in correspondence to his presented
Exhibits. An analysis on the proposed measures is presented in this section, firstly, the
suggestion of a new case manager seems really promising as a potential candidate for the
position would be able to interlink the BAs and the CSRs so that the issues are resolved more
efficiently. Secondly, the recommendation for an additional training for the CSRs would be
helpful for them to manage or sort issues relative to the escalations from the customers
helping to gain profitability (Bradley, 2016). The investment was also addressed in these
suggestive measures by an introduction of a negotiated pay scale for the case managers.
While another suggestion of making the CSRs capable enough to deal with escalations with a
low-level of research would be helpful form both ends. Additional 30% revenue should be
considered for the benefits and the taxes involved. The title for the model representing the
measures is very apt, ‘high-touch-low-cost’ model, as these measures will definitely
introduce improvements, sustained customer services, and organizational profit scale with the
optimized operational management investments (Bronzo et al., 2013).

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The Suggested 18-Month Action Plan:
The recommendation set, which was worth an analysis resulted to hold enough
potential to bring about an effective change in the growth and the sustainability of the
organization involving the customer care services. The strategizing involved enough effort
from Jerry but the most difficult issue here is to implement the innovative and analyzed
pointers in the real time situation, which is a matter of correct measures and time-consuming.
The descriptive methodology can be implemented through an 18 months action plan (Magno
& Cassia, 2015). First step towards this action plan would be assigning a correct individual
for the designation of a case-manager. This individual should have the leadership qualities
that helps a team to flourish. This might consume 1 month of quality interviewing or analysis
of potential resumes. The next step to the assignment should correspond to the developing of
an active system wherein, the manager is able to mange the existing issues relative to the
clients expecting a standardized customer service from the organization end. The unresolved
matters should be given priority along with the involved evaluations relative to revenue or
escalations should be made before making any new commitments. This is estimated to be
completed around 3 months of time. The next step is approach towards providing the training
to the existing CSRs to manage activity related issues and time management to improve the
efficiency level in them. The completion of the training in general should take about 6
months. The next 3 months, should implement the ‘on job training’ for the CSRs to display
the learning. This would help in determining the potential and diligent candidates. Another 3
months should be spent on the advanced training involving the CSRs and the BAs to research
on escalations from the clients. This will make both the ends potential enough to solve the
issues instantly. The next 2 months should be a practice period to witness the effect of the
steps and procedures introduced; accordingly, the revenue and the pay scales will be

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detrimental. This implementation plan corresponding to the suggestions is a sure
methodology to test the descriptive methods.
CONCLUSION:
The meeting conducted with the consent of Allen proved to be helpful as it helped
Jerry to introduce the underlying operational limitations that were prevailing, adversely
affecting the profitability of the organization. The Exhibits gives a descriptive support to the
analysis of the situations. The performance information should be considered before
implementation of the suggestive measures. The action plan revolving around the ‘high-
touch, low-cost’ model to initiate an effective change ensuring better customer services from
the organization. A weekly assessment would guide the process towards sustainability.

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Bradley, G. (2016). Benefit Realisation Management: A practical guide to achieving benefits
through change. CRC Press.
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& Ferreira, R. L. (2013). Improving performance aligning business analytics with
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Presbitero, A., Roxas, B., & Chadee, D. (2016). Looking beyond HRM practices in
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