Process Improvement for a Global Financial Services Company

Our client is a multinational investment bank and financial services company founded and based in Switzerland. Co-headquartered in the cities of Zürich and Basel, it maintains a presence in all major financial centres as the largest Swiss banking institution and the largest private bank in the world.

Global Corporate Services (GCS) are a division of a Financial Services Company that we serve and are responsible for the delivery of Moves, Small Works and Capital Projects globally. The division is made up of a number of external providers that are responsible for space planning, project management, cost management, IT asset moves and providers of building works. The in-scope processes for this project worked across all of these teams.

During a routine Move, some assets went missing causing a compliance breach. When there was an internal investigation into the reasons for the breach, three things were identified:
1. The Moves and Small Works processes were over complicated;
2. There was no audit trail which meant that no one knew where each move was in the overall process and who had performed what action and when;
3. The ownership of who is responsible for each part of the process was not clear.

There were two phases to this project. Phase 1 focused on Moves and Phase 2 focused on Small Works. In both phases we completed a full Lean Six Sigma Review. This included:

• Project start up
• Voice of the customer exercise
• Mapping of the Small Works processes
• Process performance data collection
• Process analysis
• Root cause analysis brainstorming
• Improvement brainstorming
• Recommendations

The recommendations were presented as short term, medium term and long term solutions. Improvements focused on resolving the problem statement but also on improving the customer experience. Recommendations included:

• Improving the time taken and reducing the complexity of completing the move request and asset collections
• Improving the approval process for the cost of moving assets
• Removing the need to collect IT asset information twice preventing rework
• Improving risks and controls
• Reducing the level of detail required for high level quotes
• Introduction of a new role to oversee the Moves and Small Work process to reduce the number of touchpoints with the customer and improve customer experience
• Introduction of a dashboard to provide full visibility of performance

Following presentation of recommendations, the project was then managed and delivered by us, ensuring solutions were implemented. 

CI Projects also gave Lean Six Sigma Yellow Belt training to staff across GCS so that they were empowered and skilled to make improvements internally.