High quality standards need highly robust processes.​

smart/consult & smart/bench case studies

When a global enterprise decided to tackle quality across their operations, smart/tasking stepped in to provide support. With thousands of projects being implemented each year, and failure rates increasing in line with volume, a call for an in-depth quality review was made, with the objective of understanding the root cause of their problems. ​

What are impactful, affordable initiatives could we identify to help raise standards internally, improve customers’ experiences externally, and reduce costs and risks across the board?

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We started by collecting a large number of operational data sets, ranging from audit trails of change requests through to failures and escalations reports. We integrated these into a single database, enabling us to correlate data across all information sources. This enabled us to map incidents to root causes, and characterise problem statements into logical, compelling language. Working with key internal stakeholders, we agreed upon a desirable, realistic set of standards, balancing costs and risks against success. With a comprehensive effort-vs.-impact matrix in place, we were able to build out a full implementation roadmap and assess progress against targets, making any necessary adjustments along the way.​

We were impressed to see our client’s employees get totally onboard with this rigorous quality initiative. The outputs of our investigations confirmed the initiatives that were already in-flight, and added new perspectives giving the Leadership Team even deeper insights. The new integrated database rapidly became the catalyst for continuous improvement: by using this data intelligently, the objective was to detect context of incidents before they actually occurred – meaning far less financial wastage, and a much better use of our client’s time and resources.​

Importantly, as smart/tasking commits to leaving a legacy on each of our engagements, our intervention has created a highly transferable service and a set of collaborative values which can be quickly spun up elsewhere, as needed!