OUR SERVICES
We work with regulated infrastructure operators and utility companies. We offer three services: Operational Performance Acceleration, Operational Model Acceleration and Strategy Execution Acceleration.
OPERATIONAL PERFORMANCE ACCELERATION
We accelerate performance by integrating excellence into your operational engine. We help you realise the benefit of improved performance by co-creating new operational designs and ways of working using proven methodologies to get maximum benefit from your people, process, assets and data. We build the tools and change working methods so you unleash efficiencies across large, complex and dispersed organisations. You get to ‘cash the cheque’ of operational improvement sooner.
Marching to the beat of the same drum
Marching to the beat of the same drum
All together now
We helped one of the UK’s largest water and wastewater companies transform how they operated by creating alignment across Directorates, getting them focused on working together to deliver against their regulatory targets.
Targets were extremely tough and ratcheting throughout AMP-7, so things were about to get even more demanding. Our client was in danger of falling behind on their performance ambitions and it was clear that making up lost ground would be exorbitantly expensive in terms of costs and management focus.
One, two, three, four, can I have a little more?
We found that given the broad range of performance commitments agreed with the regulators, previous efforts to analytical ‘slice, dice and allocate’ targets to departments had become counterproductive. We showed that accountability for delivering regulatory targets was dispersed across the organisation, which had led to unhealthy tension and conflict. Fault lines become exposed when trade-offs were required to get the best outcomes for the business, not just the department. Our approach was designed to create organisational velocity – direction and speed.
Direction: Initially, we worked with the senior leaders from each department directly involved in delivering the regulatory outcomes. We agreed on a common set of KPIs to drive performance, calibrated to the regulatory targets.
Speed: We established a weekly cross-functional meeting to review performance. The meeting was designed as an empowered decision-making forum. The focus was on creating collective responsibility for business performance and accepting the inevitable trade-offs for the greater good.
Insights that Reson8
The key to our success was aligning all the teams around a new shared set of objectives and visual KPIs that made performance trends transparent. Each KPI metric was carefully defined and designed to enable the teams to see the key issues and drive action.
The KPIs acted as the frame for the teams to prioritise issues. The performance improvement came from cross-functional problem solving and collaboration. Our approach created transparency and accountability, problems became visible, and owners were held accountable for driving their departmental improvement goals, creating a movement of people focused on delivering the plan.
Results that Reson8
- Avoided penalty payments by bringing visible leak response times within the target
- Improved performance from 73% to 97% achievement of SLA for a critical customer metric
- Our analysis identified an underlying capacity constraint, and this resulted in a Board level review of long-term headcount and workforce planning
For further information please contact us at hello@reson8.group
Marching to the beat of the same drum
All together now
We helped one of the UK’s largest water and wastewater companies transform how they operated by creating alignment across Directorates, getting them focused on working together to deliver against their regulatory targets.
Targets were extremely tough and ratcheting throughout AMP-7, so things were about to get even more demanding. Our client was in danger of falling behind on their performance ambitions and it was clear that making up lost ground would be exorbitantly expensive in terms of costs and management focus.
One, two, three, four, can I have a little more?
We found that given the broad range of performance commitments agreed with the regulators, previous efforts to analytical ‘slice, dice and allocate’ targets to departments had become counterproductive. We showed that accountability for delivering regulatory targets was dispersed across the organisation, which had led to unhealthy tension and conflict. Fault lines become exposed when trade-offs were required to get the best outcomes for the business, not just the department. Our approach was designed to create organisational velocity – direction and speed.
Direction: Initially, we worked with the senior leaders from each department directly involved in delivering the regulatory outcomes. We agreed on a common set of KPIs to drive performance, calibrated to the regulatory targets.
Speed: We established a weekly cross-functional meeting to review performance. The meeting was designed as an empowered decision-making forum. The focus was on creating collective responsibility for business performance and accepting the inevitable trade-offs for the greater good.
Insights that Reson8
The key to our success was aligning all the teams around a new shared set of objectives and visual KPIs that made performance trends transparent. Each KPI metric was carefully defined and designed to enable the teams to see the key issues and drive action.
The KPIs acted as the frame for the teams to prioritise issues. The performance improvement came from cross-functional problem solving and collaboration. Our approach created transparency and accountability, problems became visible, and owners were held accountable for driving their departmental improvement goals, creating a movement of people focused on delivering the plan.
Results that Reson8
- Avoided penalty payments by bringing visible leak response times within the target
- Improved performance from 73% to 97% achievement of SLA for a critical customer metric
- Our analysis identified an underlying capacity constraint, and this resulted in a Board level review of long-term headcount and workforce planning
For further information please contact us at hello@reson8.group
OPERATIONAL MODEL ACCELERATION
Determining how best to configure your organisation requires difficult and complex trade-offs to balance long-term strategic ambitions with the current operational reality. Reson8 has a proprietary operation model design methodology to accelerate aligning your operations with strategy. Co-creating a new operational design with a quantified case for change in 90 days without force-fitting off-the-shelf models or requiring months of analysis. You achieve your design objectives faster.
One direction
One Direction: integrating Customer Experience
One Direction: integrating Customer Experience and the Field Workforce
Whose problem is it anyway?
When a failure in the network leads to a significant loss of service, it matters to customers. Within the context of a regulatory regime this also translated into eye watering penalties. The Operations team had recently put in place a suite of new KPIs to drive performance and avoid looming penalties charges. This had helped leaders make better decisions within their own function but had created unhealthy tension and caused conflict between departments. Meeting tough Customer Satisfaction targets needs a joined-up end to end approach; customers don’t care about the internal organisation – they simply want their issue dealt with quickly and flawlessly.
How to see two sides of the same coin
We assessed the whole customer and network operation from customer service operators and civil engineering contractors, through investment appraisal to the teams rebuilding assets under the roads.
We devised a coordinated set of objectives driven by KPIs that could be shared by both Customer Experience and Operations. Developing the KPIs was the easy bit; working to ensure the KPIs were owned by the right team was the critical one. Where there was shared responsibility for performance, creating an environment where teams could review performance together and collaborate was crucial: building the connections that would drive improved customer case management and ultimately regulated outcomes. Together we changed roles and relationships and ways of working across the Directorates from the Executive to the front line.
Insights that Reson8 – Measure what you measure
Key to our success was the integrated KPIs, which measured aspects of customer engagement and the quality of information flows coupled with transparency of performance and clear accountabilities. This delivered a vastly improved service to internal customers (e.g. front line teams) which accrued to external customers.
Recasting roles and structures to foster team working and collaboration was at the heart of this project. Helping people understand the constraints on performance from their colleagues’ perspective and the impact on customers was the basis for the cross functional working required to resolve novel and complex problems.
Results that Reson8
- The operations team managed to meet all their business plan targets, resulting in increased customer satisfaction demonstrating the power of the team, improving their customer ranking by 2 places.
- The focus of the customer team has changed from speed of response to time to resolve customer problems in full, creating true customer focus and driving a tangible impact on Customer Satisfaction. Internal customer satisfaction scores have improved by 11%.
- Complex customer issues that were getting lost as they were passed between functional teams became visible – cross functional teams worked together to drive the issues to resolution, a focus on delivering great customer outcomes.
For further information please contact us at hello@reson8.group
All together now
We helped one the UK’s largest regulated utilities get off to a flying start to the new regulatory period by developing the master plan, Key Performance Indicator (KPI) reporting and management system to deliver their business strategy.
A new leadership team had the most ambitious performance targets in the organisation’s history but with a lower overall budget than in previous years. To meet this stretching ambition they needed everyone – from the front line teams to the Directors – to be fully focused and aligned around new mission-critical priorities.
All together now…
Working with the leadership teams we translated the 5-year strategy into tangible objectives. We assessed whether their planned projects and programmes would be able to close the performance gaps, ensuring alignment and driving ownership.
We created line of sight to performance by developing a leadership Balanced Scorecard, cascaded throughout the organisation through new KPI reporting. We ensured each objective mapped directly back to the strategic intent and its supporting initiatives.
Ensuring each team had the right set of performance measures (no more, no less) that they could directly influence – aligned with the strategy – was only half the battle. We had to ensure all leaders understood their KPI measures, the levers they should pull and how they could hold their teams to account to drive continuous improvement. We established a management system based on Lean visual factory techniques and launched a ‘train the trainer’ programme to roll out new ways of leading.
Results that Reson8
• Reduced the number of metrics Operations Managers were expected to review from c.800 to less than 150 each month
• Identified £1.1m of costs associated with operational failure in 1 (of 29) geographic operational areas
• 7 members of the project team went on to gain promotions or accepted stretch roles to support their continued career growth
For further information please contact us at hello@reson8.group
STRATEGY EXECUTION ACCELERATION
We turn your strategy into reality by aligning team objectives, developing KPI Scorecards and assessing your projects for alignment with the strategy. This allows you to focus your organisation on achieving its mission. Working with your leadership teams, we redesign how you review performance, make decisions, prioritise projects and track progress against initiatives. You get a structured management system that keeps your team focused on delivering your strategic goals.
Another brick in the wall
Building a better delivery capability
Another brick in the wall
We worked with a UK water company to transform the way they managed capital delivery in the face of a step change efficiency challenge.
An external benchmarking exercise had revealed the truth about the efficiency of capital delivery across all asset types both above and below ground. They had some of the highest overheads in the UK and the ‘pound in the ground’ (the value of the assets delivered) was low in comparison to total Capex spend.
Rebuilding strong foundations
We identified a disconnect between the strategic intent and the operating model design. The delivery capability was not structured in a way that optimised decision-making, prioritisation, programme development and portfolio management to assure value for money.
Our clients’ supply chain partners were involved from the beginning of the project, an approach which was counter cultural. The previous approach had been ‘arm’s length’ and transactional despite the reassuring use of branding such as ‘Alliance’ and ‘Partner’. Below the surface lay a culture of blame, claim and counterclaim. When combined with a bureaucratic project governance structure that did its best to cloud decision-making the cost of managing delivery was out of control.
We worked to develop the critical capability components to execute an assured value for money delivery strategy. This included the capability to bundle similar project to reduce the overheads; reduce the layers in the supply chain and enable more efficient information sharing; develop better relationships with fewer partners and build an activist portfolio management function that was able to both report on the efficiency and drive delivery improvement based on internal and external benchmarks.
Insights that Reson8
We were able to bring an understanding of the strategies that determined the operating models of several large infrastructure owners in water, electricity, rail and airports, each with similar challenges on managing large scale capital delivery through a range of supply chain partners.
We simplified the project governance and reporting processes to bring transparency. This transparency enabled real discussions between the client and their delivery partners, surfacing issues quickly and developing solutions together.
This helped us to define the critical interactions and reduce friction – our key finding was that simply focusing on the metrics and project controls alone is not enough. No amount of new MI and Governance can improve an operating model with mis-trusting relationships and unhealthy tensions.
Results that Reson8
• Engaged alliance partners
• Lower overheads
• Better and faster decision-making throughout the governance process
For further information please contact us at hello@reson8.group
All together now
We helped one the UK’s largest regulated utilities get off to a flying start to the new regulatory period by developing the master plan, Key Performance Indicator (KPI) reporting and management system to deliver their business strategy.
A new leadership team had the most ambitious performance targets in the organisation’s history but with a lower overall budget than in previous years. To meet this stretching ambition they needed everyone – from the front line teams to the Directors – to be fully focused and aligned around new mission-critical priorities.
All together now…
Working with the leadership teams we translated the 5-year strategy into tangible objectives. We assessed whether their planned projects and programmes would be able to close the performance gaps, ensuring alignment and driving ownership.
We created line of sight to performance by developing a leadership Balanced Scorecard, cascaded throughout the organisation through new KPI reporting. We ensured each objective mapped directly back to the strategic intent and its supporting initiatives.
Ensuring each team had the right set of performance measures (no more, no less) that they could directly influence – aligned with the strategy – was only half the battle. We had to ensure all leaders understood their KPI measures, the levers they should pull and how they could hold their teams to account to drive continuous improvement. We established a management system based on Lean visual factory techniques and launched a ‘train the trainer’ programme to roll out new ways of leading.
Results that Reson8
• Reduced the number of metrics Operations Managers were expected to review from c.800 to less than 150 each month
• Identified £1.1m of costs associated with operational failure in 1 (of 29) geographic operational areas
• 7 members of the project team went on to gain promotions or accepted stretch roles to support their continued career growth
For further information please contact us at hello@reson8.group