Financial ServicesCase Study
Background
This is a financial services organization with revenues already topping $4 billion. After performing a benchmarking of their planning processes (strategic planning, target setting, operational planning and forecasting), company initiated a restructuring of the processes. The objective was to increase decision making speed, provide a sound framework for decision making, and standardize and reduce the cycle time of the entire planning process. From the company inception in 1995, the company did not have a formal strategic planning process and had few incentive based targets. The operating plan was a labor intensive exercise and did not match the needs of the organization. Forecasting was much the same. Very little integration occurred in the entire process as each activity was self contained.
Approach
The benchmarking results determined that all areas of the planning processes were high impact. The following planning processes were to be re-designed: Strategic Planning, Target Setting, and Operational Planning. Client company chose to re-design the forecasting process in-house.
Once the future state was defined and approved, we led the re-design efforts and, for the new operating plan, was part of the implementation team that focused on the execution of the new process. In the creation of the new strategic planning process, we was also involved in strategic research for the various Business Groups.
We facilitated the re-design of the in- scope processes into best practice models. In partnership with Client company, we helped to define a new strategic planning process, a target setting process that institutes targets around key business drivers that hold people accountable, and an operational plan that was re-designed to shorten the cycle time and to allow for a capacity assessment to better allocate resources. In the end, the operating plan was completed in the designated year for the company’s Board of Directors meeting.