Back Office (Montrusco)

PROBLEM

The CEO of Montrusco Bolton compared their operations with industry benchmarks and realized that increasing the size of the back office would have resulted in a higher cost of operations than benchmark for investment managers. The back office was already working overtime regularly. 

APPROACH

With cognitive analysis, Cognitive Group was able to analyze how employees process information, what problems were encountered and the impacts on operation costs. It was discovered that 50% of the workload in the back office was due to subtle but preventable human errors from the front office. Many of these errors had not been detected with traditional means of observation.  Thirty causes of errors were identified. Of those 30 causes, 5 error types represented 80% of errors.

RESULTS

Cognitive Group recommended fixes to prevent the most common and critical errors. For example, having the new stock prepared a day ahead to prevent input errors, etc. In less than 4 months, instead of hiring more employees as requested originally by the line manager, Montrusco was able to reduce their number of employees by 30%.

EXPERTISE USED 

• COGNITIVE ANALYSIS
• USER RESEARCH
• PROCESS REDESIGN