PA CONSULTING is going from strength to strength. Last month, the firm posted a 47.4 percent increase in profits to £24.1 million ($39 million) on revenues of £277 million, helped in no small part by a reorganisation in ownership. The firm has also picked up two accolades in the UK Management Consultancies Association (MCA) Best Management Practice Award. These two awards, like the overall winner Coverdale, demonstrate a rare opportunity to gauge client satisfaction in a management-consulting project.
According to Bruce Petter, executive director of the MCA, the awards recognise the best examples of management innovation, 'in many instances against what appear overwhelming odds and to highlight the role played by our members'.
PA's project in the human resources (HR) arena dealt with the post-merger HR environment of leading UK financial institution Lloyds TSB and included the delicate issue of reduction in head count. The goal of the project was to produce a lower cost base and create a more efficient department that treated staff as customers in an environment where HR was an integral part of Lloyds TSB's business strategy. The measure of success was how well staff viewed the operation of the department.
An internal team developed a series of models, which aimed to save the bank £7.4 million. Lloyds TSB and PA decided upon a structure that covered six key areas: strategy and policy, personnel resource management, customer service management, supply chain management, personnel systems and process management, and commercial management. The structure lead to the formation of a personnel call centre, which would be able to deal with an anticipated 50,000 calls a year. The department was also given a customer satisfaction measurement tool, which measures the perception of quality of the HR department in the eyes of the staff. This now remains as an integral part of the bank's HR department.
According to Bridget Skelton, the PA management group member who worked on the project, supporting the bank through the change was a significant task. 'They had very ambitious visions and goals and they needed to keep the right balance between these goals and their day-to-day business,' she said.
PA helped the bank combine disparate personnel departments in individual business units. The result was a primary factor in the reduction of the bank's HR budget by £5 million last year and the total saving of £7.4 million is on target for the end of 1999. Of the total, £100,000 in annual savings is a direct result of using a centralised call centre. Personnel director at Lloyds TSB Paul Turner said the bank was striving to become a world leader in HR. 'We appointed a customer relationship manager for the first time. We need to balance the needs of the business with the needs of the customer,' he said. The bank is continuing its work with PA to build a department that is recognised internationally.
The consultancy's second award was for a massive upgrade of the IT infrastructure used by the National Health Service (NHS) in Scotland. The existing General Practitioner National System (GPASS) provided GPs and practice staff access to basic administration tools that covered tasks such as prescription printing. With UK governmental plans to overhaul health service provision, the current Scottish IT system was seen as cumbersome and outdated. The new system would have to cope with 4,000 GP users in 850 practices and incorporate the legacy system. It needed to be fully integrated, providing support for patient and clinical records, patient consultation, appointments booking, clinical management and reporting. To ensure all aspects were covered, a joint team was set up, with initial project management responsibility held by PA. The consultancy also provided the bulk of the resource but as the project advanced, PA staff were replaced by health service staff.
GPs were involved in the system development at all stages and the implementation spanned a two-year period, documented to ensure that ongoing maintenance was feasible. According to PA, the interactive development was one of the mainstays of the project. Using a Windows environment, the new system has features, such as a warning for GPs about potentially dangerous drug combinations or interactions. It has reduced paper levels, increased the accessibility and quality of patients notes and prescribing, offers an e-mail service to GPs and also access to the most cutting-edge clinical information on the Internet. The success was measured in part by the shortened rollout, from five to two years.
Government Health Minister Sam Galbraith commented that the system 'lifted the burden of administration' from doctors and now enabled patients to 'access healthcare in a way that is more convenient to the way that they live their lives'.
GPASS Development Director Martin Irving referred to the new system as one of the most powerful clinical tools for primary care and demonstrated a move from trying to catch up with the competition to overtaking them.
'It improved patient care and also gave a reduction in GP bureaucracy, which allows them to give more help to patients,' he said. 'The old system had some powerful functionality but the user interface was prohibitive when getting the best out of it. We can now unlock some of those features.'
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