B AT S H A R E D S E R V I C E SC A S E S T U D Y

British American Tobacco Shared Services (BASS) adopt Workware by ActiveOps for back office workforce optimization.

BAT Shared Services (BASS)BASS provide Finance and HR services to 183 BAT operations across the globe, from centers in Romania, Costa Rica and Malaysia. Employing over 1300 staff, BASS have evolved from providing back office to more complex middle office services, contributing to the group’s strategy to improve operating margin through the transformation the Operating Model.

Workware was selected to support BAT to accelerate their transformation ambitions, and mature their Operational Management maturity. BAT Shared Services needed timely, reliable day-to-day measures of efficiency to support them in identify opportunities for operational improvement.

“Being able to actively respond to real-time performance information has had a marked motivating effect on our team leaders and team members. Team leaders now feel ‘in control’ of their areas of responsibility and can make ‘in- flight’ adjustments to meet changing circumstances in work volumes, capacity and availability.

Team member reviews have become more meaningful and frequent supported by accurate and trusted information, highlighting not only best practice but also the ability to set and monitor realistic targets and reward accordingly.”

Business Benefit S U M M A R Y

Within months of using Workware, team managers relied on the real-time performance and capacity data to more effectively manage their operational peaks and leverage scale.

Benefits gained from the Workware Data and Performance Insights:

• Identified latent capacity, that was redeployed to value added activities

• Improved productivity outputs by over 20%

• Significant reduction of paid overtime

• Baseline data provided benchmark performance across teams and centres

• Behavior change in Team Members, through the capture of standard daily activates that mattered to the business

• Global visibility of how processes were operated and where they can be optimised

• Enabled the setting of realistic and measurable incentives

• Engaged and focused teams striving to improve operational efficiencies, not just executing processes

We selected Workware as we were convinced that ActiveOps could solve our immediate requirement for a single and consistent real-time view of operations performance. We were keen to look beyond our initial challenges and explore the depth of solutions and management processes ActiveOps offer, to improve our capacity planning, forecasting to roll out and sustain the benefits across all our service centers.

Jon Evens | Group Head of HR - Corporate Functions

Workware Data Insights. Shining a light on operations…BAT Shared Services first trialed the Workware cloud based solution in 2016. They needed to capture performance data to support the deployment of PWC’s Perform Lean-based framework, that delivers cost savings through changing ways of working, and releasing capacity.

Initially, consolidated spreadsheets and an in-house time tracker were used to support the Perform deployment, to track operations performance. It became clear that a more reliable, real-time measure of efficiency and available capacity was required and Workware was adopted. As a result, management were then able to measure end to end processes and operations performance in real-time, identify spare capacity and quantify the benefits of the Perform development.

Workware Planning InsightsFollowing the success of using Workware Data Insights, BAT is in the process of adopting Workware Planning Insights combined with ActiveOps Active Operations Management (AOM) Methodology.

The combination of Workware Software and AOM will provide longer term, capacity planning and forecasting supported by a consistent management process to:

• Forecast and plan impact and benefits of ongoing operational improvement and transformation initiatives

• Reduce workforce costs, through more accurate workforce capacity requirements

• Proactively manage operational volumes by using predictive analytics, based on historic volumes

• Raise the maturity of manager’s Operational Management capabilities

• Monitor benefits achieved, and look for opportunities to mature operational efficiencies

The intention is to roll-out Workware and AOM to all global service centers to provide a single source of performance, capacity planning and forecasting information backed by a consistent management process from centre to team, to individual.

ActiveOps – Manage DifferentlySince 2005, ActiveOps has been committed to helping organisations improve their operational efficiency by helping managers and teams deliver their best possible performance. ActiveOps provide cloud based software and services to meet the increasing market demand for back office workforce optimisation.

Workware™, our cloud based SaaS software, is purpose built for the back-office to quantify work and time, measure productivity by efficiently measuring both human and digital robotic resources in real-time. It enables capacity to be optimised, reducing costs and improving service delivery across diverse and complex back office operations.

The Active Operations Management (AOM™) method enables ‘teams of teams’ to collaborate and sustain higher productivity through a consistent management framework. Better communication and improved control results in higher staff engagement and reduced stress.

ActiveOps operates across the globe from offices in the UK, Australia, India, South Africa and North America supporting back office and shared service operations in financial services, shared service centres, government organisations and Business Process Outsourcers (BPOs).

Website: activeops.com

B AT S H A R E D S E R V I C E SC A S E S T U D Y