2024 Summer Best Practice Showcase (Virtual)

2024 Planning Awards: Michelle Adshead at VitalityHealth

Michelle led a pioneering project, promoting work-life balance by empowering employees to choose their shifts. Positive feedback ensued, prompting the implementation of a shift swap feature for enhanced efficiency. Work-life balance scores provided valuable insights, demonstrating the organisation’s commitment to employee well-being. Michelle’s adaptability and vision earned widespread acclaim.

2024 Planning Awards: Kirsty Ritchie at Wheatley Housing

Kirsty has led on optimisation, by removing inefficient tasks to allow more value-add activities like extending the planning window and gaining the benefits like planning for recruitment. Her focus on longer term planning ensures that peak is now well managed and easier for all. Kirsty is well respected and is committed not only to continuous learning & development but also to sharing skills and new learning with her peers.

2024 Improvement & Quality Awards: Benenden Health Be Smart Programme

Benenden Health’s Be Smart programme revolutionises healthcare service delivery by fostering a culture of continuous improvement and member satisfaction. Shifting from centralised change management, it empowers individuals across the organisation through a network of champions, covering 75% of business functions. This initiative has yielded significant results, including £165K savings and a 441% increase in return-on-investment by 2023, demonstrating the effectiveness of embedding a culture of proactive change and engagement across all levels.

2024 Data, Analytics & Insight Awards: The AA Forecasting Team

The AA’s forecasting team has been pivotal in optimising breakdown services through a predictive model linking weather data to breakdowns, improving resource allocation and response times. Their analysis has driven digital advancements, streamlining operations and enhancing customer interactions by filtering simpler queries online. They also evaluate economic and market trends for strategic planning. This work ensures The AA adapts efficiently to customer needs and maintains leadership in service excellence, highlighting the team’s essential role in operational and strategic decisions.

2024 Data, Analytics & Insight Awards: Steven Hunter at Hiscox

At Hiscox, Steven transformed corporate planning by adopting advanced methodologies and improving data management. His benchmarking efforts and use of the Minto Pyramid Principle for communication enhanced strategic operations in the UK. Steven’s initiative underscored the importance of innovation and foresight, driving Hiscox towards operational excellence and sustainable growth. This case highlights the significance of strategic planning and data-driven decision-making in the competitive business landscape.

2024 Data, Analytics & Insight Awards: Chantal Lowson at Macmillan Cancer Support

Chantal’s leadership journey at Macmillan Cancer Support showcases her transformative approach to management. Transitioning from a single Data Analyst Insights team to leading three specialist teams, she exemplifies embracing change, fostering trust, and leveraging technology for organisational improvement. Her strategy prioritises people, performance, and continuous learning, demonstrating the impact of multifunctional teams and data-driven decisions. Chantal’s story is a testament to the power of leadership in navigating challenges and driving substantial business improvements.

2024 Partnership Awards: Business Systems & Motorway

Through partnering with Business Systems to implement Calabrio, Motorway has experienced significant improvements in their WFM and Planning operations. These include substantial improvements to adherence, equivalent to 30 FTE per week, a considerable increase in the efficiency of internal processes such as holiday requests, and the fostering of an overall more positive work environment resulting in greater employee satisfaction and improved customer service. Through innovative problem-solving and dedicated teamwork, they overcame challenges in integrating systems, delivering significant operational improvements and financial benefits. Shared goals and a willingness to “walk in their customers’ shoes” were key elements of this successful partnership – we understand that Neil did get a good price for his car!

2024 Partnership Awards: CMS and Student Loans

This strong, responsive, and mature partnership has delivered the first ever integration of the OPX back-office system with NICE, and the first integration that NICE has had with a back-office system. Student Loans now has full visibility of staff across the estate, allowing for the dynamic allocation of staff to different roles based on changing needs and operational priorities. Frequent and transparent communication at many levels, and easy access for the SLC team with CMS developers really helped to deliver a solution that meets their customers’ needs. ROI is very impressive, with £925k in year one and savings of up to £3.6m per annum.

2024 Partnership Awards: Davies & TJX

In a strategic collaboration, global retailer TJX and Davies revolutionised employee onboarding, focussing on decentralised training and soft skills. Incorporating digital learning and aligning with cultural values, they achieved a 300% investment return, which included a reduction in the glide path to productivity in the contact centre from 8 weeks to 6 weeks. This partnership not only enhanced employee engagement and customer service for TK Maxx and HomeSense but also established new benchmarks for training excellence, an increase in empathy and rapport with customers with a positive impact oncustomer loyalty.

2024 Partnership Awards: NICE and BT Group

Driven by a goal to discover whether NICE’s NEVA technology could be used to support scheduling activities, NICE and BT Group worked together as one team to design a solution. By adopting NICE’s NEVA technology, they were able to reduce the number of interdependent systems, remove transactional work, and create new skills and career development opportunities for schedulers to learn robotics. This venture was built on mutual respect, open communication, and shared goals, and created a new use case for NEVA which works for BT Group and which NICE can share with their customers.

2024 Partnership Awards: QStory & Jet2holidays

A mature and established partnership between QStory and Jet2holidays delivered an extremely successful intraday automation implementation, which has been a great enabler for Jet2holidays homeworking model. Once they had a better visibility of their absence, QStory supported Jet2holidays with the establishment of a centralised absence management function SMART. The QStory policy of retaining 30% of developer time to be available to work on customer requests has been a real enabler for this change, ROI and stakeholder impact has been positive. Jet2holidays are so delighted that QStory were awarded one of their coveted supplier awards.

2024 Partnership Awards: Sabio & DHL

In a strategic partnership with Sabio, DHL Express UK embarked on transforming its resource planning and employee engagement, addressing staffing inconsistencies and inefficiencies. By overhauling their Workforce Management system, focussing on accuracy, optimisation, and schedule flexibility, they achieved significant improvements in forecast accuracy, resource efficiency, and employee satisfaction. Sabio took time to understand DHL, and their service goals, and worked hard to support and upskill the team at DHL. These efforts led to marked cost savings, showcasing the value of leveraging technology and innovation in the logistics industry.

2024 Partnership Awards: SVL and Hoover Candy

A consultative approach from SVL identified that Calabrio would provide Hoover Candy with a tool that not only reduced manual processes but also delivered self-service functionality for agents to have more control over their schedules. SVL worked closely with Hoover Candy to plan the roadmap forthe roll out to focus on areas that would get buy in from internal stakeholders early in the process and to resolve technical issues with some of the key interfaces. Open communication and a deep understanding of their clients’ needs has been key to the success of this relationship.

2024 Partnership Awards: Tambla and Leeds Bradford Airport

Collaboration and joint ownership of the plan has been key to the success of the implementation of a WFM solution, tailored to the aviation industry. This has supported LBA’s passenger growth and service delivery expectations and enabled a consolidation and centralisation of their planning and forecasting functions. There is now a clear view of workload and staffing levels, this has enabled data-led decision making to improve operational performance, queues in security have been reduced and SLAs with airlines are being met, all helping the airport to bounce back post pandemic.

2024 Partnership Awards: Verint & Vitality Health

This collaborative and professional partnership has revolutionised back office operations and enhanced customer experiences at Vitality Health. The deployment of Verint Operational Manager has given visibility, streamlined processes, improved data analytics, and facilitated better demand planning. The outcome was not only a substantial increase in operational efficiency but also a significant reduction in customer complaint resolution times, reduced from two months to 72 hours. A strong sense of professionalism and a governance framework has been key to delivering and demonstrating the success of this implementation.