The review started with diagnostic activity and focused on mapping the current state process. This highlighted some common themes including high levels of waste activity across the process, a lack of clarity on roles and responsibilities and a lack of standardisation in ways of working.
In order to improve the process, the purpose was clearly defined and used to agree the redesign principles to which the future state process should adhere. These principles included improving communication and visibility of enquiries across teams, and standardising the process to reduce touch time.
As the project group went through the steps of Ideal and Future State Process Redesign they identified a number of quick wins to implement almost immediately. These included; increasing resource and extending working hours and weekend work in the peak April period, introduction of an enquiries tracker to allow the team to track and monitor more effectively, review of all arrears letters and introduction of a suite of standard letters and offering a £25 incentive for full payment amongst others.
In addition a number of longer term changes such as moving to a one-stage enquiry process, working on legal case files case by case, rather than as a batch, and rationalising arrears codes were identified.