• About Barclays Mortgages
• The Need for Information
• Early Days with Nuqleus
• The Next Step
• The Quantifiable Benefits
• The XTAQ Partnership

About Barclays Mortgages

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Download the Full Case Study (PDF, 190k)

Barclays Mortgages, based in Leeds and employing 850 staff, is the centralised, self-contained mortgage provision arm of Barclays Bank.

It handles all elements of the business including marketing, product development, underwriting and customer service.

The Need for Information

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Barclays Mortgages has increased productivity year upon year and needed to keep this momentum going.

The firm's programme involved aligning the organisation and it's measurement systems to a business strategy, key customer processes and a culture that placed ownership of decision-making and responsibility for results within multi-skilled front-end teams.

Barclays Mortgages placed significant emphasis on behaviours and a consultative approach to change. Nuqleus was chosen to provide the meaningful management information needed within teams to achieve a balanced approach to set and monitor continuous improvement goals.

Early Days with Nuqleus

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As a first step, Barclays Mortgages installed a small Nuqleus system in their Internal Distribution Department.

This department is where incoming mortgage cases were scanned into the FileNet document imaging system.

Initially the benefit of Nuqleus was found in providing information that helped to make overall performance faster, more efficient and in considerably reducing the unit cost per case.

The use of this information on an ongoing basis, to understand the process and to drive change, saw a cost reduction of over 35% per image along with a continually rising graph of service level improvement.

The Next Step

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Having seen the efficiencies and cost savings that a localised Nuqleus system could offer, Pat Flanagan, Barclays Mortgages Service Delivery Director, decided to extend Nuqleus into the Underwriting Department with an initial installation of 20 users.

The criteria for success of this "next step" installation was as follows:

• To obtain information to increase operational efficiency in order to cope with anticipated increases in business volumes
• To bridge the gap with current in house management information systems
• To obtain information to facilitate the automation and streamlining of manual processes
• To give a greater understanding of processes performed
• To gain information on the barriers and impediments to the process
• To provide performance measures to be implemented throughout all operational areas to give consistency of reporting
• To provide information on which to measure staff performance

The Quantifiable Benefits

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Barclays Mortgages said of Nuqleus:

• "Nuqleus has enabled us to achieve a significant increase in productivity within our Underwriting Department. Immediate gains were as high as 33% and as a result there has been a reduction of cost even though business levels are rising steadily."
  
  
• "In our Mortgage Services Department, all processes and tasks have been identified and measures put in place - this previously unobtainable information is now being analysed to improve processes within the area."
  
  
• "In our Imaging and Post Room facility we have reduced the cost per image by over 35%, along with a continually improving service level."

The XTAQ Partnership

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When asked about their impressions of XTAQ as a business partner, Barclays Mortgages had this to say:

• "XTAQ have shown their commitment to help us achieve our goals and objectives and have provided continuous support and enhancements to our system. They have provided us with excellent training and advice on various aspects of the software ensuring that we can, in turn, provide an excellent service to our customers."
  
  
• "Nuqleus has enabled us to fully understand and plan our workloads effectively. We made a conscious decision to place the ownership of Nuqleus within our teams who work with an excellent team of internal Information Analysts, who are skilled in Change Management and Communication. We really think that is the formula for sustaining the success that Nuqleus can bring to processing operations."