Principality was introduced to Nuqleus from XTAQ and, according to Dave Mills, "We realised that this would do the job for us. We did look at another organisation but we wanted something that we could implement quickly, that would start giving us results immediately and, importantly, fitted what we wanted to pay." We did look at another organisation but we wanted something that we could implement quickly, that would start giving us results immediately and, importantly, fitted what we wanted to pay." Nuqleus was rolled out initially in a pilot exercise to demonstrate the kind of benefits it could deliver and to prove the concept. As Dave Mills says, "We studied the savings that each department would get from implementing Nuqleus. This justified its purchase and enabled us to start rolling its use out to other areas of the Society like Member Services. " From the pilot programme in December 2003, Nuqleus was rolled out into the Customer Contact area in January 2004 and in March the same year was deployed across the Further Lending area.The Role of Nuqleus
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We studied the savings that each department would get from implementing Nuqleus. This justified its purchase and enabled us to start rolling its use out to other areas of the 
Society like Member Services.
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From this foundation Principality has set up a number of initiatives to improve its processes and products to generate a better return for its members. As Dave Mills explains, "Looking at high level reports via the system's dashboard we can view trends and see at a glance what is going on within departments. That information is available across the whole organisation."
Nuqleus is used within Principality to provide robust and accurate information for the balanced business scorecard as a basis for decision making. The business scorecard balances financial success with processes that create future value through investment in customers, suppliers, employees, processes, technology and innovation.
Nuqleus has been instrumental in a number of initiatives, including task and role analysis and the actual cost of certain jobs. Using Nuqleus as a workload tracker, assessing the right length of time to do a particular job, capacity and resource planning are more effective. As Dave Mills points out, "One quick task/role analysis enabled us to save £12,000 by recognising that we had the wrong grade in a certain role."
Another way in which Nuqleus adds value is in performance management by providing objective measures of performance that support the appraisal process, which gives the Society a better way of managing teams.
One recently launched initiative, the "On-call initiative" which is a way of organising resource levels across different areas of the business, has led to a policy of cross-training individuals to accommodate peaks and troughs of activity in different areas. Dave Mills again; "We aim to deploy appropriately trained staff into different areas of the business, maximising the Society's return on the human resource as well as providing people with new skills and variety in their jobs. Based on the data already gathered it is estimated that this alone will deliver a tangible benefit of £55,000 over three years as we won't have to take on extra staff to cope with spikes in business, or have staff being unproductive at quiet times."
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Not only are efficiencies to be made in payroll savings, but Nuqleus has enabled Principality to make improvements in a number of processes, almost as a by-product of having the software in place. In the same way, Nuqleus has been used to understand the current mortgage application process and the data has provided Principality with the ability to model it to measure potential efficiencies. In short, as Dave Mills says, "Nuqleus gives us the power of quoting from a known source that is trusted."
Implementing any tool and methodology with the potential impact of Nuqleus does require the support of the whole organisation. Principality found, like any company facing a new way of measuring performance, that there was some initial resistance. Dave Mills realised that the answer was to position the tool to highlight the benefits that it would bring to each particular department. "Stressing the benefits in relation to the demands of the manager as a tool to support their arguments and find ways of improving efficiency within their department soon bought management on-board."
The 'Meerkat' Syndrome
Shock tactics were used by Dave Mills and his team in a couple of instances, especially when people had become accustomed to Nuqleus and were even a bit blasé about its impact.
"To shake people out of their complacency we broke out a number of departments to show how much work gets done in an hour."
The results were presented to show graphically how much of the hour was spent doing process related work and how much on 'non-work' – such as training, administration, meetings etc.
The results showed that one department spent 28 minutes an hour on process-related work, compared to 55 minutes in another department. This gave rise to what Dave calls the "meerkat" syndrome as people popped their heads up to ask more and more questions.
It also led to the reclassification of certain parts of the process, such as meetings, and refocused people towards the value each task or process delivered to the society.
Delivering Tangible and Intangible Benefits
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Deploying Nuqleus within Principality meant that the Society could also benefit from the skills and expertise of the people at XTAQ, something Dave Mills acknowledges. "We have a good relationship with XTAQ. They have been most proactive in our implementation of the call centre product. The consistency of the support we have received from the technical staff in particular has meant that, while we are now self-sufficient, we do call on XTAQ for training."
Deriving the kinds of benefits that Principality has from its use of Nuqleus does not carry a massive technology overhead, as Dave Mills explains, "We already had SQL Server 2000 in place within the Society, which meant that Nuqleus was appropriate for our environment - so we simply purchased Nuqleus and the necessary SQL Server licences."
Adoption and use of Nuqleus among its customers is practically viral. It is often implemented in a pilot to judge its impact on one project. The potential value of the information that Nuqleus delivers is very quickly recognised and its use soon spreads across an organisation.
As Dave Mills concludes, "Nuqleus quickly delivers both tangible and intangible benefits. The key to using it effectively is to provide as many hooks as possible, so that people can't possibly think of getting data to make decisions without Nuqleus. That way we ensure that our decisions are based on facts and all work to the benefit of the Society and our members."
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