Nuqleus has been used to provide Scottish Equitable with valuable performance metrics since 1999.
About Scottish Equitable
Scottish Equitable has grown steadily in size and expertise since its foundation in 1831.
It is now recognised as one of the most experienced and dependable companies in the financial sector. In 1994, Scottish Equitable became part of one of the largest listed insurance companies in the world, the AEGON Group.
Independent industry analysts, Standard & Poor, awarded Scottish Equitable one of its highest ratings of financial strength and noted that this reflects strengths in good operating performance, robust capability and strong competitive position in the UK IFA pensions market. Scottish Equitable was recently named Group Pensions Provider of the Year 2005 by the Financial Adviser Life and Pensions Awards.
Nuqleus has been used to provide Scottish Equitable with valuable performance metrics since 1999.
The Challenge
Maintaining an award-winning position at the heart of the UK’s financial industry has provided Scottish Equitable with its own challenges.
One of which was identified six years ago when Scottish Equitable initially started looking for a measurement tool to calculate process times to provide a view on resourcing requirements. Manually measuring how long it took people to process pieces of work proved time-consuming in itself and was liable to affect the results.
At that time a few companies offered products that promised an automated aproach to measurement. These were invited to demonstrate their solutions to Scottish Equitable.
As a result, Scottish Equitable bought a handful of Nuqleus licences to use within different departments. Lesley O’Neill, manager of Management Information Support at Scottish Equitable explains, “We used Nuqleus on a project basis within different areas of the company to get answers to specific questions such as; why are there long delays in getting work processed? And why do we get a lot of phone calls about this particular product?”
In a short time the use of Nuqleus moved from a project-based tool to an accepted solution for gathering performance metrics. As Lesley points out, “Pretty soon it got to the stage where people wanted to keep it in their departments.”
The Solution
Today, Nuqleus is embedded within a range of different functions and processes within Scottish Equitable.
The applications to which Nuqleus is put to use are wide and varied within Scottish Equitable. Used within call logging and product logging, it is providing informed insight for query analysis. “This gives us better planning and cost allocation.” Says Lesley.
Elsewhere, the Corporate Events department uses it to record every activity that has to be performed to run the company’s corporate and sales events. The auditable, historical data shows the true picture of the timeline required to host an event. It also provides scheduling and work management capabilities for the department. Within the Commissions area of the business Nuqleus is used to provide management information for a whole range of activities, from visits to process quality. The Actuarial area uses Nuqleus for billing purposes.
Nuqleus can measure things that other systems just can’t measure. This can prove a bit of an eye opener.
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As Nuqleus becomes established in different areas, its contribution grows. Data collected over a year or more enables insight into trends and patterns. The list of applications continues to grow, as Lesley O’Neill explains, “Nuqleus can measure things that other systems just can’t measure. This can prove a bit of an eye opener. In one area we identified that more time was spent on meetings than on actual process. Clearly there was a problem in that area, which we were able to address.”
Nuqleus also gathers information on how much time is spent providing management information by Lesley’s own department; “We can allocate how our time is spent by each area, identify who our top customers are and use Nuqleus to recommend ways to solve problems that people may face.”
The flexibility of Nuqleus is highlighted as a particularly important feature. “If we change a process, we can reflect that change within Nuqleus ourselves, quickly and effectively, without involving the IT department.” She explains, “Which is important as we’re using Nuqleus to improve our processes and improve our efficiency.”
Another benefit felt by Scottish Equitable is the accuracy of the information provided by Nuqleus, compared to the previous method of tick-sheets. The consolidated data provided by the manual system meant that inaccuracies were compounded, providing data that was unreliable for decision-making.
Measurement systems such as Nuqleus, particularly performance measurement systems, can be regarded by some employees as intrusive or having an element of “Big Brother” about them. Within Scottish Equitable, as Lesley points out, Nuqleus provides the information that staff use to support their own regular HR performance reviews.
Because the data is gathered as the work is being done, the picture painted is accurate and provides the integrity needed for trusted evaluations.
Working with XTAQ
Working with the team behind Nuqleus at XTAQ over the past six years has proved beneficial to Scottish Equitable.
Lesley O’Neill certainly values the relationship, “XTAQ has supported us throughout the full lifecycle of our involvement with Nuqleus, from the initial project to our extensive use of the system throughout the business today.” She explains, “Initially, we thought of different areas that could potentially benefit from Nuqleus, and the dialogue we had with XTAQ offered up new ideas and changes to enable us to get more value from the product.”
Lesley adds, “It helps that the same people at XTAQ have been working with us. They know a lot about our business now – which makes life easier.”
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