Unlocking >£20M in Increased Gross Margin at a Major Health Insurer
The issue
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Shrinking customer base
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13 legacy books and numerous policy variants causing customer and staff confusion
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Operationally complex to manage – high cost to serve
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Existing proposition and pricing created trigger points for customer exit
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Customers not segmented by value
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No differentiated renewal or save strategies
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Not pricing for risk or maximised value retention
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Poor customer journey: passed from function to function, advisors not empowered
Solution
- Designed and executed a pricing, product and service migration of all policyholders to one new modular product
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- Developed new proposition which drove retention of high value customers and higher return from lower value customers
- Built in upgrade/downgrade ‘right-size’ choices to mitigate competitor switching
- Created pricing engine enabling all business to move to NCD-based policies and set renewal premiums to optimise gross margin
- Cut expected IT lead time to launch from 12 to 3 months
- Changed customer communications and management processes to de-risk customer disruption and loss
- Engaged Legal and regulator on ‘automatic renewal’ plans throughout
- Piloted the transition on 2 highest lapse-risk books to ensure error-free process and no adverse increase in lapse rates
The results
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Exceeded the £20Mpa gross margin improvement target
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Reduced customer loss by 25%
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Improved operating cost ratio from 30% to 16% with greatly improved IT flexibility
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Excellent customer and FSA feedback
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Successfully rolled out from personal to SME & Group schemes
Find out how we can solve the key challenges facing your organisation
Leveraging effective negotiation to deliver up to 50% more value for a major international airport
The issue
- Frontline ‘negotiators’ not trained – Teams lacked clarity on effective, strategic negotiations
- Power balance leaning to suppliers – Although the airport had leverage, suppliers secured favourable contract terms
- Costs above benchmark – Costs were identifed as 20% to 40% above benchmark for critical success
Solution
- Benchmarking & Research
- Gained clarity on the as-is situation. Conducted supplier forum
- Build Strategy
- Tenders, direct negotiations, demand management
- Deliver Negotitations
- Reduced costs, and aligned supplier contracts with strategic goals
- Train Stakeholders
- Equipped them with best practices to ensure long-term value in contracts
- Operating Model Change
- Ensured cost savings are locked in the organisation for the long term
- Build Future Roadmap
- So the organisation can use the training and model to deliver further savings
The results
- Training and Development of Client Team
- Empowered the client team with strategic procurement and negotiation skills, resulting in more balanced contracts and enhanced decision-making capabilities
- Client – Supplier Power Dynamic Changed
- Rebalanced power dynamics, shifting leverage back to the client and achieving more favourable contract terms
- Cost Reductions Delivered
- Achieved over $7 million (AUD) in savings and improved negotiation outcomes by up to 50%
Find out how we can solve the key challenges facing your organisation
5-year strategic plan to uplift recurring revenue by 80% through organic growth within four years
The issue
- Our clients was experiencing significant changes in the largest customer segment
- Leading to a material decline in client revenues
- EBITDA fell below business case targets
Solution
- Sized the UK medical consumables market for 10 segment, including private acute, NHS, care homes
- Created a vision for the organisation in collaboration with the client senior leadership team
- Shortlisted target segments to drive organic growth
- Developed win strategies and business model options for each segment
- Identified approaches to extend treatment and care pathways into a patient’s home
- Developed a 5-year financial plan including revenue projections and investments required
The results
- Identified multiple growth pathways to reach 80% revenue growth within four years
- Developed a balanced framework of win strategies to drive incremental revenue and EBITDA growth
- Generated a 5-year strategic plan, go-to-market launch and implementation roadmap to capture the identified incremental income
Find out how we can solve the key challenges facing your organisation
Award-Winning Procurement Transformation Programme
Background & Challenge
After a challenging year where the Covid-19 pandemic impacted activities and financials, our client launched an ambitious strategic initiative focused on becoming more efficient, concentrating on growth and delivering sustainable value for consumers and doctors.
The pandemic exposed an over-reliance on a ‘single’ income source. All elective activity (e.g. joint replacements, cataracts), the primary income source, was halted overnight, but a high fixed cost base remained. As a response, Curzon Consulting was engaged to design and deliver a Procurement Transformation Programme.
Overall Approach
Over nine months, we took a pragmatic, agile and “together” approach to accelerate benefit delivery, particularly in high spend / high complex clinical spend categories
- Conducted a full review and defined a new procurement organisation aimed at maximising value to the business
- Conducted a review of the external spending and identified cost savings opportunities within complex medical categories
- Implemented a full strategic programme that delivered multi-million £ cost savings to the business
Our Solution
1 FULL PROCUREMENT ORGANISATION REVIEW
We assessed the existing procurement organisation against eight dimensions and highlighted several data-driven insights
- Quantitatively and qualitatively assessed the procurement team, conducted time analysis, salary benchmark & reviewed performance
- Business partnering and perceived value: Interviewed key business stakeholders across all divisions
- Assessed procurement influence across all spending areas
- Defined and costed new (to-be) procurement organisation
Our Results
- A complete procurement maturity assessment highlighting strengths and weaknesses of the current procurement organisation
- A new procurement organisation was designed, profiled and costed.
- A procurement organisation designed to maximise value to the business and stakeholders
2 FULL EXTERNAL EXPENDITURE OPPORTUNITY ASSESSMENT
We conducted a full opportunity assessment on Ramsay’s external expenditure to define adequate sourcing strategies and identify cost savings opportunities
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- Cleansed, categorised and analysed spend data; Providing full spend transparency.
- Conducted category deep dive for each key medical category, assessed current category management and supplier management
- Defined adequate sourcing strategy, identified opportunities and sourcing levers
- Identified and quantified savings potential via internal and external benchmarking
Our Results
- Category strategy for all key medical categories
- Multi-million cost saving opportunities identified
- Prioritised sourcing plan with saving targets by spend categories
- High level 3-year business plan
3 THE IMPLEMENTATION
We implemented procurement transformation and a cost reduction program
- Our methodology was specifically adapted to address demand-side cost optimisation levers. Whilst we addressed a range of spend categories and redesigned the PO, we delivered sizeable benefits in difficult clinical areas such as Orthopaedics.
- A key benefit in orthopaedics came from ensuring the surgeon selected the appropriate implant system (metal or ceramic) to match the patient’s profile (e.g. age, gender).
- Our analysis showed surgeons implanted costly ceramic hip systems in a high percentage of older NHS patients. With fixed NHS reimbursement every incremental switch impacted the bottom line.
- Our insights directly influenced the Orthopaedic Steering Group’s new policy which required surgeons to utilise lower-cost metal hip systems in older NHS patients.
- Fundamentally, a key part of the relationship was to ensure recommendations on cost improvements would not compromise clinical outcomes and patient satisfaction.
Our Results
- Delivered £multi-millions in incremental savings and a new procurement organisation
- Engaged with all key medical stakeholders and instilled a cost-consciousness culture
- Ramsay Health Care UK will benefit from the savings over multiple years
“Curzon helped us obtain the confidence and operational ‘can-do’ to drive incremental savings sooner than we could have expected, and then to push on to best practice performance.
Their skill was in balancing pace of change and the results imperative with the need to take the organisation with them on the journey.
A key achievement was building the necessary collaboration between the many functions that needed to act together to drive benefits in complex clinical spend categories.
Curzon’s strong analytical expertise, and ability help us to take a critical view on the “art of the possible” and bring the team along on the journey to demonstrate benefits delivery was a critical success factor.
The result was a tangible and ongoing commercial win, and a new Procurement Organisation to drive cost leadership, profitability and sustainability going forward”
Peter Allen
Chief Financial Officer
Ramsay Health Care UK
Contact our Procurement service line lead,Stephane Boroncelli, to find out more
Driving market focused resource allocation decisions
The issue
- A business unit of a global speciality chemicals producer supplying catalysts for industrial applications to multiple markets across all geographies
- Capacity constrained and being challenged to improve overall business profitability
- Shared manufacturing assets serving multiple market-facing business units
- Upcoming regulatory changes required product recipe changes with implications on the existing production process
- Limited attempts to address supply constraints in an effective manner, with over-stated demand and poor sales & operations planning disciplines
Solution
- Establish & exploit true production capacity of existing assets:
- Identification and elimination of bottlenecks in supply chain & productions
- Drive for OEE in existing plant (batch size & sequencing, down time & maintenance etc.)
- Identify options to reallocate capacity use to more profitable customers
- Identification of customers & volumes yielding below average contribution allowing for either renegotiation or re-allocation
- Establish cross-market segment view of long-term demand
- Markets & functions created fact base & presented in facilitated cross functional sessions to build cross markets view & build priorities for overall business
- Revamped S&OP including product profitability of prospect pipeline to ensure capacity is utilised for highest financial returns
The results
- CAPEX spend avoidance of £18m with extrapolated implications to the whole division of c. £100m
- Improved joint-management understanding on the levers of capacity & profitability, supported by a cross-market decision making governance process to make data based trade-offs
- Increased production capacity through de-bottlenecking (e.g. batch sequence & maintenance optimisation) with potential resulting contribution uplift of ~ £ 10m p.a.
- 235 tonnes of unlocked capacity through selective elimination of low margin product variants and Sales re-alignment
An award-winning team
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Framing the requirements for developing a customer-centric approach and service model
The issue
- With a re-focusing of the organization on energy transition and a strategic objective to grow B2C Mobility and Convenience revenue streams, the current, largely B2B, customer care service model was increasingly being asked to meet needs beyond core capabilities and capacity, putting a strain on service and cost to serve
- With limitations on internal capability, business units have chosen to outsource services, leading to a proliferation of suppliers, models and customer experiences
- No cohesive corporate narrative of the customer promise exists and the internal focus was on fixing service failings to reduce the noise within the organisation
- The need for a future-proof operating model that is aligned to the projected steep growth in the B2C customer base was recognized
- Gaining an appreciation of leading external practices in customer care delivery was considered an essential input to framing the right future state operating model
Solution
- Current state assessment of customer care and customer centricity capabilities against a set of standard dimensions to establish current maturity and points of commonality or difference across business groups
- Established current state maturity of each business against an industry reference benchmark
- Developed design criteria to frame a future operating model and as a reference against which to benchmark external leading practices
- Undertook competitor and cross-sector benchmarking to identify areas of Customer Care differentiation, including desktop research, expert input and interviews with Customer leaders within major organisations (both B2B and B2C).
- Defined the priority levers to drive improved customer-centricity and articulated the linkages between the dimensions
- Developed an initial roadmap to outline how the Customer Care capability should evolve
The results
- Mobilised the senior stakeholders to want to move beyond fixing performance failings in Customer Care to evolving a business-wide Customer-centric operating model
- Delivered a customer centric maturity assessment across three representative businesses against a series of capability levers
- Multi-industry, international benchmarking exercise, highlighting customer-centricity maturity and leading practices
- Identification of priority levers to increase customer centricity maturity and approach options to achieve a viable system model
- Development of a roadmap to move beyond operational fixes to a strategically customer centric approach
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Designing and deciding digital CX route-map & the priority omnichannel service investment to realise it
The issue
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Having delivered the ‘brilliant basics’ part of a CX transformation programme, the bank needed to define a digital CX design to deliver a signature, differentiating experience
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A pressure point was that customers’ expectations of doing their banking anywhere/ anytime/on any device were growing, and the ground had been lost on this to digital challenger banks
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The bank was also in sharp cost control mode so it was critical that digital CX investment choices were well evidenced, validated and focussed
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We had to answer the question: where and how to prioritise omnichannel service investment to deliver a competitive digital CX?
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With many competing candidates for digitising customer service across the existing product portfolio, we had to be clear about what omnichannel improvements would realise greatest value from a CX and commercial perspective
What we did
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Reviewed draft digital strategy and developed investment prioritisation criteria to focus CX and omnichannel service design choices
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Defined design principles to guide the development of Omnichannel capability
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Competitor and cross-sector benchmarking to identify key areas of digital CX differentiation
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Evaluated and ranked CX/service design options against agreed prioritisation criteria and ability to leverage existing IT capability and technology roadmap
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Flesh-out of to-be CX/service design with benefit cases supporting the investment priorities identified
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Produced and validated a sequenced digital CX/omnichannel implementation route map
The results
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Delivered new digital CX/omnichannel design with 10 key touchpoint changes, each with benefits ranging from £3.5M to £9M annually in a fully realised state
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Pragmatic, phased change route map adopted, which drove early cost savings and new customer acquisition uplift by addressing highest priority CX pain points, allowing subsidisation of next phases
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80% of the technology capabilities required to deliver the route map were covered by leverage of existing or planned future (and already budgeted) technology assets and upgrades
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Delivering greater procurement efficiencies for a construction company
The issue
- £1billion division split into 6 semi-autonomous business units, spending £450m per annum on materials and sub-contracted services
- Each business unit under revenue and margin pressure especially those dependant on public sector work
- By re-establishing good procurement practices a modest 3% savings target was agreed upon, the stretch being that the full cash saving had to be delivered in-year
- No single picture of procurement spend or performance compared to the external market
- Procurement & supply chain savings were already baked into business unit budgets and there was pressure from plc to deliver over and above this
Solution
- Created a definitive ‘spend cube’ and with it a single set of numbers
- Completed a top-down and bottom-up analysis of spend at the detailed category/supplier level and agreed impactable spend
- Created and executed a prioritised implementation plan closely monitoring and recording the benefits as they are realised
- Redesigned the P&SC organisation bringing in the necessary skills and expertise as required
The results
- In-year cash savings of £8million with an exit run rate of £10million per annum
- New operating model fully installed and driving benefits (sustainability)
- Benefits fully traceable within business unit P&L
An award-winning team
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Operational excellence at a key site for a marine engineering products division of a global organisation
The issue
- An engineering, fabrication & assembly facility supplying deck machinery equipment to the marine industry, was severely underinvested in, with old facilities & equipment and remote from Group HQ
- Seen as a failing site with internal customers losing trust in its ability to deliver
- Disconnected planning and production functions causing late delivery and high costs
- No effective performance management system in place to drive improvements
- Very high inventories due to a lack of control of demand and production priorities
- Intention to transfer products in from Scandinavia and establish a low-cost supply centre of excellence
Solution
- Evaluation of the primary issues and development of a site transformation plan
- Focused on OTIF as the critical performance metric; established cross-functional planning with short interval control to manage demand and delivery to promise
- Improved data integrity, reset planning parameters and re-established ERP system use
- Re-organised operations to improve flow through the factory and to establish schedule adherence
- Implemented practical lean operational disciplines centred around PDCA
- Addressed excess inventory, control of stock, kitting and warehousing operations
- Established effective performance management across all functions
- Coached management to develop capability and establish sustainable improvement
The results
- Delivery performance improvement OTIF from 14% to 95% within six months
- 45% reduction of inventories within one year
- Jump in recovered factory revenues from effective demand management & increased delivery to commitments
- Engaged and productive workforce with a clear understanding of what was required of them
- Successful capital upgrade completed while continuing to supply
- Site was established as a Centre of Excellence for deck machinery and achieved Group award for excellence
- Asked to repeat a similar exercise at another site in the Far East
An award-winning team