The problem
Where the time was going
A sports channel set out to find waste in the work it had stopped noticing. The first place to look was human resources, where the paperwork for a newly hired employee passed through the hands of 14 different people. The handoffs created delays, and roughly 40 percent of the time a new employee's file carried major errors.
The bigger prize sat in the advertising sales department, which brings in about half of the channel's revenue. The same instinct that fixed the hiring paperwork pointed at the larger flow of sales work, where errors and rework were quietly eating into results.
What we modeled
Mapping the process, then testing the fix
Rather than have outsiders grade the work, the channel trained its own people to model their processes, see where work bunched up, and where staff sat idle. Six human resources employees learned to build the models and then tested changes in simulation before putting them into practice.
The fix in hiring was simple once the flow was visible: have the hiring manager gather the new employee's key information up front, instead of leaving human resources to chase it later. With that working, the same modeling approach was carried into the advertising sales department to redesign how the revenue work flowed.
The result
The proof, and the payoff
In human resources, collecting information up front cut the error rate on new-hire files from about 40 percent to 1 percent, and shortened the time it took to complete the paperwork. The employees who built the models found the answers themselves, which made the changes stick.
The advertising sales overhaul was far larger. The department realized about $64 million in immediate savings, and roughly $190 million in total savings over time, from a four-week initiative built on the team's own modeling work.
- $64M
- saved immediately in ad sales
- $190M
- saved over time in ad sales
- 40% to 1%
- fewer errors on new-hire files
Part of our work in services.