We are beyond thrilled to announce that Xcentuate has been awarded Partner of the Year at the prestigious ActiveOps Capacity 24 Awards, held last night at Battersea Power Station, London. This special recognition is a testament to our dedication to delivering exceptional operational performance and best practices.

We extend our sincere thanks to Richard Jeffery, Bhavesh Vaghela, Kuljit Bawa, Paula Brown, and the entire ActiveOps team for this incredible honor. Our partnership is truly transformative, and we are proud to collaborate with such an innovative and dynamic organization.

A heartfelt thank you goes out to our fantastic clients. Their trust and support have been instrumental in our success, and we look forward to continuing to deliver outstanding results together.

Lastly, we are immensely grateful to our talented team of strategists, technologists, implementers, innovators, and planners. This achievement is a direct result of thier hard work and commitment. We couldn’t have done it without them—thank you!

To everyone who continues to champion and support us, we deeply appreciate your belief in Xcentuate and our mission.

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Michael will be in the field working alongside client teams mentoring, managing and monitoring progress to ensure smooth operation and transition.

With a 20 year track record working in Financial Services with RBS under his belt, including managing Teams, Clients, and Transformational Change Projects, Michael is passionate about Operational Performance, Continuous Improvement and helping businesses leverage and sustain productivity benefits. He holds the ActiveOps Level 3 Coaching Certificate and will utilise his knowledge and experience to enable businesses reach their goals. He also holds a Certificate of Management from the Chartered Management Institute.

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Published in Business Plus January 2023. George Morahan

Productivity at financial services institutions in Ireland and the UK peaked during the pandemic but has slumped by almost 20%, according to a new report from workplace management software company ActiveOps.

The OpsTracker report analysed insights from over 30,000 employees in Ireland, the UK, Australia, New Zealand and North America to identify challenges for back-office operations at financial institutions.

It found that operational performance was optimised across all regions during the pandemic as organisations allocated significant resources to overcome the challenges involved in setting up remote practices.

OpsIndex measures how well operations are running across a number of metrics (agility, control, effectiveness, efficiency, and focus) to create an overall score in the form of a percentage figures.

In Ireland and the UK the OpsIndex score slumped from 57% at the pandemic peak to just 47.5% in the fourth quarter of 2022 — a drop of 16.7%, with organisations today operating at a significantly lower standard than they were before and during the pandemic.

UK and Irish organisations are also operating at a lower level than their North American, Australian and New Zealand peers, who saw an increase in performance of 32.4% and 5.3% respectively since before the pandemic.

In Ireland and the UK, work out per paid hour was down by more than 8% since the start of the pandemic, highlighting that organisations are less efficient and not getting the most out of staff.

Indeed, this correlates with findings from a recent industry research around recession readiness, which was carried out at the end of last year and found that a whopping 55% of organisations in the sector feel they have spare capacity but cannot locate it.

This is largely due to teams working in silos or due to lacking the necessary agility to cope with fluctuations in workload by moving workload between teams, ActiveOps said.

Productivity

PRODUCTIVITY IN IRISH FINANCIAL SERVICES INSTITUTIONS HAS BEEN ERODED SINCE THE HEIGHT OF THE PANDEMIC.

Ray Bowe, CEO of Xcentuate, ActiveOps partners in Europe, Australia and New Zealand, said: “Against a backdrop of challenging economic times the pressure is on to produce extra growth and productivity.

“In 2022, issues with staff turnover and return to the office have particularly hit productivity so 2023 is about stabilisation. Looking forward for firms to improve productivity, they do not need to wait for new breakthrough technology or AI.

“The digital or management tools that can significantly improve performance already exist and the advent of cloud technology has resulted in lower costs and less complexity to implement.”

In the control metric, Ireland and the UK fell five percentage point since the start of the pandemic, underscoring how teams are struggling to deliver on plans and indicating a misuse of capacity and failure to plan for peaks or share workload across teams.

Commenting on the report, Richard Jeffery, CEO at ActiveOps, said: “Operations leaders in financial services have a lot to deal with today. Having only recently emerged from the stormy times of the pandemic, they are now faced with an uncertain economic environment.

“While their focus is on cutting costs they are also aware of a shortage in talent and the need to both retain existing and attract new staff through better utilisation of staff time and investment in cross-skilling. Yet despite the pressures on them, few leaders are equipped to make strategic changes that will improve operational efficiency and deliver a competitive edge”.

He continued: “The UK in particular is facing a challenging time and leaders are pressed to bring operations back up to pre-pandemic levels this year. They need to use data to accurately gauge where their inefficiencies lie and to better understand which levers they can pull to release capacity across their organisations.

“This will allow leaders not only to create an operating environment that is efficient and running at a high-performance level but also a satisfying place to work where employees wish to remain.”

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Published in the Business Post 24th December 2022

THIS WORKING LIFE

With a potential downturn on the way, better customer supports and investment in intelligent automation are just a few of the measures businesses can take to run operations more efficiently.

In 2023, firms will look to avoid the operational systems failures of this year.

(RAY BOWE) DECEMBER 24, 2022

Ray Bowe is the Chief Executive of Xcentuate, which specialises in using digital solutions to boost business productivity and performance, xcentuate.com

This was the year that normally anonymous, but vital, operational systems that help businesses run smoothly and effectively became headline news. Why?

Because around the world, companies experienced some epic failures that impacted their reputations and their customers’ lives. Remember those airport queues, and the seemingly never-ending piles of luggage waiting to be reunited with their owners’° As we move into 2023, how can these issues be prevented from recurring?

Simply put, an operational system is the infrastructure that supports a company’s day-to-day operations. lt includes hardware, software and must be up to date in order to run efficiently.

In many cases, it’s the heart of a company – everything else revolves around it. With an unpredictable 2023 hovering into view, business needs to prepare for every eventuality, including a potential downturn, tightened costs, and capacity and productivity issues.

Some new research from Xcentuate’s partners at ActiveOps in Britain shows that the need to take action and start planning for a potential downturn is urgent.

According to the research, 5S per cent of businesses know they have spare capacity within their organisation, but done know where or how to access it. Almost 60 per cent of employees also believe that their business needs better forecasting and planning during a recession.

This indicates that a combination of better foresight and insights into day-to-day operations will be key to supporting employees and responding to customers when circumstances change rapidly.

One in four of the businesses surveyed did not have the information needed to improve productivity or efficiency, while 29 per cent lacked reliable forecasts of future work levels.

What are the trends we are going to see more of in 2023 for this vital company function, trends that should hopefully address some of the research findings?

Investment In Intelligent automation

In 2023, more firms will have a cohesive approach to investing in software and training staff to optimise the available technology and deliver smooth-running operations.

At Xcentuate we’re seeing more opportunities emerging for robotics and automation. Firms are recognising that valuable talent in-house not be wasted on low-level tasks when automation can do them, freeing up key staff for other more meaningful and satisfying work.

Doing more with less

It’s no surprise that with inflation running at close to 10 per cent and a tougher economic environment looming, there will be a stronger focus on costs. Firms will be looking for targeted solutions which will deliver cost savings where the impact can be felt quickly. Solutions such as automated digitization of documents to reduce effort and reduce the postage bill are on the agenda.

Better customer supports

As one of the most complained about aspects of many business operations, more companies are prioritising delivering better customer interactions and support in the new year. Why? Because there‘s a recognition that many customers have complex requests that cannot be dealt with by ‘one size fits all solutions. Much more consideration will be given to designing processes and solutions that address these needs and see an uptick in customer experience.

Addressing the Data swap

Firms are swamped with valuable data that, while essential for business planning, is expensive to collect. lt’s commonly accepted that data-driven insights are business gold, but a worrying number of firms are missing out on these insights because they don’t have the systems that can analyse this material.

We predict that more firms will address this problem in 2023, unlock their data potential, and derive more value from it. Companies are looking for new solutions to bring data together in one place and deliver actionable insight.

For example, we are seeing companies look for one solution for all their operational and service providing managers with real actionable insight to more effectively manage their operations.

Computers and connections

Next year, progressive businesses will be future-proofing their operations by investing in cutting edge software that connects their systems into one seamless flow of information.

This will allow them to do everything from delivering great customer experiences to planning the best use of human resources, charting and improving productivity and capacity, while also generating data that informs business planning.

Building resilience and agility into operations will be crucial for organisations, particularly in the finance sector. Leaders will need to facilitate a culture of cross-team collaboration to support overworked teams, clear backlogs and enable flexibility when the unexpected happens.

!n order to unlock capacity, leaders must have an accurate overview of capacity within their organisation by analysing the work teams and individuals are doing to understand where capacity is hiding.

A continuing lack of insight into workload volumes and day-to-day operations will mean that leaders are unable to make critical decisions or respond to spikes in demand due to a lack of operational agility. This could ultimately cause businesses to fall short of organisational objectives, costing revenue and profit.

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The partnership follows SS&C’s recent acquisition of Blue Prism, the leading Robotic Process Automation provider, further demonstrating its commitment to the intelligent automation solutions market. Xcentuate, based in Dublin, Ireland, will serve as a consulting and implementation partner, acting as an extended team to advise, implement, support and deliver complex projects.

“We are delighted to partner with Xcentuate,” said Gautam Moorjani, General Manager, SS&C Intelligent Automation Solutions. “The EMEA and the Asia Pacific regions are markets with a lot of appeal – with resilient and developing economies and talented, skilled workforce. In addition, the potential for operational automation to transform how businesses work is significant.”

The partnership will enable SS&C to leverage Xcentuate’s vast experience to access new potential customers, take new value propositions to market, develop point solutions to address current market needs, and enhance its specialized professional services to our customers.

 “The SS&C partnership is of significant strategic importance to us regarding our offer to the market,” said Ray Bowe, Xcentuate founder and CEO. “The breadth and depth of SS&C’s expertise in financial services and healthcare technology are unmatched. In addition, this new partnership further broadens the suite of services we can offer to firms in EMEA and the Asia Pacific with an ambitious digital transformation agenda.”

About SS&C Technologies

SS&C is a global provider of services and software for the financial services and healthcare industries. Founded in 1986, SS&C is headquartered in Windsor, Connecticut, and has offices around the world. Some 20,000 financial services and healthcare organizations, from the world’s largest companies to small and mid-market firms, rely on SS&C for expertise, scale and technology.

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Congratulations from everyone at Xcentuate

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We are delighted to welcome Louise Nolan who will be working with clients as an Implementation Coach for our ActiveOps solutions designed to power an operations efficiency agenda in thriving, growing businesses as they progress their digital transformation stories.

Louise brings with her 17 years of Financial Service experience, 15 of which was leading large high performing teams. 

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We could not be prouder to be double winners of the prestigious Constantinus International Awards awarded by the International Council of Management Consulting Institutes (ICMCI.)

These awards recognise the best international projects in the field of consulting and are awarded to both the consulting company and its client.

It’s a great honour for us to have this global recognition and it’s made all the more satisfying because the awards were in recognition of work done with Allianz, a great company with fantastic people.

Competing against a shortlist of fellow consultants from Singapore, Russia, Mongolia, Canada, Austria and Brazil, Xcentuate were delighted to be awarded the International Silver Medal. 

With our HQ in Dublin serving Ireland and Europe and our sister company, Xcentuate NZ, serving the Asia-Pacific region, we look forward to introducing more clients to our distinctive range of solutions.

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