Process Streamlining in Superannuation Administration Contribution Receipting (Manual & Electronic)

Situation

This self administered industry super fund with over 100,000 members and over $4 billion in assets was seeking to reduce processing delays and generally streamline the Contribution Receipting process.

A key objective was to consistently process all contributions within 3 working days. However, not all contributions were processed within this time.

Issues associated with the Contribution Receipting process included:

  • Delays in processing
  • Costs incurred by the fund for delays
  • Additional work load incurred by the administration team
  • Potential reputation loss with employers and members.

The fund wanted to be an administration showcase for other industry funds with a view to the possible merger activity or providing administration for other funds. The fund also wanted to improve efficiency and be in a position to add volume incrementally without same incremental increase in resources.

Task

The project had two main elements:

  1. To facilitate a cross functional internal team to run a diagnostic study to identify waste elimination opportunities, reduce process duration and plan for process improvements on both the electronic and manual contribution receipting and allocation processes.

  2. Knowledge transfer to internal team members in structured process mapping, analysis and improvement using our proprietary Smartmapping© methodology.

In detail, our role included:

  • Facilitating the data gathering, mapping and analysis of the Contribution Receipting process

  • Carrying out a diagnostic study to identify opportunities to eliminate waste, reduce process duration and delays for the contribution receipting process

  • Ensuring the development of a shared understanding of the current process

  • Generating a "current state" map that identifies waste

  • Identifying and prioritising process improvement opportunities

  • Ensuring a shared understanding of the future process

  • Generating a "future state" map for 3  6 months into the future

  • Creating an action plan with responsibilities, tasks and timeframe to realise the future state map.

 

Action

Conducted a comprehensive (activity level) analysis of key processes using our proprietary Smartmapping© methodology.

Smartmappingã makes process variance and waste visible by combining the strengths of flow-charting, process mapping, value stream mapping, constraints analysis, workflow analysis, business systems modelling and activity based costing.

Smartmappingã is a comprehensive mapping approach that rigorously maps all the elements of organisational processes (Activities, Resources, Time and Information) in a way that:

  • Captures current-state process variances and waste.
  • Identifies improvement opportunities.
  • Codifies the future-state process.
  • Enables continuous improvement.

Results

  • Identified opportunities that will reduce the contribution receipting process duration for both cheques and EFTs by about 30%.
  • Significant improvement in screen flow
  • Process order redesign to change the critical path
  • Increased use of preferred electronic payment methods
  • Significant reduction in wasteful follow-up activities and process duplication (i.e. expediting / rework / follow-up)
  • Compliance with regulatory obligations
  • Pulling employers onto the web-browser
  • Straight through processing

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