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Branch Support Programme Performance Narrative - Gayle Peacock — In confidence
Transformation Committee - Narrative on Branch Support Programme Slide
Overall status of the Programme
I have marked the “Time” and “Benefit” elements of the Programme amber for the following
reasons:
Delay in getting the business case agreed which has impacted on the delivery dates of some
of the activity. However, we are in the process of re-working the lower level work stream
plans and will have a better understanding of any revised milestones within the next couple
of weeks. This activity will also inform which elements of the benefits we can accelerate into
this financial year to bridge the £1.5m gap within the overall network budget.
© There has also been a delay to implementing HORIce due to issues with IT. Whilst we were
engaged with IT throughout the process and were informed directly by Fujitsu in stakeholder
sessions that they were already using a version of HORIce to support the mediation cases in
Sparrow, the formal elements of the process have slowed us down. We have had to
complete the relevant Change Requests to perform impact assessments. Fujitsu asked for a
three week extension which was rejected but they have ignored our response. This has been
escalated internally but this also appears to have been unsuccessful. The reason provided to
us was resource issues within Fujitsu.
The delay in HORIce has the potential to impact on the benefits of the Programme. The
success of the revised suspension policy and the process of being pro-active to support
branches rests us on us being able to see, interpret and act on real time data. Whilst we
continue to have the delay with HORIce, losses could be escalating in the network.
Angela and I have discussed the quality measures of the Programme with Michael Brown and the
recommendation which will be presented at the Transformation Committee is that we will call out
specific elements of the Agent Engagement Survey and the satisfaction with the on-line training
modules.
Performance (Benefits)
Suspensions
In Period 2, there have been 12 suspensions (4 in the South and 8 in the North). Only 5 of these were
down to audit shortages where there were no admissions, explanations or offer of repayments. A
condition of not suspending is that all three of these have to be in place. Regarding the other 7
cases:
* 1was due to the power being cut off because the agent was not paying the bills
@ 1was due to a repossession of the property
* — 1was due to bankruptcy
* 1 went into voluntary liquidation
e 1.was arrested for Actual Bodily Harm
© labandoned service
¢ 1was subject to a security investigation with Royal Mail
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Branch Support Programme Performance Narrative - Gayle Peacock — In confidence
All of the above would have been suspended in “old world” and will continue to be even with the
revised policy changes. What we will have to ensure is that we go back to the suspension data for
2013/14 to understand which of the historic cases were suspended due to audit shortages.
Reduction in agent net debt
The YTD net reduction on debt is c£113k. Whilst former agent debt stayed static from Period 1,
current agent debt saw an increase in Period 2 of £700k compared to Period 1. A lot of this was
recovered, but the amount recovered from former agents was low at 32%, where last year they
were trending at above 75-80%. We will be working with Rod and the team to understand what
action can be taken to get this back on track.
Satisfaction with training
We will only be able to track this measure from the launch of the regulatory compliance on-line
training modules. The prototype will be ready for testing on the 16" June. Depending on the level of
feedback from the users during the two week test period and what we have to change, we
anticipate that we would like to launch end July/early August. Realistically, this means we will have
our first true measure at the end of Q2.
Reduction in calls to NBSC
Given that this is dependent on us implementing root cause analysis on the calls coming into NBSC,
we will only see a decrease in calls from the end of this financial year. The action taken from the
Steering Group is for myself and Amanda to baseline which information we will use to track calls and
the impact of specific activity.
Reduction in audit shortages over £10k
This KPI is dependent on the implementation of HORIce and therefore further delays will impact on
the Programme hitting target.
Risks and Dependencies
In terms of resource allocation, Angela and I have an action following a meeting with Sharon Bull to
understand where we can implement activity sooner to bridge the gap in the cost challenge. This will
need to involve Ann Miller and the relevant Programme representatives to understand what the
people/resource plan needs to look like.
In terms of IT, we are already finding hold ups in a couple of areas:
e Lack of resource in Fujitsu to process change requests in a timely way
Lack of internal IT resource to process Horizon script changes which will improve the
experience for branches and customers. It isn’t a case of budget, but the fact that IT have
not increased the skill base required in Bracknell to cope with all of the system changes
which are required by the wider business. This is leading to uncoordinated decisions being
made about business priorities and respective change.
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Branch Support Programme Performance Narrative - Gayle Peacock — In confidence
This risk will be called out by Strategy in the Transformation Committee as a number of Programmes
are suffering the same risk, but no plan to resolve the issues appears to have been produced.
The biggest dependency for the Programme is on Business Transformation. When Angela and I
attended the Steering Group and SME sessions, their approach will be to “process map” different
sections within the business. This is potentially duplicating the work that has already been done. This
isn’t in the sense of formally documenting the process but more regarding how they've calculated
cost savings. However, we are closely aligned into the activity and we will know more in the coming
weeks.
Delivery plan (RAG) status
On the advice of Strategy, we’ve moved the milestone for HORIce to red, based on the reasons
above and it has been re-planned for beginning of Quarter 2.