Integrating "new ways of working" through Lean in a company's culture is the toughest challenge. Much of this challenge arises because in typically "western" way of doing things: in other words the initial focus on methods and tools, while bringing impressive initial results, ultimately fail to deliver these benefits sustainably.

That's why a recent Capgemini survey found that 4 out of 5 organisations complain that lean has not delivered sustainable results. It is all too easy to forget that delivering Lean sustainably means bringing about a company-wide cultural change enabled by simultaneously acting on both bottom-up performance improvement and top-down leadership alignment. It is this latter area that brings the most challenges as it fundamentally challenges many traditional command and control constructs which we in the west have lived with ever since business school.

In financial services, for those that persist in understanding and delivering true Lean capability, the rewards are impressive:

• Credit card fraud disputes: activities representing 60% of the overall process reduced from 22 days to 9 minutes
• Insurance services: removed 12% of entire cost base
• Life insurance underwriting: £200million of new NWP in a new product with no staff increase
• Lease contract: set up reduced from 60 days to 8 days, smaller team to process 4 x previous volume
• HR recruitment: senior manager recruitment reduced from 85 days to 55 days saving £353,000 external costs in 18 months
• Complex bank account opening: reduced from 4 weeks to 3 days

For more on implementing Lean sustainable find out about Capgemini's BeLean® approach.

The Next Big Thing

Financial Services are information intensive businesses and greatly influenced by technology innovation. Current operating models have been shaped by ATMs, telephone and e-banking, and organisations that developed early technology visions moved to gain business advantage.

Today, technology and social trends are blurring as the likes of facebook and texting merge with heightened social collaboration needs. Opportunities are wide ranging for example, is there a case for adopting social networking business tools for employees, customers and business partners or a text or email customer interaction platform?

This merged landscape ultimately presents too many choices and only a few trends will emerge to deliver business advantage. There is a real possibility of backing the wrong horse, so how to spot the winner and make informed investments around the next big thing? Capgemini has developed a structured approach that helps organisations to short-list the choices by:

• Making sure business and technology areas agree key business drivers
• Piloting technology solutions to demonstrate value and build buy-in
• Rolling out solutions across the organisation for iterative improvement
• Conducting regular reviews of technology opportunities for business areas

We call this approach TechnoVision 2012 and if you want to find out more, then download our pdf on TechnoVision 2012 and Financial Services