Strategic Thinking to Build a Better BridgePoint Group

Behind the scenes at BridgePoint Group – strategic thinking and planning

By Neil Parker, MD, BridgePoint Group. 

All members of the team work incredibly hard to continually build a better BridgePoint. I thought it might be interesting to pull back the curtains and let you, our clients, take a peek at what’s going on behind the scenes at BridgePoint Group, in essence, our strategic planning and thinking.

You may get some value from applying the same planning and strategic thinking to your own business. 

CULTURE

As an organisation with aspirations for growth, we see huge value in having a strong and productive corporate culture. A culture that informs team members ‘how we do things around here’. Being able to scale without losing that strong and productive culture and in some ways because of that culture, makes real sense.

We frequently talk about the link between our beliefs and our values as individuals and as an organisation.  How do our values translate into behaviour?  Our ‘ideal culture’ is defined and the steps we are taking to close the gap between our ideal culture and our ‘actual culture’. 

Leadership drives culture and culture drives performance. A core group of our leaders are now 12 months into developing their professional leadership styles. Individually and collectively, we are striving for a more ‘constructive’ style. 

We recently surveyed our team and asked them how we are going. The results were pretty pleasing but as always, there is more work to do.

QUALITY

You expect and deserve quality and it is a strong and continuing focus for us. Most of what we do is carried out by people with the assistance of technology. The quality of what we do remains heavily reliant on our people. That, of course, opens the door to human error.

How we allocate and review work also affects quality. The person carrying out the work must have the requisite skills. They must understand the process and have appropriate supervision. The work must be reviewed by a more senior person. Clearly, there must be a balance of efficiency and cost in order to deliver a high quality ‘product’. A product that delivers value. 

Knowing that we are working to ensure our people can deliver a high-quality product. Therefore, who we hire and how we train them – not just in relation to the technical skills but also how they think – is important for you, the customer, as it builds in a level of ‘quality at the source’.

EFFICIENCY 

If quality ensures effectiveness, then efficiency is key to delivering the remaining elements of the value equation. 

We are consistently working to examine our standard operating procedures and consider ways they can be improved. 

Technology is a great enabler (and disruptor) in our sector. We have established a ‘technology committee’ to frequently look at the ‘tools’ we use and search for improvement opportunities. All of our technology stack is now ‘in the cloud’. That promotes the opportunity to connect different systems that each help us with one part of what we do. When COVID-19 lockdowns came into force, we were in effect ready for the team to work from home with little disruption to delivering high-quality outputs.

Happily, feedback from third-party experts is that we are in the Top 10% among our peers in terms of adopting and utilising technology to drive efficiency. Whilst some would be satisfied with that, we see there is more to be done. 

We are turning our minds to robotic process automation. Our view is that there are a series of tasks that we can automate to reduce the boredom of repetitive tasks and speed up turnaround times. It should also reduce the incidence of human error. Cost vs benefit analysis is underway on those projects now.

Being in the cloud also raises the question of data security. That will be the subject of a separate article and it is important enough to stand alone. However, in the meantime, please be assured that the measures we have in place to ensure data security are also very strong. 

SERVICE

It is all well and good to provide a top-quality and highly efficient ‘product’. If the service element is lacking, the whole client experience is diminished. The old saying goes ‘they will quickly forget what you did but they will never forget how you made them feel’. That drives us on to work out ways to provide you with better service.

We know that intending to do well by our clients is not enough – we have to actually perform well. Your feedback is vitally important to us in providing an honest assessment of how well we are doing.

WHERE TO FROM HERE?

If you need any help or would like to discuss how BridgePoint Group’s strategic thinking may be able to help your business, then please give me a call on 1300 656 141 or email me directly here.

Talk To

Neil Parker

MANAGING DIRECTOR

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