An Insider action research on process flow improvement through kaizen

We often hear the saying, Nothing is constant but change. This saying encompasses on everything including businesses. In the very competitive industry of banking and finance, it is how a company differentiates its products and services and over-all operation that gives it the clear-cut edge and advantage over his competitors. A companys products and services should always be better than what their competitors are offering, their business operations superior than what their competitors are doing. To achieve this, the most effective way would be to continuously improve the quality of their products and services offered in the market and most importantly their business operations. The concept of Kaizen or continuous improvement have been around the corporate world for the longest time and has helped many large and well-known companies into a success story, the most famous would be the Toyota car-maker company. The goal of this Action Research is to improve the current process flow in Sending out Insurance Renewal Notices for XYZ Financing Services Corporations Insurance Team. To achieve this goal, we, the researchers, used the Deming Cycle or the PDCA Cycle in analyzing the issue into a more systematic way. The use of the PDCA Cycle helped us identify the root cause of the issue and plan the interventions to be implemented. This Action Research resulted in a new process flow that eliminates the intervention from the It Department, making it solely the responsibility of the Insurance Team to generate, print and send out the Insurance Renewal Notices from the system databank up to the hands of the Courier Service representatives. The adapted new process flow was reinforced by the Letter of Authorization and Memorandum signed by the Management that gives the Insurance team access to the system data bank to directly access and print the Notices. Controls in the new process were made through monitoring by the IT Department on the receipts of data generated. Interventions and activities include informal interviews and meetings between the whole Insurance Team and a representative of IT Department. This research also helped improved the teamwork and communication within the Insurance Team through collaboration and active participation during the whole Project