CASE STUDY. A leading US finance organization was experiencing eroding profits while internal
service function expense was growing at twice the rate of revenue growth. The organization’s business units had been aggressively
pursuing efficiency opportunities while the company was steadily increasing its investment in its internal services functions to support
strategic business unit growth. Seeing a trend of decreasing profits, the executive management team decided to expand their
organization’s efforts in efficiency by focusing on internal service function cost improvement.
SOLUTION - To attack waste in its internal service functions, the organization selected a
methodology especially suited for “leaning” internal service functions called Functional Lean. The Functional Lean
methodology guided carefully selected teams in the organization’s 11 internal service functions (e.g., HR, IT, Finance,
Marketing, Legal, Compliance, etc.) through a 6-phase systematic process and the effective application of powerful lean
thinking tools to identify and eliminate non-value adding function activities, time and cost.
RESULTS - Implementing Functional Lean enabled this organization to achieve a 20%
reduction in internal service function expense within a 24-month period with while maintaining the high quality service
that business unit customers had come to expect!
