Case resolution went from 4 to 5 days to under a day, on an implementation that took six weeks

The contractor resource center managed 2,000 contractors and an annual spend of $100 to $150 million through a shared Outlook mailbox. Four problems came with it:

• The shared mailbox built up unread email, often reaching 150 at any given time, and the team could not track requests reliably.
• Managing cases through email was prone to human error, so cases slipped and mistakes were made around contractor hiring.
• Individual workloads were invisible, so the manager could not allocate resource properly.
• The team was consumed by tactical work, leaving no time for anything strategic.

The manager approached a colleague running HR shared services, whose team had a reputation for responsive service, and found they were using Dovetail. After a demonstration from that colleague, he acquired it for the contractor resource center.

The team came to this implementation carrying the memory of the last one, a system quoted at 14 weeks that took over a year. When Dovetail was quoted at 8 to 10 weeks, the manager privately assumed 6 to 8 months.

It took around six weeks.

Individual queues replaced the shared inbox. Each team member has their own queue profile and assigns their name to specific cases, so everyone can see who is working on what. Duplication and confusion stopped.

Notification analysis. Reviewing what the team was actually receiving showed a large volume of redundant notifications. Removing them saved around 500 messages a month and reclaimed roughly 1,000 minutes of productivity.

Resolution time. Case resolution moved from 4 to 5 days to under a day. It was a gradual improvement, since the team had a backlog to work through in the first months.

Onboarding. Notice of a new contractor's start date used to arrive by email and get missed, so the team often learned of it days late and onboarding slipped. Requests are now received and processed promptly, often the same day.

Workload visibility and reporting. Cases are tracked and categorized by type, with onboarding the most common, then change and offboarding requests, plus report and billing queries. The manager pulls a report in the first week of each month covering case volume, case types and how much work each team member is carrying, and keeps a running total to identify seasonal patterns such as offboarding rising in December. Before the reporting tool, work volume could not be predicted.

Resource allocation. Five metrics on open and closed cases and case types go to the Director of Enterprise Procurement, and are used to allocate people across projects and identify cross training opportunities, including lending a team member to vendor management during a quiet period rather than hiring.