Work

Helping this charity serve 20% more people in debt with 20% less operating cost

Written by Rob Macfarlane | Apr 27, 2023 11:51:18 AM

Working holistically across service design, CAP’s digital estate and operating model, Mando Group used best-of-breed technology and expert insights to smooth out the user journey and provide a digital roadmap for future development and growth.

Highlights

  • Mando Group created a strategy that would enable CAP to do more of its good work in the charity sector at a lower cost per interaction.

  • Our strategy mapped out a route for CAP to potentially save £474 per case.  When multiplied by their 23,000 clients to date - this presents a £10M+ saving over the same number of cases again.

  • The £10M in savings to undertake the same great work, but better means CAP had a vision to scale and take on new clients and meet the needs of society, something that they had been forced to put on hold due to the high cost to serve.

Background

CAP came to Mando Group stating that when they compared their service with other debt advice organisations, they found that their central cost per case was £557 (seven times higher than the next most expensive provider). 

Mando Group was tasked with working holistically across service design, CAP’s digital estate and operating model to reduce that cost to serve and help them scale globally to keep serving the needs of those in debt at a time of crisis. 

Business Drivers

Christians Against Poverty (CAP) - CAP’s mission is to end UK poverty, in partnership with local churches. Every day, they strive to improve the lives of thousands of people facing debt and financial hardshipThey identified that they were only serving about 3% of the UK market and wanted to scale to help release more people from povertyChallenges for CAP included their reliance on legacy technology, inefficient processes and organisational complexity. 

Solution

Mando Group embarked on a series of consultancy workshops with CAP to deliver a high-level roadmap.  Following the success of the workshops, we engaged further with CAP to provide: 

  • A gap analysis on technology that was/was not fit for purpose, plus an outline of the investment required.  
  • Tech and UX audit of their existing systems.   
  • Onsite journey mapping session, documenting the process of a service user from end-to-end.
  • Identification of all the pain points in the ‘as is’ journey. Then, mapping out the ‘to be’ end-to-end journeys. 
  • Establishing interim architecture to get from a to b. Plus, transitional stages through their digital transformation.   
  • Establishing adoption to help the transition, due to potential role changes across the organisation.   
  • Agile user testing.  Undertaken in a sprint-based way, enabling us to:
    • Sketch wireframes and product prototypes in front of real customers – ahead of the final design, to get much more rapid feedback on what would improve interactions.   
    • Undertake tech spikes on more complex areas (technical architecture). To validate assumptions and quickly assess certain routes, approaches and platform capabilities, to expedite decision-making during technology platform vendor selection.   

Outcome

With donations playing such a huge part in the brief, we had to determine how data moves through the organisation, define the value of that data and standardise key parts of the process to ensure users could interact and donate as easily as possible. 

We were able to determine the value of their current systems, gain a greater understanding of the current digital experience, determine the ROI for the proposed vision, and architect how users engage with the process across multiple channels based on their needs.   

Based on this work, CAP received a set of clear recommendations and a plan of action to use for the next phase of work.  In order to develop a platform that would deliver clear messaging around the work that CAP does and encourage donations and an increase in interactions, we delivered the following: 

  • Validation of digital initiatives to ensure the delivery against CAP's digital vision and KPIs, and optimal ROI  
  • Prioritisation of digital initiatives with dependency mapping to provide an actionable delivery backlog  
  • Validation of an appropriate target operating model to ensure successful delivery of CAP's backlog  
  • Selection of the most appropriate technology and architecture to enable the right business outcomes  
  • Selection of the most appropriate digital suppliers to deliver maximum value to CAP  
  • Bringing a level of governance to drive the delivery of the roadmap and lighten the load to get things done