At the moment you won’t know all the answers to reducing a backlog that has built up. Latent and unmet demand may not yet be visible. Some of how your backlog can be reduced will be outside of your control and in the hands of your supply chain.

Increasing your output may inadvertently create a bottleneck elsewhere causing further delays, a poor customer experience and potentially cost. There will be pressure to give definitive answers when there aren’t any.

Based on our experience and the knowledge from within your operational teams , we are able to rapidly develop a set of assumptions that we feed into a model that can forecast backlog management performance. We can help you create and make visible a concise set of reports that show daily, or weekly, performance against this forecast.

We set up the processes which will allow you to assess the impact of external and unknown factors as they emerge and their effect on performance. You will be able to demonstrate that the issues are being managed and that there is a level of control.

We work with the operational teams and supply chain to co-design to develop the underpinning recovery plan, cost and expenditure profiles and resource plans. The plans must be workable and rooted in operational reality. These outline the roles, responsibilities and accountabilities across all those that contribute to the outcomes and the measures and reporting.

This impact assessment will allow you to consider:

• • What impact does IT and Operational change have on performance and how can this best be sequenced
  • What performance regimes and metrics needed to be in place and managed
  • What impact will any additional resource have on performance, taking into consideration the time it takes to be sourced and trained