The Challenge

Science World has been educating and entertaining the citizens and visitors of the Lower Mainland since 1977.   The organization has evolved over the last 30 years and key process may not have kept pace with this growth.   In January of 2017, Science World embarked to strengthen its social role that it serves for its community.  Science World engaged Propel Solution’s assistance to ensure that processes are efficient, effective and scalable for future growth.  The objective of this initiative was to identify opportunities to improve the visitor and staff experience at Science World.

The Objective

  • Process Review: Propel conducted a review of the current Hiring, Scheduling and Visitor Experience processes to determine opportunities for improving service delivery throughout Science World. This was done through interviewing staff, observing work practices, and creating detailed process maps that were critiqued by managers and staff. The resulting “as-is analysis” was used to identify opportunities for process improvements.
  • Base Data Analysis: A Profit Driver Model was developed to demonstrate the linkages between the cost and revenue drivers of the organization. Using this model, the total cost per visit was analyzed. From here the impact of changing the organizational targets can be modeled to help determine specific improvement objectives in terms of financial and capacity improvement in the back office. Additionally, Propel conducted an analysis of monthly staffing to visitor volumes, visitor experience and conducted staff experience survey, to identify opportunities to improve service delivery.
  • Management Toolkit Analysis: Propel conducted a review of the tools used by the Science World Leaders to manage processes including Business Strategy, Forecasting, Planning, Execution Control, and Operational Reports. From this analysis, Propel was able to identify missing tools that should be developed in order to increase staff engagement, operational capacity and communicate the expectations to staff in a common language.

The Result

Staff engagement throughout the analysis was high with over 40 opportunities for improvement identified. The Business Process Analysis provided Science World with baseline measures of their current state and identified the opportunity to introduce a Management Toolkit to improve the management of key processes, improve staff scheduling, improve staff and visitor experience, and increase visibility through daily and weekly reporting of results and Key Performance Indicators. Propel determined that through process improvement, Science World could improve the capacity Lobby Team and Visitor Experience teams by 20% of with the non value-added time in the processes.