01Financial services
Financial services teams often need to balance clear customer experiences with controls, operational responsibilities, and complex handoffs. Work can focus on mapping service journeys, clarifying ownership across teams, and making change practical within the relevant governance and risk constraints.
Example focusService and operating-model design
Sector-specific challenges
Customer journeys can span onboarding, servicing, operations, and digital channels, with reviews or control checks adding hand-offs. Improving clarity means understanding who owns each decision and what information can be shared at each step.
Practical applications
- Map an application or account-servicing journey, including status updates and exception routes.
- Clarify ownership between customer-facing, operational, and control teams.
- Review how policy or process changes are communicated across channels.
Illustrative scenario
Illustrative scenario: a provider could map how a customer moves from an initial application through review and ongoing support, then identify where status updates or clearer ownership would reduce uncertainty.
Potential outcomes
- A clearer view of where customers need information or support during a service journey.
- More explicit hand-offs, decision points, and escalation ownership for teams to assess.
Question to explore
Where do customers or employees lose visibility as a request moves between teams?
Explore Financial services details →02Healthcare and life sciences
Healthcare and life-sciences services involve connected patient, provider, and operational needs. A thoughtful improvement effort can examine how people navigate a service, where information or responsibilities become unclear, and how teams can coordinate changes while respecting the clinical, privacy, and regulatory context.
Example focusConnected care experiences
Sector-specific challenges
Care and life-sciences operations involve different professional roles, sensitive information, and dependencies between people and processes. Improvements need to consider privacy, safety, evidence requirements, and local clinical or operational responsibilities.
Practical applications
- Trace administrative steps around referrals, appointments, or follow-up communication.
- Clarify how information and responsibility move between care or research operations teams.
- Review service navigation and support information from the perspective of patients or participants.
Illustrative scenario
Illustrative scenario: a care organization could trace the administrative steps around a referral, identify where information or ownership changes hands, and explore ways to make the next step clearer to the people involved.
Potential outcomes
- A shared picture of coordination gaps and information needs across a defined pathway.
- Practical improvement options that can be assessed with appropriate clinical, privacy, and operational owners.
Question to explore
Which hand-offs create the most uncertainty for patients, providers, or support teams?
Explore Healthcare and life sciences details →03Manufacturing and supply chains
Manufacturing and supply-chain work depends on decisions made across planning, production, logistics, and service. Making dependencies, exceptions, and decision ownership more visible can help teams coordinate changes and respond to disruption without treating each function as an isolated process.
Example focusOperational coordination
Sector-specific challenges
Plans depend on linked decisions across procurement, production, logistics, and service. Changes to demand, materials, capacity, or product specifications can affect downstream work, while safety, quality, and physical constraints limit what can change quickly.
Practical applications
- Map how a demand or engineering change moves from planning through production and fulfilment.
- Clarify how supplier or inventory exceptions are escalated and communicated.
- Review decision ownership and information needs across production and after-sales service.
Illustrative scenario
Illustrative scenario: a manufacturer could follow how a change to an order affects planning and downstream operations, then clarify which teams need to know about the change and when.
Potential outcomes
- A more visible view of dependencies, exception routes, and decision owners.
- Improvement options that account for operational constraints and can be evaluated by local teams.
Question to explore
What information would help teams anticipate the downstream effects of a change?
Explore Manufacturing and supply chains details →04Public and social services
Public and social services support people with varied circumstances, access needs, and routes to assistance. Improvement can start by making service pathways easier to understand, involving the people who deliver and use them, and planning change around accessibility, accountability, and practical delivery constraints.
Example focusAccessible service delivery
Sector-specific challenges
People may have different access needs and routes to support, while services must work within eligibility rules, statutory responsibilities, budgets, and capacity. A pathway that is clear to one group may still create barriers or gaps for another.
Practical applications
- Review how people find, understand, and request a service across channels.
- Map referral and case hand-offs between teams or partner services.
- Test whether eligibility information and next steps are understandable and accessible.
Illustrative scenario
Illustrative scenario: a service team could review the steps a resident takes to request support, ask where eligibility or next steps are unclear, and test a simpler way to explain the process.
Potential outcomes
- A clearer account of barriers, hand-offs, and communication needs in a defined service pathway.
- Prioritized changes that service owners can assess against accessibility, accountability, and delivery constraints.
Question to explore
Can people understand the next step, including when they need support through another service?
Explore Public and social services details →05Technology and business services
As technology and business-service offerings change, product decisions, customer expectations, and internal operations need to remain connected. Teams can clarify how work moves across those boundaries, identify where service commitments and delivery processes diverge, and adapt operating practices as needs evolve.
Example focusGrowth and service evolution
Sector-specific challenges
Offers and delivery models can change faster than the processes that support them. Product, sales, delivery, customer success, and support teams need a shared view of commitments, ownership, service dependencies, and the point at which a request falls outside the standard offer.
Practical applications
- Map a new or changing service from customer commitment through delivery and ongoing support.
- Clarify hand-offs, escalation paths, and ownership for non-standard requests.
- Align service descriptions and internal delivery steps as an offering evolves.
Illustrative scenario
Illustrative scenario: a service provider could map a new offering from initial commitment through delivery and support, then resolve gaps in ownership or information between teams.
Potential outcomes
- A more explicit connection between customer commitments and the processes intended to deliver them.
- Clearer roles and decision points for teams reviewing how an offer should evolve.
Question to explore
Does the path from customer commitment to delivery have clear owners and hand-offs?
Explore Technology and business services details →06Consumer and retail
Consumer and retail journeys can cross discovery, purchase, fulfilment, and support in quick succession. Reviewing how digital and human channels share context, set expectations, and handle exceptions can reveal practical ways to reduce friction while keeping service operations workable.
Example focusEnd-to-end customer journeys
Sector-specific challenges
Customers often move between discovery, purchase, fulfilment, returns, and support across online and in-person channels. Product availability, delivery expectations, seasonal demand, and exception handling all affect whether information stays consistent.
Practical applications
- Trace a purchase journey across product information, availability, fulfilment, and support.
- Review how stock or delivery exceptions are communicated across customer and store channels.
- Map returns or post-purchase support to find repeated effort and unclear ownership.
Illustrative scenario
Illustrative scenario: a retailer could examine how a customer moves from online product information to store availability and a later support request, then look for gaps that create repeated effort.
Potential outcomes
- A connected view of customer-facing information and operational hand-offs across channels.
- Specific opportunities for teams to evaluate against fulfilment capacity and customer-service needs.
Question to explore
Where does information or support become inconsistent when customers switch channels?
Explore Consumer and retail details →