Operational control of service processes: Empirical evidence from the financial sector in Australia

As customers of financial service providers do not always provide the required information on time, operational control has to be conducted. Thus, companies have to deal with daily decisions of how to process incoming orders to perform well in terms of quality, cycle time and cost. Due to a lack of empirical research, we gathered evidence by identifying the state-of-the-art of operational control in financial services companies in Australia. The results revealed that operational control is mostly conducted in an ad-hoc manner as forecasts and predefined rules are rarely used. In-depth interviews uncovered opportunities to install a more forceful operational control. The results also indicated that certain criteria, such as organisational grouping of employees within the process, should be considered as these criteria influence the effectiveness of operational control.