As the Optum Advisory team developed the governance and operating model for the contact center, it assessed UHG’s organizational readiness and capacity for change. This required understanding the perspectives of cross-enterprise business and contact center leaders on where this new capability could deliver value so the team could “go slow to go fast” and do this exercise thoughtfully.

The Optum Advisory team conducted interviews with about 70 UHG, UHC, and Optum executives chosen for the Governance and Operating Committee. By involving these stakeholders early and understanding their priorities with the GCO, the team increased stakeholder confidence and buy-in in the process and increased participation. The interviews also helped the team understand:

• Which contact center assets were managed or supported by each stakeholder.
• The biggest needs, concerns, and opportunities within each contact center.
• Perspectives on the desired nature and scope of a GCO’s role (if any) and where and how the GCO could deliver value.

This assessment helped the team:

• Understand the starting level of support for the GCO, including which stakeholders were for, against, or neutral to the idea of a GCO and later workstream-level priorities.
• Create tailored stakeholder engagement strategies to manage and communicate with those groups differently.
• Gauge where the GCO had a clear mandate to support priority setting and anticipate areas where change would be more difficult.
• Collect baseline data on current state operations and performance.
• Secure buy-in and validate stakeholders to involve in workgroups set up to drive solutioning for GCO priorities.

While interviewees recognized the nuances of each business, they shared a desire for more:

• Global enterprise visibility into contact center assets, performance, best practices, and innovations.
• Standards with performance measurement and management.
• Standardization of practices across the enterprise where it made sense and where there are clear industry or enterprise best practices.

During the assessment phase, interviewers discovered considerable interest in a GCO model and consensus around which opportunity areas to tackle. Interviewees confirmed that eight focus areas (or workstreams) had a clear mandate for change — including five core focus areas (performance measurement and management; capital management; tools rationalization and sourcing; talent and staffing; key workflows and integrations) and three quick win opportunity areas (staffing clearinghouse, AI/ML, cross-enterprise incident, and issue management).

GCO executives wanted to ensure that the GCO demonstrated meaningful and immediate value to enterprise stakeholders. The team started with an initial list of quick win opportunities, from which the three were prioritized using the criteria below.

For each core focus area, teams were established and deployed to create roadmaps — identifying, prioritizing, and charting a path forward for tackling key opportunities within their workstream. As part of this effort, operators from different parts of the enterprise met to discuss shared and unique challenges, opportunities, and best practices. This gave operators an appreciation for their peers’ realities and experiences. In addition, it pushed leaders to think beyond siloed toward greater adoption of enterprise thinking and ownership.

When the roadmaps were combined, they helped lay the foundation for better outcomes and increased cost savings, efficiencies, innovation, and quality. For each core focus area, the GCO:

• Conducted a current state assessment to understand operational challenges and risks.
• Defined a vision, key objectives, and desired outcomes.
• Developed “crawl, walk, and run” goals to drive near-term action, with parameters and clear accountabilities for each phase of work: crawl (less than 30 days), walk (less than 90 days), and run (more than 90 days).
• Included a deliberate mix of workstream participants to reflect a cross-section of the enterprise. A UHC and Optum executive sponsor was named for each workstream. Representatives across UHC and Optum lines of business were also asked to participate for each workstream.
• Quantified the value generated to track and communicate enterprise wins via the GCO.

As health plans work to reduce costs and address other strategic priorities, it is important to lay the groundwork to ensure that the right people are engaged in designing and driving needed solutioning and change management. Foundational enabling capabilities like the GCO model can be a key differentiator in creating better organizational visibility, increasing coordination and nimbleness in solutioning or response, and ensuring alignment in implementing and scaling solutions more effectively and sustainably.

Because the contact center GCO was a success, the GCO model was expanded. The same methods used for the contact center have been adapted and deployed for 10 additional functional areas: