WHAT WE DO

Performance Improvement

When services aren't performing as well as they should, we help you understand why — and make them better.

We work with your teams to get underneath the symptoms, understand how work really happens and identify what's getting in the way of good performance. Then we help you redesign and improve services to deliver better outcomes for customers, colleagues and your organisation.

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Better performance starts with understanding the problem

Poor performance rarely has a single cause. Long waiting times, rising costs, backlogs, complaints, inconsistent customer experiences and overstretched teams can all be symptoms of problems elsewhere in the system.

Processes may have become unnecessarily complicated. Teams may be working to competing priorities. Measures may encourage the wrong behaviours. Technology may be making poor processes faster rather than making them better. Or years of small changes may simply have made the service harder to operate.

We help you step back and understand what is really happening before deciding what needs to change.

How we help

  • Understand performance

    We combine data, customer insight and the experience of the people delivering the service to build an evidence-based picture of current performance and identify what's really driving it.

  • Find the causes, not just the symptoms

    We look across the whole service — processes, demand, capacity, measures, roles, systems, behaviours and ways of working — to understand where problems originate and why they persist.

  • Redesign how work happens

    We bring the right people together to design simpler, more effective ways of working around the outcomes your customers and organisation need.

  • Turn improvement into action

    A better process on paper achieves nothing. We support implementation, helping teams test new ways of working, resolve problems and maintain momentum as improvements are introduced.

  • Make improvement last

    We put the measures, management approaches and capability in place to help your teams understand whether improvements are working — and keep making them better.

Real improvement & measurable results

We don't arrive with a pre-designed answer. We help your people understand the problem, design the solution and build the capability to sustain it.

Read more client stories

99.5% fewer clashes

The University of Kent transformed its approach to timetabling, publishing the timetable eight weeks earlier, reducing student clashes by 99.5%, cutting 9am classes by 63% and 5pm sessions by 78%.

30% increase in repairs productivity

Places for People increased the productivity of it’s repairs productivity by 30% and reduced it’s contact centre failure demand for repairs by 20%.

£50k added to bottom line

Improving the management of care contracts helped The Wilberforce Trust identify income that had previously been missed, adding approximately £50,000 to its bottom line and strengthening the charity's financial sustainability.

“Working with partners, not consultants”
— Grand Union Housing
““I would 100% recommend Ad Esse Consulting. If you think your performance is good, think again — it could be better.””
— L&Q Group

Performance improvement can mean...

  • Improving customer journeys

    Make services simpler, faster and easier for customers to navigate.

  • Free up capacity

    Remove unnecessary work, duplication, delays and failure demand.

  • Improving productivity

    Help teams get more of the right work done with the resources available.

  • Redesigning processes

    Create simpler end-to-end processes built around the outcomes you need.

  • Reducing costs and improving value

    Understand where resources are being consumed and improve value without simply cutting services.

  • Improving performance management

    Develop measures that help people understand what's happening and act on it.

  • Making technology work harder

    Improve the process first, so technology enables better ways of working rather than hard-coding existing problems.

  • Solving persistent problems

    Get underneath issues that have survived previous attempts to fix them.

Not sure where the problem is?

Start with a diagnostic

If you know performance could be better but aren't yet sure what's causing the problem or where to focus, we can start with a focused diagnostic.

We'll give you an independent, evidence-based view of current performance, identify the biggest opportunities and help you prioritise what to tackle first.

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