Client Success: BlueCross BlueShield of NC

The leadership team at Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina (BlueCross NC) recognized there was a need for change. Ian Gordon, then senior vice president of commercial and government operations, determined that his 100-member service operations management team needed to do things with greater efficiency to meet more aggressive performance goals.

Lynn Duffy, then vice president of leadership and organizational development for BlueCross NC, brought this need to NC State Executive Education. “We were impressed by NC State’s willingness to create a customized curriculum specifically targeting our organization’s unique needs in the area of operations management.” BlueCross NC worked with NC State Executive Education to develop and deliver a custom program – the Service Delivery Leadership Program – that would train approximately 100 of their managers, directors and vice presidents to better design, plan and run service operations.

The six-day custom program spanned six weeks and covered the latest techniques in defining and documenting service processes, analyzing and managing service capacity and performance, and forecasting and managing demand. Managers also learned how to build simulation models of their actual processes. The participants worked in cross-functional teams to tackle real business problems and present real solutions. “This approach is at the heart of why this program was so successful,” Gordon said.