Practice Areas

NewPoint Group's public sector specialists provide management consulting services in the following areas:

Statement of Qualifications (SOQs)

Strategic Planning

How can an organization move from the current state to their future vision? Strategic Planning creates an explicit path between the two through a process of long-term assessment of internal and external environments, establishing goals and objectives, developing action plans to meet those goals and objectives, and identifying and tracking performance measures.

• Where are we now?
• Where do we want to be?
• How do we get there?
• How do we measure our progress?

This process shapes and guides what an organization is, what it does, and why it does it. The process of strategic planning is participatory – facilitating communication within an organization and with its external environment, strengthening partnerships, improving customer service, and improving decision-making and successful implementation.

Strategic planning is a vehicle to successfully introduce quality management concepts to an agency or department. It guides the budget process, providing management an opportunity to evaluate the existing allocation of funds. The process of planning is often more valuable than the plan itself. The strategic planning process is flexible and continuous – strategic plans are not static, but may be adapted over time to reflect the changing internal and external environments.

NewPoint Group has guided public sector clients through the entire strategic planning process. Starting with the internal and external assessment, through the development of performance measures and monitoring, tracking, and reevaluating the plans.

Strategic Performance Management

Top government executives are managing their agencies in an extremely volatile environment, and the performance stakes are higher than ever. Strategic Performance Management is an essential tool for managers aiming to provide the information and accountability that is expected of them.

Strategic performance management builds on your organization's core strategies to identify a balanced scorecard of performance metrics that will promote the achievement of agency goals and provide direction and commitment for future success. This tool is built around results-oriented measures, not just financial measures, but those driven by the three building blocks of effective measurement:

• Knowledge of your customers
• A focus on business processes
• External information that affects the success of an agency in achieving its goals

A balanced scorecard provides for measurement of the customer satisfaction, cycle time and cost of processes, employee growth and satisfaction, and financial data. The metrics for the balanced scorecard are defined with reference to the strategic plan, so they can be used to assess alignment with this strategic plan.

Our results-oriented focus requires commitment on your organization's part, and ideally, one or more project champions. NewPoint Group works with your organization to secure this commitment and generate enthusiasm for the project. Our team will assist with developing the balanced scorecard of metrics, defining the data collection process, and developing an integrated and continuously operating performance management system.

But we don't stop there. Our team will sit down with an organization to identify next steps - recommendations for future activities that will allow an organization to continuously improve performance. This process aligns your agency with its business goals and is responsive to the needs of your customers and other stakeholders. Measurement Building Blocks

Customers – understanding the needs of external and internal customers enables you to evaluate whether your services and products meet their expectations in terms of delivery time, cost, and quality.

Business Processes – measurements oriented towards your business track the actual flow of work in your agency, helping you to focus on specific areas that need attention. Can you reduce turnaround time and costs? Are resources deployed efficiently? Have you overlooked opportunities to improve quality?

External Information – awareness of external factors such as stakeholder needs and regulatory requirements will allow you to stay informed about opportunities and threats to your agency. Are you missing out on relationships with other government agencies that could enhance performance? Are you aware of strategic issues facing your agency?

There are many performance measures – the key is identifying those that will drive improvements in performance in your agency.

Process Improvement and Innovation

Government agencies today are confronted with the challenge of providing better services more efficiently, and for less cost. The way to meet this challenge is through Process Improvement and Innovation. NewPoint Group provides a portfolio approach to improvement, along the dimensions of degree of change (tactical to strategic) and pace of change (fast to measured). The solutions that match the people, processes, and technologies of your agency are unique - our portfolio approach allows us to work with you to customize our analysis and solutions to your objectives and priorities.

Continuous Improvement. Institutes programs of measured, tactical change, such as total quality management, that yield a steady flow of incremental performance improvements and promote cultural change.

Focused Improvement. Produces fast, tactical gains in cost, time, or quality performance in specific operational areas-for example expediting collections, reducing lead times in public works, and improving constituent service.

Focused Restructuring. Brings about fast, strategic change required by sudden, major shifts in the internal or external environment. Restructuring can include asset sales, outsourcing, and getting out of (or into) traditional government services.

Process Innovation. Supports strategic redefinition and transforms fundamental operating characteristics through the reengineering of business processes. For example, we recently reinvented a state's procurement system to dramatically change what is bought, how it is distributed, and the roles of customers and suppliers.

Our improvement methodologies are supported by two enabling practice areas for evaluating performance and facilitating your organization's transition to its future state: performance measurement and organizational change management.

NewPoint Group works closely with clients as we apply a three-phased focused process improvement and innovation methodology that provides a flexible framework for identifying, prioritizing, and realizing the changes to business processes that will yield significant gains in performance.

Assessment Build commitment, assess current state, develop improvement portfolio Design Define future state, manage change, develop performance metrics Implementation Deploy new processes and technologies, train staff, measure results

Technology and eGovernment Services

Elected officials are requesting their chief information officers to enable eGovernment implementations. Governments that understand the need to provide a single view across processes (a "brand") will achieve success in eGovernment efforts.

Internet-enabled government services is a key driver in government improvement efforts. The Internet provides a platform for 24/7 constituent services with zero latency. Constituent relationships can move from standard treatment to customized service, while daily interactions can be increased by orders of magnitude without similar increases in staff.

NewPoint Group's public sector technology professionals keep pace with proven and emerging technologies. They can help an agency assess the effectiveness of its strategic information technology plans, knowledge management infrastructure, and technical infrastructures, and then determine the business model that will enable the agency to meet its strategic objectives. Our team can help you overcome issues such as integrating legacy systems, multiple databases, and distributed architectures to deliver Internet-enabled operations.

• Readiness assessment: assessing the readiness for eGovernment, including current policies, infrastructure, architecture, work flow, and knowledge management process
• eGovernment visioning: developing an agency's eGovernment vision and strategy, and the business model to support the strategy and drive innovation
• Strategic planning: developing strategic information system plans to support agency goals and objectives
• Feasibility analysis: developing the business case, evaluating alternative solutions, and determining the economic viability of potential technology solutions (feasibility study reporting)
• Protecting: identifying and evaluating security, privacy, and reliability issues, and planning and implementing measures to ensure the public's trust
• Architecting: defining functional, technical, and creative requirements
• Implementing: defining, designing, installing, and testing information portals, systems, and interfaces to meet specific organizational requirements

NewPoint Group's eGovernment services are integrated with the firm's other consulting areas. When we assist in developing a new system or program, it is done within the context of leveraging process improvement, and it is done with regard to the human aspects of the organization.

Organizational Alignment

Too often, the human aspect of organizational change and process improvement is ignored. Organizational Alignment helps an organization create a mutually supportive system of people, processes, and technology, while focusing on achieving its business objectives. To be successful in today's rapidly changing environment, the organization's vision of the future must describe how employees will be organized, trained, compensated, rewarded, and informed. NewPoint Group works closely with you to align the organization to the vision, focusing on six key enablers. Affecting these cultural enablers encourages employee behaviors that will improve future performance:

• Organizational structure
• Performance measurement
• Management style
• Compensation, benefits, and rewards
• Education and development
• Communication

NewPoint Group's three-step organizational alignment methodology helps clarify an organization's current business situation in these six enabler areas, and identify an optimal future state, ensuring that it is properly tied to the organization's business strategy. These steps will place your organization in the best position to realize the highest levels of improved performance and the greatest competitive advantage in the years to come.

Planning and Analysis Identify future state, enablers and barriers, develop integrated action plan for future state Design Design the future state, identify performance criteria, policies, transition, and implementation plans Implementation Implement improvements, training, and processes to evaluate and measure

Government Program Planning and Evaluation

More and more, government agencies are being asked to evaluate their policies and programs, and develop improved ways of conducting business. NewPoint Group has extensive experience in conducting Government Program Planning and Evaluation, and in developing recommendations to take our clients to the next level. Generally, these projects include all, or most of, the following:

• Assessment of the external environment (e.g., governing statutes and regulations, stakeholder and/or customer needs and requirements, and industry trends, benchmarks, and leading practices)
• Assessment of organizational structures and reporting relationships, personnel classifications used and skill requirements, and skill deficiencies and training needs (i.e., the organizational development, organizational alignment, and human resource dimensions of an enterprise)
• Assessment of the major processes at various levels including: (1) policies, methods, procedures, and controls; (2) process, material, and work flow; (3) workload standards and staffing requirements; and (4) financial and operating performance measures.
• Assessment of technology support (e.g., executive management information systems, operations support systems and equipment, and workload/resource management systems).

Organizational Change Management

Reengineering, restructuring, focused and continuous process improvement, and business process innovation result in major changes in an organization. However, resistance to change is a basic human characteristic. Successful implementation of these improvement projects requires a structured and disciplined approach to managing the human elements of change.

For NewPoint Group, managing change is at the foundation of improvement efforts. To maximize success of our portfolio of services we integrate our three-step Organizational Change Management methodology into all our business improvement projects. We have found that a well-planned and effective change management program will:

• Reduce implementation risk
• Improve management of people aspects of change
• Increase likelihood of on-time, in-budget results

Clarification Clarify objectives, assess organization, build teams, develop transition strategy Transition Plan, train, implement change management infrastructure, execute plan, track and report results Evaluation Measure achievement of objectives, build continuous improvement orientation

Cost Allocation and Rate Setting

User fees can be an important source of revenue. However, they also place new demands on your organization. Effectively setting and implementing user fees and rates requires an understanding of direct and indirect cost allocation and capital financing strategies. The large volume of data required must be well documented and easily updated, so that fee adjustments become routine. Many agencies that adopt policies to recover the full cost of providing certain services fail to implement those policies due to the time and complexity involved in calculating and allocating costs. Cost allocation is also important in determining charges for contracts and recoveries under federal programs.

NewPoint Group provides a full range of Cost Allocation and Rate Setting services to help you allocate costs and recover them through user fees:

• Developing cost recovery strategies
• Developing a fee inventory
• Identifying the full cost of direct and indirect services
• Applying cost allocation methodologies to recover indirect costs
• Calculating capital cost depreciation
• Developing cost accounting systems, activity-based cost allocation programs, and inter-departmental billing systems
• Surveying other agencies' fees
• Estimating fee recovery potential
• Analyzing legislative and regulatory guidelines

NewPoint Group's experience in developing and conducting cost and rate studies covers a wide range of federal, state, and local government agencies. Our California rate-setting studies are done in the context of Proposition 218 and AB 1600. We have extensive cost and rate setting expertise within three specific functional areas: heath and welfare; integrated waste management; and water and wastewater.

NewPoint Group also has developed rate structures for unique programs of individual agencies, relying on our rate setting methodology and process. For example, NewPoint Group has performed rate setting work for the telecommunications industry on behalf of the California Public Utilities Commission in the nature of a complex performance measurement and incentive plan to deregulate the local telephone market. As another example, NewPoint Group has unique rate setting experience with municipal mobile home rent control and the firm has performed over twenty city and county mobile home rate setting projects.

In the field of integrated waste management, NewPoint Group has developed a proprietary solid waste rate setting process and methodology manual currently used by a number of local governments to adjust refuse collection rates. We have conducted numerous refuse rate reviews, cost studies, and financial and economic analyses for local government clients, as well as cost-recovery studies for container recycling programs.

In the behavioral health field, NewPoint Group developed the cost report forms and methodology used by the California Department of Mental Health to obtain federal Medi-Cal reimbursement for specialty mental health services provided by county mental health plans in California. NewPoint Group also developed the rate setting methodology used to establish maximum reimbursement rates for these same services. Given our extensive knowledge of this specialized area, we have prepared cost reports and conducted numerous fiscal analyses for local behavioral health organizations.

Environmental Studies

NewPoint Group has developed a specialization in performing unique, state-of-the art studies in the environmental and natural resource areas. These large, complex, and multi-disciplined engagements require combining and integrating numerous functional areas of expertise.

Our environmental studies competence provides management solutions for government environmental and natural resource programs and projects. These engagements usually require effectively integrating numerous disciplines such as engineering, economics, planning, and environmental sciences.

We have assisted clients with project management and preparation of environmental documents, including Negative Declarations as well as full programmatic Environmental Impact Reports. NewPoint Group has also provided Assembly Bill 939 (AB 939) and general recycling planning assistance.

Examples of four recent multi-disciplined NewPoint Group environmental studies (several of which were multi-year projects) are as follows:

• Preparing an Environmental Impact Report for the California Delta Egeria densa Control Program for the California Department of Boating and Waterways
• Performing economic and operations modeling of California's proposed hazardous waste classification system for the California Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Toxic Substances Control
• Reengineering of the State of California's ten-year-old beverage container and recycling program for the California Department of Conservation
• Evaluating the Transportation Energy Technology Advancement Program for the California Energy Commission

Our environmental studies often have involved assessment of one or more of the following functional areas:

• Alternative Transportation Technologies
• Energy Systems
• Hazardous Waste Management
• Land Use Planning
• Refuse and Recycling Collection and Operations
• Solid Waste Landfills
• Water Resources Management
• Wastewater Infrastructure

Publications Design

NewPoint Group offers its customers professional in-house Publications Design that provides a finishing touch to any management project. NewPoint Group's in-house Publication Designer has extensive expertise in producing full-color RFPs, proposals, reports, product manuals, executive presentations, handouts, media kits, and informational graphics. Our designer will work directly with you from product inception to production to ensure that the final product meets your specifications. We have the capability to produce almost every document in-house, which saves our clients time and money, as well as allowing greater control over the form of the final product.

NewPoint Group's web designer can design your web site from scratch, or enhance your existing web site using state-of-the-art technology and web design tools. Few web design firms take the time to understand your needs and intended uses. NewPoint Group will work directly with you to build a professional, functional site that your company will be proud to have on the Web.

Increasingly, companies are relying on PDF to streamline their paperless workflow, with multiple users reviewing, marking up, and revising PDF documents on-line. PDF also enables companies to avoid the increasing cost of distributing large reports and databases to clients by allowing for digital distribution via CD-ROM, e-mail, or the World Wide Web. NewPoint Group provides our customers with full PDF production and implementation capabilities.