Business Case Studies & Business Publications

Employee Provident Fund Organization (EP...

Ravichandran, N, N...

Case

Employee Provident Fund Organization (EPFO): Towards consumer centricity

Ravichandran, N; Narayanaswami, Sundaravalli

IIMA-PSG0128 | Published April 4, 2018 | 26 pages Case

Collection: Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad

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Learning Objectives

The Employee Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO), established by the Government of India (GoI) is one of the world’s largest social security organisations. The purpose of EPFO is to ensure social security for industrial workers and their dependents. EPFO maintains more than 15 crore accounts of its members. Traditionally EPFO was a legacy organisation, administered and managed by Indian bureaucracy. Operational processes were riddled with over emphasis on rules and regulations, but were weak on transparency, accountability, effectiveness and efficiency. They have 120 offices established all over the country and operated in silos. Consequently, the very purpose of social security and welfare of the industrial employees suffered, while all other stakeholders enjoyed significant controlling power. Recent interventions at EPFO were focussed on process reengineering and ICT enablement to make EPFO more customer-centric. The case documents the transformation of EPFO from a bureaucratic, opaque organisation to a customer centric, stakeholder friendly, transparent and accountable organisation through IT enabled operations.

Demonstrate the impact of bureaucracy in public services. Demonstrate the adverse implications of over emphasis on rules based decision making in an organization that was created for social security and welfare. Discuss operational transformations in a public organization towards achieving customer centricity. Understand the impact of Technology Enablement and Process Reengineering in improving efficiency and effectiveness of a social organization. Illustrate fairness and balance in empowerment of individuals, specifically for an employee to demand his own monetary rights. Illustrate the power of IT enabled processes in rebalancing the power equation among various stakeholders