Situation: Three HR/Payroll systems required integrating to enable a Flexible Benefits service to employees within a large commercial Enterprise.
Intervention: Coordination of four external companies and five internal departments, action tracking, solution definition meetings, produced and maintained data flow architecture diagrams, IT department acceptance meetings.
Results: Implementation of data flow solution with strong focus on post-live support framework.
PROJECT: HR BUSINESS ANALYSIS
Situation: The HR Department within a large commercial Enterprise required system improvements to support a strategy for increasing employee engagement across the Enterprise. They also wished to redirect any time gained from system efficiencies towards supporting the engagement effort.
Intervention: Analysis of as-is solution architecture, weekly team stakeholder meetings, functional breakdown and analysis of HR business architecture, process workshops, definition of to-be solution architecture and proposal of next step activities.
Results:
1) Customer realisation of cost and challenge in integrating best of breed HR and related systems.
2) Identification of how most of the business needs discovered in the analysis did not require the assumed systems integration or replacement but could instead be realised by a proposed improvement in reporting functionality
3) Customer used analysis to inform key decisions: a) Halt implementation of learning tools solution and switch to functionality emerging within another application, b) Invest in Flexible Benefits system integration, c) Progress new intranet platform and associated integrations.
PROJECT: CORPORATE WEB SITE DESIGN SERVICE
Situation: Barrier to customers’ ASP sales pitch was cost and complexity of their clients commissioning design agencies.
Intervention: Developed web design team capability to accept briefs, brainstorm and deliver pitches. Produced in-house manuals on how to design and code solutions requiring either minimal or no back end redevelopment.
Results: Multiple pitch and Delivery successes. Designs produced for speculative pitches were commonly successful against competitor bids. Design service extended to display advertising and templates.
PROJECT: REDESIGN OF RECRUITMENT SERVICES SITE AND JOB BOARD B2B SITE
Situation: The web site design of a leading Online Recruitment Services company looking dated. A professional B2B site was required to support sales activity and communicate the relationship between the Recruitment Services and Job Board arms of the business.
Intervention: Applied principles from an earlier Corporate Career Site Design project. Fostered a collaborative yet competitive environment in the Design team. Managed design selection process with Marketing and Product Development teams.
Results: Successful release of both designs. Signposting to B2B site introduced on all marketing promotions and communications.
PROJECT: CONTENT MANGEMENT SYSTEM
Situation: This ecommerce customer required a Web user interface, CMS and associated content workflows for staff to control core content, site pages and graphics.
Intervention: Liaised closely with development team on options and design. Project continued to be progressed post live to improve usability and automation. Strong focus on testing.
Results: Systems and a user interface that was good enough to later reuse as client admin access feature.
PROJECT: WORKFLOW MANAGEMENT SYSTEM
Situation: This ecommerce company required functionality for their back office to include: CRM pipeline integration, order entry, order status and billing integration.
Intervention: Work shopped and brainstormed workflows. Worked closely with Sales teams to establish rate card and fulfilment expectation. Commissioned CRM system enhancements from 3rd party to deliver pipeline forms and database. Established in-house super user role for future customisations.
Results: Efficient single user interface booking and fulfilment management system integrated with the core CRM system and database.
PROJECT: OVERSEAS OUTSOURCING
Situation: This commercial Enterprise needed to reduce the cost of manual activity deployed to optimise data processing workflows. Inability to process data quickly was distracting their clients from appreciating the overall USP.
Intervention: Supplier selection process. Training and QA of service in test environment. Testing and trial period. Contract agreement.
Results: In house team reduced from 30 to 8. Ability to deal with workflow spikes.
PROJECT: INTERNAL ACCOUNT MANAGEMENT SERVICE
Situation: This ecommerce company required renewals success to no longer be compromised by inconsistent service during the life of the subscription.
Intervention: Analysis of account management activity. Definition of account management best practice. Identified reasons for salesperson to call clients and IAM’s (Internal Account Managers) to create up-sell opportunities between renewals. Established a virtual team of IAM’s. Introduced a reward structure.
Results: CRM system reports and IAM captured evidence of success was used to support account renewal pitches and also to demonstrate increased renewal rates for managed accounts.
PROJECT: INTRODUCTION AND ESTABLISHMENT OF DIGITAL WORKFLOWS
Situation: This national media organisation required the removal of offsite manual processes. Establishment of a digital studio operation was required in advance of a systems integration go-live.
Intervention: Software selection, establishment of specifications, design and testing of workflows, extensive team and user training,
Results: Digital workflow. Increased sales time achieved by offering later deadlines. Quality of reproduction enabled scope expansion to additional products.
PROJECT: ESTABLISH AND IMPROVE DIGITAL WORKFLOWS
Situation: Despite digitisation of content in-house, material was still being supplied to this major media customer in a non-digital format. There was also no mechanism to move content efficiently between two regional offices.
Intervention: Software selected for digital transmission solution. Once skills developed, a service for receiving content electronically was introduced. Robust checking processes introduced.
Results: Reduction of both cost and the logistical barriers preventing sale. Quicker processes enabled later sales deadlines.
PROJECT: SOLUTION PROPOSAL FOR REPLACEMENT COMMERCIAL ADVERTISING MANAGEMENT AND ORDERING SYSTEMS
Situation: Sponsors within a major UK media organisation sought an alternative solution proposal in response to a new strategy to seek reduced reliance on unique in-house systems development skills. A new technology strategy suggested Agile web development learning be applied also to business systems development by investing in cloud-based applications.
Intervention: High-level business analysis, gap analysis, supplier selection. Interviewed U.S newspaper companies. Attended Salesforce.com’s U.S. Dreamforce. Commissioned blueprinting engagement from a Salesforce.com Agile implementation partner. Applied Agile requirements gathering.
Results: High-level business requirements, high level architecture roadmap, high-level solution architecture and scope definition. Presentation of these documents describing strategy for integrated cloud based solutions. Business proposal based on iterative development successfully progressed to the next stage thereby enabling next step JAD and Agile development methodologies.
PROJECT: ARCHITECTURE ROADMAP
Situation: The IT department of a large Enterprise was struggling with an extensive list of business demands on Technology but little prioritisation or business ownership for benefit cases.
Intervention: Analysis and architecture workshops with business customer departments.
Strategic skills workshops to analyse in-house development capability versus future skills roadmap.
Results: Documentation and presentations of proposed priorities, high-level business cases and options to support process of business decision making with regard to both operating and capital expenditure.
PROJECT: COMMERCIAL ADVERTISING SYSTEMS REPLACEMENT PROPOSAL
Situation: Business sponsors within this major UK media organisation stipulated the future system be achieved through gradual and incremental change of existing systems by external partners working with internal staff.
Intervention: Led the IT input. Worked with business customer to establish vision, requirements, supplier assessment and gap analysis. Commissioned agile consultants to chair ‘away days’ to prioritise requirements, elucidate misunderstood obstacles to success and to help break the waterfall thinking. Overcame people barriers to success. Achieved seed funding approval for a commissioned technical architecture review and solution architecture proposal from a global outsourcing provider. Recruited contract Project Manager and Business Analyst to ensure project focus.
Results: Board paper proposing ad systems evolution by outsourcing/offshore partner, supported by internal staff.
PROJECT: PROJECT PROCESS
Situation: Absence of development or project methodologies restricting ability of IT to engage with distributed business owners and their own technology resources.
Intervention: Analysis of current state. Established a broad project process (Engagement Policy). This wasn’t a methodology but a workflow that business partners agreed to follow.
Results: The agreed principles obliged acceptance of IT involvement in early stages of projects and ensured requirements analysis, solution definition and robust selection processes were carried out. Enabled a line to be drawn upon which to set tolerances.
PROJECT: RISK ASSESSMENT OF SYSTEMS SUPPORT AND DEVELOPMENT
Situation: Staff concerns on development disciplines raised at Director level within this large commercial organisation. High risk of loosing highly skilled and unsettled staff.
Intervention: Investigated issues. Analysis and discovery of issues around process and team working. Agreement of proposal to enforce code change disciplines and introduction of Junior DBA to support additional activity.
Results: New change process and guidelines reduced chance of issues occurring particularly out-of-hours. The improved collaboration process increased awareness and knowledge required for issue resolution. Key staff were retained.
PROJECT: RESTRUCTURE OF TECHNICAL SUPPORT TEAM
Situation: Single point of dependency on one manager across a business critical 24/7 service within a large commercial operation. Unacceptable variance of skills, abilities and performance existed within the team.
Intervention: Analysis of issues. Change management included mentoring of managers and teams to realise need for change. Coaching of key team members before and after transition. New team structure, which included the establishment of four deputy manager roles.
Results: Level of support increased. Risks reduced. Low implementation cost due to new appointments being recruited from within existing team.