Case Studies

Company Profile: IT equipment, service and software business, with 6500+ employees, £2 billion revenues, 40+ legal entities, operating in 13 countries with a partially centralised 200+ strong multi-national IT department.

Task: Own, manage, deliver and accountable for the IT divestment of each business entity by country for the parent company. Transition to numerous buyers including competitors, management buyouts, new sectors and closures. Responsible for but not limited to facilitation of contract discussions, liaising with global corporate offices, creating migration plan, leading migration activities and reinvigorating and ensuring maximum delivery from diminishing teams.

Results: All units disposed of within 18 months of initiation, under budget and one year ahead of schedule.

Company Profile: Regulated and non-regulated water utility business, with 3500+ employees, £500 million revenues, 25+ legal entities, operating in 5 countries with a centralised 200+ strong multi-national IT department.

Task: Design, structure and facilitate the partial divestment of the regulated entity to a third party fund manager. Include IT department design, recruitment, service provider migration and creation of the divesting entity, as well as all activities necessary to reverse carve-out the future retained entity. Ensure both entities are self-sufficient with limited cost increase and nominal service disruption.

Results: Both entities were stable, self-sufficient and had very minimal staff attrition during the retained 6 month period after completion.

Company Profile: Water Utilities, carved out non-regulated service provider, with 200+ employees, £100 million revenues, operating in 3 countries with a centralised 200+ strong group IT department.

Task: Own, sponsor and ensure successful delivery of the complete IT transition including, due diligence, pricing, design, build and migration from the current owner to the purchaser with no disruption of services to the end customer.

Results: Complete migration of business occurred on schedule including transitioning the entire IT service portfolio with no disruption to services including billing on time and within budget.

Company Profile: Financial Services, subprime mortgage lender, with 300+ employees, originating c.£100million new loans monthly, introduced through the Loan Packager Networks, operating in 3 countries with a distributed 80+ strong outsourced multi-supplier IT department.

Task: Design, build and deliver the IT service transition post joint venture buyout with no disruption to current or planned services.

Results: Measurably improved productivity, pricing and service delivery within six months of transition with no contractual issues or service disruption after trigger.

Company Profile: Holding company supplying regulated and non-regulated water utility businesses with shared service functions, having 400+ employees, operating from a central location with a 180+ strong IT department.

Task: Significantly improve service delivery to ensure future contractual SLA breaches do not incur penalty charges and instil a sense of pride and accountability in the leadership team.

Results: Achieved contractual SLA performance for the first time in the company’s history. Reduced running penalty charges of £150k per month to £0. Empowered team and instilled department level accountability.

Company Profile: B2B insurance provider providing high risk origination protection, with 19 employees, £2 million revenues, operating in three countries with a centralised eight contractor led IT department.

Task: Evaluate, build business case and migrate existing contractor led outsourced IT department with several single points of failure to cheaper, larger and competitively priced offshore service provider to enable ambitious growth target of 25 fold.

Results: Re-organised and refocused an under-performing IT department. Developed a new vision and team structure, recruited new talent, consolidated reporting lines, initiated the outsourcing of services and “sold and demonstrated” the value of IT to the business. Significantly reduced employee turnover and enabled the business to exceed its growth target to achieve a phenomenal 52 fold growth in two years (£2 million to £105 million) with no additional full time staff.

Company Profile: IT equipment, service and software business, with 6500+ employees, €2 billion revenues, 40+ legal entities, operating in 13 countries with a partially centralised 200+ strong multi-national IT department.

Task: Measurably improve the perceived service, pricing and support provided by the centralised IT organisation to the enterprise.

Results: Centralised the ownership of IT requests, created and appointed business account managers to the individual business boards, and ensured ownership and accountability for each individual programme at an executive level. Reduced incomplete projects by 62%, facilitated pan-European solutions and regained the businesses’ trust in IT’s capabilities.

Company Profile: Holding company supplying regulated and non-regulated water utility businesses with shared service functions, having 400+ employees, operating from a central location with a 180+ strong IT department.

Task: Improve SLA/OLA delivery capability without increasing operating cost. Provide an IT platform with virtually unlimited resources to meet unknown future business demand. Ensure future delivery model is capable of managing the contractual service levels agreed with the customers and any risk in meeting service levels are mitigated. If the identified solution involves an outsourcing solution, then the OJEU procurement process must be followed.

Results: Outsourced current staff of 136+ to outsourced service provider, retained 19 full time employees to ensure ownership and accountability. Transition was completed 3 months from contract signature, achieved 32% Opex and 36% Capex reduction whilst improving documented SLA by 56% with penalties directly flowing to the supplier, all within 9 months of stabilisation. Solution delivered over £25m benefit to the group’s bottom line with no FX risk.

Company Profile: Financial Services, subprime mortgage lender, with 300+ employees, originating c.£100million new loans monthly, introduced through the Loan Packager Networks, operating in 3 countries with a distributed 80+ strong outsourced multi-supplier IT department.

Task: Eliminate service disruptions and improve current suppliers’ service delivery without increasing support costs.

Results: Conducted workout sessions with high priority suppliers to identify and document all issues from both sides, created and prioritised issues log, ensured improved operating stability, and focused and tracked delivery leading to a 33% service level increase.  Vastly improved supplier relationships and improved customer satisfaction which generated a 5% increase in new business bringing service availability to over 99%.

Company Profile: B2B insurance provider providing high risk origination protection, with 19 employees, £2 million revenues, operating in three countries with a centralised eight contractor led IT department with significant potential for growth.

Task: Design and build an IT department with a headcount cap of 13 capable of delivering 25 fold growth to existing business. Meet corporate outsourcing mandate of 70/70/70 (% resources outsourced/% off shore /% fixed price bids) using approved partner list. Ensure service provider already has capacity to achieve the growth targets.

Results: Transitioned current providers to corporate approved suppliers. Instilled a department culture of healthy competition which challenged current mind-sets and adjusted staff goals to deliver the necessary change in leadership values. Created a structure with supplier to achieve competitive rates and delivery times that were challenged by both parties. Resulting in a year by year reduction in costs by £2mpa, increasing work capacity by 25%, and enabling staff to focus on strategy and growing their management skills versus day to day operations at a reduced day rate from previous supplier.

Company Profile: Debt management business

Task: Help design and build the end to end processes necessary to establish and enable a new business unit for future growth.

Results: Gathered requirements, conceptualised and built a four pillar process to use as a foundation to the future business. Interviewed new leadership team and past suppliers to design and fabricate the new processes for each pillar. The resulting documentation and materials enabled the business to work as a team on a common goal.  As a team, they were able to leverage their capabilities and build a successful business with new trained staff to operate it from day one.

Company Profile: Mortgage lender

Task: Improve the turnaround time necessary to provide customers with a lending decision

Results: Reviewed the processes necessary to create and provide estimates and interviewed staff to validate documentation.  Mapped the process from end to end to identify waste and areas that could be streamlined.  The simplified process and subsequent improvements identified enabled the business to redefine their product portfolio and reduce the time taken to process decisions from 10 days to 3.

Company Profile: International high street lenders

Task: Reduce margin for errors and processing time, costs associated to courier and storage fees while enabling all authorised parties and both internal and external auditors to search, view and print any relevant documents and contracts for a case file anytime, anywhere, on any device.

Results: Reviewed the case creation process to establish touch points and key triggers.  Conducted vendor assessment to identify products capable of digitising process steps.  Negotiated partnership with supplier and led team to customise product with intention of creating a bespoke solution to meet client needs with limited retraining.  Product rolled out and utilised as a core service by over 50 high street lending client’s and their suppliers worldwide.

Company Profile: Shared service organisation operating as a cost neutral independent business providing back office services to 56 separate businesses under one parent umbrella.

Task: Complete IT health check assessment, SWOT analysis and next steps analysis report for executive board.

Results: Identified six key projects that needed immediate attention to ensure a stable IT department. Highlighted numerous key strengths the IT department had that could be used to assist in business growth. The resulting projects identified in this report contributed to over £6m/year in additional revenue and greatly improved both the IT department’s standing within the business and the services it offered.

Company Profile: Large multinational utilities business

Task: Merge the delivery capabilities of 56 separate entities into a single shared service centre.

Results: Established, measured and agreed service levels were instated, improving overall service by over 50%. Services and pricing were published on a rate card that could be compared to third party offerings to ensure best value for money across the business and per business unit. Published pricing ensured the subsidising of one profit centre from another was transparent and controlled at a group level. Benefits were realised through economies of scale in vendor negotiations, leveraging best practices and office consolidation, these benefits enabled the creation of group level comparative business cases and corporate governance while significantly reducing duplication efforts.

Company Profile: Insurance business

Task: Design and implement a department capable of supporting significant fluctuations in size with no employment risk

Results: Department was redesigned around a new outsourcing model, where FTE risks were moved to third party provider and priced on a fixed price bid. Contract was structured so that expansion and consolidation were measured based on percentage and trued up quarterly going forward. Business accomplished 52 fold growth then shrunk by half with no change to initial headcount numbers.

Company Profile: Distribution and consultancy services business

Task: Measurably improve the value that an international shared services corporate function provides, and is seen to provide, to its customers.

Results: Redesigned corporate department focusing on account managers who owned the client relationship, responsible for marketing group best practices, reducing implementation costs, coordinating and communicating prioritisations and ensuring delivery commitments were met for their customers. Reduced incomplete projects by over 60% and group became the preferred first point of contact for services in each federated business unit.

Company Profile: B2B insurance provider operating in eight countries.

Task: Provide IT programme delivery transparency, improve end user experience for new projects and reduce project waste by 30%.

Results: Moved the request programme prioritisation from corporate departments to the business leaders or delegates that receives the service. Board level project sponsors were appointed within the business ensuring adequate functional resources were assigned and remained appointed to project.

All services were owned by department leaders or front office functions and their teams. Corporate responsibility changed from owner of the service to managing the service availability, maintenance and upgrades as required, on behalf of their customer.

Business users and leaders alike were regularly updated on their programme progress allowing for early intervention and significantly reducing waste and improving delivery time. Programmes with insufficient resources allocated by the business were either closed or risk mitigations were implemented. High profile project prioritisations were moved to the board so that all directors were involved in the decision process.

Company Profile: Shared service organisation operating as a cost neutral independent business providing back office services to 56 separate businesses under one parent umbrella.

Task: Standardise, simplify and clarify the rules associated with project/programme approval.

Results: Creation and publication of company-wide governance model covering minimum project requirements, minimum return on investments and extenuating circumstances used for project prioritisation. Followed for every project, this guideline ensured financial resources assigned to project deliveries were sanctioned and approved by the executive committee. This simplified the prioritisation process, significantly reducing decision times, enabling the delivery of high priority programmes at a reliable pace and vastly reducing wasted resource effort on lower priority requests.

Company Profile: Financial Services: mortgage lender

Task: Standardise business case documentation to ensure the leadership team can prioritise seemingly unrelated projects timely, accurately and efficiently. Enable leadership team to prioritise programmes in a very quick and decisive manner suitable for all departments regardless of interests.

Results: Created a one page summary document with all critical information necessary for decision for each individual programme. This document covered financials, risks, programme and solution descriptions as well as dependencies so that all parties regardless of their awareness could easily identify and compare one request to another for approval for spend and resource allocation.

Provided details for prioritisation including resource allocation impacts, legal restrictions, regulatory obligations and return on investment predictions.

Reduced the programme pipeline prioritisation time from 1 day to under 1 hour.