- CLIENT CASE – Rescuing and Delivering a Failing Project
The challenge…
The business had won a prestigious contract to provide new technology combined with on-going retail operations at a brand new multisite theme park development in Dubai. The technology to be deployed was still being developed as part of a wider programme. The regional team in Dubai and the technology team in the UK were not aligned. The company had to deploy new technology in a new theme park with a new team in less than four months. The newly arrived CEO knew the project was in trouble.
Approach…
After a rapid review with stakeholders and project teams to assess the health of the project, a project recovery plan was proposed to the CEO as the Executive Sponsor. This required a different project structure, approach and stronger programme leadership. After personnel changes, Marketing, HR, Retail Operations, Engineering and Technology workstreams were defined and assigned to functional managers with clear responsibility and deliverables.
A new governance structure was established under a new Programme Director with clear authority and accountability. A new experienced Project Manager was hired to work on the ground in Dubai. The Head of Region and the Programme Director worked in close collaboration with the end customer to manage expectations and to solve problems. The technology team worked to clear requirements to deliver a working solution.
The Outcome…
The new retail operation with entirely new staff, technology and retail systems integrated with the theme park ticketing system, opened on time in and under budget. The project went from status RED to GREEN in less than three months. The company had a repeatable project blueprint for future park openings that was used in subsequent installations in Asia and the USA. This was achieved by experienced people applying solid technique with effective stakeholder communication aligned to a clear scope and project outcome.
2. CLIENT CASE – Attracting and recruiting high quality talent
The Challenge…
A high street, high growth coffee retail business was opening 60 stores a year on an established 550 store operation. Headcount of 5,000 employees with a 65 per cent staff turnover at store level.
The question we had to address was: How should the business attract and recruit high quality talent and build a talent engine in the company to meet the future leadership requirements of a growing organisation?
Approach…
Creation of a future leadership map of the skills and competencies required to lead an organisation with aggressive growth plans over the next 2 years.
This included mapping the existing leadership team against the competencies and success criteria, identification of leadership gaps or surpluses in the current organisation.
Then assessment of the future talent (Leaders+1) against the criteria taking into account geography and capacity to grow as a leader.
A ‘Potential Talent’ pool was created for future development and a dynamic, action project based programme was developed to nurture and grow the internal talent.
Recruitment plans were rolled out to identify, resource and induct external talent at leadership level and at store level .
An aggressive internal Succession Plan was developed informed by reliable data established through the competency profiling and talent identification process.
The Outcome..
Significant reduction in employee turnover by 20 per cent.
Increased leadership capacity and capacity to take on more locations.
Improved productivity per labour hour.
Reduced recruitment costs.
All leadership roles were filled internally building the culture and philosophy for future 100 per cent internal recruitment,
3. CLIENT CASE – Transformation of Hospitality Sector Software Business
The Challenge…
A technology company that had grown rapidly through acquisition, sold software products and services to the hospitality and retail sectors. A portfolio of old legacy software was proving increasingly costly and difficult to support and a dissatisfied customer base were demanding more innovation and new products. This was a business in need of a significant transformation to survive.
Approach…
Following the acquisition of a small hospitality solutions business with a fledgling range of Software as a Service (SAAS) products, the newly formed hospitality management team embarked on a strategy and plan to integrate the newly acquired business, rationalise the product base, providing customers with a migration path to the new product and solutions. This required a commitment to improve product support and develop new value adding managed services at speed. The challenge for management was to achieve this transformation in a 12 to 18 month timeframe, reducing operating costs, retaining customers, winning new customers and significantly improving business and service performance.
The plan required the creation and alignment of new support, delivery and development teams, developing a more customer focused mindset achieved by blending existing teams with newly recruited talent and capability. New Customer Service Managers and Account Managers worked together alongside development teams using Agile methodologies for the first time to develop new products to meet customer needs. Delivering higher availability with SAAS products required the consolidation and upgrading of data centres and technology infrastructure. This presented a huge change management task.
The Outcome…
A transformed organisation supporting customers with products and services based on solid service management disciplines underpinned with a ‘can do’ service oriented culture. Teams were aligned to clear objectives and worked effectively together solving problems with customers.
Revenues and profitability increased with retained and new customers positive about the impact of the programme of business change.