Case Studies

A fundamental IT systems upgrade at a major building society

The change programme was for a major IT infrastructure and associated new application systems implementation exercise for a major building society. During this assignment, the informal networks consultants prepared a management of change strategy and established a practical management of change framework for implementing more than £130 million of new IT facilities that would enable new ways of doing business – through e-commerce and call centres, as well as through traditional branches. This involved working with the outsource supplier responsible for overall programme management by balancing formal and informal networks during all aspects of the change process including change sequencing, communications, training and gaining the commitment of key influencers throughout the organisation. 

This implementation was so successful – on time and within budget, with widespread staff support - that the building society agreed to the publication of a case study of the assignment by the Wentworth/Gartner Group to illustrate “best practice in managing a major IT change project”.

A major business transformation for a large government agency

The single biggest Private Finance Initiative (PFI) contract issued by the UK Government at the time involved a practical partnership between a large government agency involved in finance (investment assets £60 billion) and a leading business process outsource supplier.  Under this contract, the outsource supplier runs all the administrative systems and processes for the Agency, as well as taking over responsibility for some 4,000 staff.  The objective of this PFI was nothing less than to create a highly effective, automated and modern organisation that can fully meet the current and future needs of the Agency, while at the same time utilising surplus staff and a comprehensive IT/IS infrastructure to service new business clients.  The technology involved includes e-commerce, call centres and intelligent document scanning and recognition.

The informal networks consultant was in charge of the people side of this massive change initiative, reporting into the change programme director.  Part of this responsibility was to guide the extensive work on new organisation design, including all aspects of organisational structures, career progression, performance assessment and rewards.  The work done represented the leading edge of change management at the time, placing a strong emphasis on influencer identification and involvement, as well as selected ONA scans - and played a major part in the smooth transition of Civil Servants into a highly competitive commercial business environment.  Productivity improvements of more than 100% were achieved while more than 99% of key performance indicators were met during the crucial transition period. 

The UK National Audit Office used this implementation as an example of success in PFI implementation.

A major business transformation for a large city council

A large city council in the north of England and a major business process outsource supplier entered into a joint venture BPO agreement whereby a new organisation would run many of the administrative operations of the city council.   These included Revenues and Benefits, IT and Human Resources.

Influencers at all levels across the organisation were identified at an early stage and used to drive all aspects of change communications – both formal and informal – during the critical transition period.  The new organisation’s call centre has subsequently won awards for outstanding performance and the highly automated HR operation has been the subject of many visits by professionals across both the public and private sectors.  ‘Customer’ satisfaction ratings increased significantly.  (This major transformation was used as an example of successful technology-driven change in the influential Gershon Report, commissioned by the UK Government.)

A major back office transformation for a leading insurance organisation

An innovative Business Process Outsource supplier entered into a business process outsourcing agreement to run the entire back office operations for a major insurance organisation.

An associated major change programme led to productivity improvements of more than 25% in operational areas over a period of less than 6 months. The use of influencers and highly-connected individuals in the new operations management/ supervisory team and for informal/formal communications led to staff support levels for change bouncing back to a higher level than they were six months previously.  It also led to profits jumping from zero to £10 million+ in the first financial year of the new operation.  Many new outsourcing contracts have been won to run different aspects of insurance transaction processing for external organisations, including a significant international insurance contract.  Key performance indicators were consistently met during the transition period.

A culture change initiative for the IT department of a major Insurer

The IT Department at a large insurance company embarked on a radical change initiative to transform a relatively traditional IT department into an internal ‘commercial IT service’ that really treated the business as its customer.  This change required organisational, process and internal charging changes that were implemented efficiently over a period of six months. 

However, it rapidly became evident that a radical change was needed to the culture of the IT group – relationships with customers, the way that new processes were implemented in practice and (above all) the way that IT staff behaved in their day-to-day work.  The informal networks consultant led a nine-month programme of practical culture change, using ‘waves’ of managers and influencers to identify and then progressively ‘live’ and measure the new desired behaviours.  The end result was a profound and measurable change in ‘the way that we do things here’:  Feedback from influencers in the culture change team reported staff ‘living’ the new behaviours on a day-to-day basis progressively rising from 18% to 55%.  Once it became clear that day-to-day behaviours were very important, a range of other quarterly staff surveys (from 2004 into 2005) vividly illustrated the knock-on effect of real culture change.