EXCLUSIVE: Project One celebrating 20 years
NEWS AT
ISSUE 14
Robotic Process Automation: the pitfalls and possibilities
IN THIS ISSUE:
creating an unrivalled customer experience
Changing Change at ReAssure
ReAssure
Mobile Transformation at Virgin Media
EOUINITI
Transforming EqPaymaster
contents
06
04 Defining Our Future
30 Welcome to The Team
NEWS AT
06 Changing Change at ReAssure
34 Life in Saudi
ReAssure
36 Looking After Our People
10 Equiniti: Transforming EQPaymaster 14 Northumbrian Water: Creating an Unrivalled Customer Experience 18 Mobile Transformation at Virgin Media
FOReWORD
40 Project One Celebrating 20 Years
24
HAYLEY GREENHILL EDITOR
42 Giving Something Back
40
elcome to the latest issue of News at One. Inside you
can find the freshest industry insights on Robotic Process Automation, learn about the transformational change we are delivering with our customers, as well as more about what is happening at Project One and what the future holds for the business. Thank you to everyone who has contributed to this issue. If you have any stories you’d like to share in the next edition, then please get in touch by emailing communications@ projectone.com.
18
20 Financial Services Transformation
22 What Our Customers Say
24 Robotic Process Automation
28 Project One in Partnership with Brightive
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tom update
PROJECT ONE
From April 2018, we’ve been working to define our future as we develop our Target Operating Model (TOM). The input from the whole team at the summer event was a key part of this process. The implementation of the TOM presents a fantastic opportunity to move Project One to the next level - building on our track record of delivering significant change for major organisations and enabling our success for the future. We will build-on and enhance our vision for being a “leading independent, consulting business; known for consistent excellent delivery in transformation and change”. Our strategy to achieve this vision is built on three core platforms:
1 2 3
Developing valuable insight in our areas of expertise Building on our relationships to act as trusted advisors Operating a robust and resilient business
TERRY HOLLAND - Managing Director defining our future
W
Providing a clearer view of our services is critical to our future success; and it’s equally important to underpin these with the intellectual property and content to help our customers with their most difficult challenges and support our team in delivering them; these will include: Go to Market Themes - these may be industry sector or function specific Insights & Points of View - connecting customer challenges with the need for our services Delivery Assets - to improve the quality and repeatability of the services we deliver to our customers The unique Project One Way - that defines how we work with our customers through the application of our values, experience and services.
We’ve developed a more structured view of our market proposition. The fundamental essence of our proposition is that we will remain a change- first business with four principle services:
elcome to this issue of News at One, in which I’m excited to share with
you our latest news and insights.
1. Shaping Change
2. Delivering Change
4. Information management
3. Enabling Change
Celebrating 20 years of delivering change 2018 marks the 20th anniversary of Project One. It was great to see the whole company come together at our annual summer event to celebrate our heritage and plan towards our future. I was incredibly proud to see the enthusiasm and energy as everyone collaborated during the interactive workshops, to help shape and develop our organisation.
Excellent delivery I’m always delighted to see the outstanding work being delivered by our team, across 24 different countries, as we support our customers’ most critical change initiatives. We’ve highlighted a selection of our recent customer success stories from Virgin Media, ReAssure, EQPaymaster (part of Equiniti Group) and Northumbrian Water and I hope you enjoy reading them. To find more customer stories, please take a look at our website, LinkedIn page or speak to one of our team of Account and Business Development Directors.
our new customers We have recently welcomed (or re-welcomed) seven new customers to Project One, including: Standard Life Aberdeen, The AA, Yorkshire Building Society and PHS Group. We’re thrilled that they’ve selected Project One to help them on their key transformation and change journeys.
These four distinct services keep change delivery, as it has always been and always needs to be, at the very heart of our business.
And finally, we’ve appointed our very own Project One Consultant, Phil Michell, as our TOM implementation lead. Phil will be spending time with each account team over the balance of 2018 and looking to get everyone involved, whilst establishing and driving a comprehensive plan of change into 2019. I look forward to updating you on our progress in the next edition.
I Hope you enjoy this issue of News at One. Best regards,
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“We needed an experienced practitioner’s view of how you deliver change in a complex, regulatory environment like ours. That’s when I thought of Project One.” Jon Whitaker The way they were delivering more ambiguous internal change was not allowing their knowledge to be effectively harnessed, to drive the best outcomes. Looking at how to tackle this, Jon decided to evolve the existing approach. “Using an off-the- shelf methodology and moving everyone to it quite quickly could have been quite disastrous - you can’t stop the bus and make those changes.” At the same time, they were delivering on the Guardian integration, and going into 2017 with big policy migrations from old systems on to their system, major regulatory changes were going through and they had kicked off a big deal with L&G which is now in full train. “We needed a vision of where we were trying to get to. It would have been easy to get a text book agile manifesto type approach from a whole range of external providers – I wasn’t convinced that was right for our business. We needed an experienced practitioner’s view of how you deliver change in a complex, regulatory environment like ours. That’s when I thought of Project One.” Said Jon.
Client focus
ReAssure
Originally founded in 1963, ReAssure is a life and pensions company which buys and administers complex closed books of business from other companies. The organisation is focused on acquiring business and not new business. Although ReAssure may not be a household name, they are not a small company. In fact, ReAssure is one of the biggest life companies in the UK – they have over 3 million policies on their books, and look after investments of over £44 billion for their customers. They have invested heavily in their buildings, infrastructure, IT and more; making the business far more dynamic, collaborative, results- focused and progressive. A joined-up change delivery function was imperative to the ongoing growth and success of the business. News at One met COO, Jon Whitaker, who shared how he approached the transformation of Change Delivery within ReAssure. Changing Change at ReAssure
the challenge
Following the acquisition of Guardian in 2016, the organisation restructured and rebranded as ReAssure. Jon Whitaker, who joined originally to integrate Guardian into ReAssure, then took on the role of COO, with a key objective to transform the change delivery function. “It was clear from the CEO’s brief that it was an area that needed a lot of focus. As an organisation, we had a good track record of delivering the big migrations of acquired businesses – our USP is bringing businesses into our in-house system set. We had not experienced the same level of success with delivering a wider range of smaller, value-adding change.” Said Jon. Although ‘big integration’ delivery was successful, as a growing business, ReAssure has an increasing amount of other change to go through. Their processes didn’t adapt themselves very well to more ambiguous change – it was taking too long, and behaviours were wrong – the change delivery functions were fragmented. Taking a traditional waterfall approach led to a lack of collaboration, which meant issues were not being discovered until late in the process.
Jon explained what he thought was key to the success of this programme. “We had to bring together a number of separate independent functions. I was determined to have one change framework that we all work to, regardless of function. Getting the behaviours right, where people are focused on the outcome first – rather than the process and their function – was absolutely key in driving the collaboration we knew we needed, to be successful.” Said Jon. The ReAssure business is complex. By definition, they inherit some of the more diverse and complex industry products, pulling them together, administering them out of one system, compliantly, and in a more cost-effective way. This involves an awful lot of knowledge of the underlying products, which you wouldn’t see in the market today, as well as expertise of their different business functions, administration systems and Financial Services regulatory knowledge – where the bar is continually being raised. Therefore, to be successful ReAssure had to harness their knowledge in those areas.
jon whitaker coo, Reassure
jane logie CONSULTANT, project one
Continued...
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Project One Leading Change
Client focus
Making a real difference
the outcome
Initially, Project One undertook a short piece of work to provide a framework that assessed the way ReAssure were operating, where they wanted to get to, and the actions required. They then agreed the framework of what they wanted to achieve over the next 18 months. A programme that Project One would help to implement and manage overall. “It was really helpful because Project One drew upon their experience of what ‘good’ looks like and identified common flaws, producing a best practice framework – not an out-of-the-box change methodology.” Said Jon. “Project One Consultant, Jane Logie, had the credibility and experience to work at a senior level and with different components of the business that contribute to change – this was critical for me. “The number of functions integral to the overall change process do not all report to me and the only way it was going to work was if we tackled it holistically. That’s why having someone like Jane on board was vital. She had also worked at other large insurance companies, and knows some of the peculiarities of our business.”
“We all know you can’t process design your way to greatness…but having great process design combined with a team that stand shoulder-to- shoulder, choosing to succeed together, is incredibly powerful.” Jane Logie
“We are replicating existing products cost effectively, that still requires a degree of innovation but it’s more about innovation of the solution, rather than innovation of the product.” Jon Whitaker Aside from the financial benefits where substantial savings can be re- invested into the business, ReAssure is targeting a 20% productivity improvement. There is a real sense of drive and ambition for the future, a more innovative culture and a team that understands the wider impact of change, using the same terminology and equipped to continue to make progress with pace and energy. The objective of the ‘Changing Change’ initiative was to replace the programme of change with a continuous improvement culture that lives and breathes. This resulted in a seismic shift with people engaging in, and thinking about the end outcome for the piece of change and how best to achieve it. “We’re harnessing our skills and applying our knowledge and innovation far more effectively to find smart solutions to very complex problems – that is very interesting and exciting.” Said Jon. “The power of getting the team involved in the delivery of end-to-end change, and working collaboratively with common vision and behaviours, has probably been the most important thing that we’ve done.”
The top four things that helped to make a real difference:
Jon always wanted to get his team truly engaged in the programme and he supported them in terms of time and resource to make this possible. The new operating model removed duplication and overlap and made it clear where accountabilities resided, enabling the team to ‘play in position’, as well as be part of the whole. Having a ‘cheerleader’ and someone who could accelerate development of new ways of working. Project One’s bespoke approach, assessing the situation and the needs of the business, and becoming a true partner.
The Approach A number of transitions were identified to take ReAssure through to Q4 2018 and an efficient change delivery function. During the engagement, Project One was responsible for three sprints, each of which built upon the foundations of its predecessor.
Sprint 3: Had many strands including: - Leadership of the ‘Changing Change’ Programme - The definition, approval and implementation of tier 2 Target Operating Models - Reengineering of key processes (sequential, gating, estimating, demand & supply, KPI’s, benefits, common data/reporting, fast track – edge cases) - Defining new backlog management, sponsorship and behaviours - The identification of quantifiable savings resulting from the changes implemented. Throughout the three sprints, Jane worked with the senior team creating opportunities for them to develop a shared and compelling vision for end-to-end change, and to challenge them to collaborate and become a living example of the ReAssure One Team approach.
Sprint 1: Focused on the completion of a change capability assessment and the presentation of findings and recommendations. The final presentation was shared with executives and functional heads and consensus reached that there were significant capability gaps and a desire to take action.
Sprint 2: Focused on putting in place strong foundations for future capability development . A new multi-modal model was defined and approved, along with three transition states. A revised end- to-end Target Operating Model removed overlap and duplication, and clearly set out functional accountabilities. In addition, the ‘Changing Change’ Programme was reorganised into a more logical set of workstreams, with clearer focus on deliverables by transition state.
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eqpaymaster EOUINITI
EQUINITI - a few facts A heritage going back to 1836, the same year the Arc de Triomphe was inaugurated in Paris – they have paid Veterans ever since Interactions with 31 million shareholders and pensioners, shareholders, pensioners and annuitants in 2017, roughly the same as the GDP of Vietnam 4,300 people work for EQUNITI, just over the number of people who broke the world record for the largest human DNA helix (4,000 people). which is more than the population of Australia Paid over £160 billion to
Client focus
combining people and technology intelligently, to deliver high quality outcomes for clients
“Project One as a business is very focused on delivering the outcomes to
EQPaymaster, part of Equinti Group, is a specialist pension, benefits and payments service provider, combining people and technology intelligently, to deliver high-quality outcomes for their clients and customers. As a strategic partner, they deliver software solutions and services at scale, supporting over 9 million pension scheme members, and in 2017 paid over £31 billion to 3.5 million customers - that’s one in five UK pensioners. Compendia – Equiniti’s web-based platform, is used by EQPaymaster themselves, as well as by in-house teams to administer their own pension schemes, consultancies and other third-party administrators. It has won 10 industry awards in the past two years. With their pensions experience dating back to 1836, EQPaymaster’s outsourced solutions help the occupational pension and life & pensions industries deliver high-quality customer service and stay one step ahead of evolving legislation. Their expertise allows scheme trustees, sponsors and insurers to de-risk through analytics, data cleanse and rectification and unlock the true value of people-related data.
their clients.” Ric Williams, CEO.
The challenge The EQPaymaster business has been affected by both external and internal factors. These include: greater emphasis on the client and customer experience increasing digitisation increasing regulation and the costs of compliance the appetite to remove the uncertainty around the future cost of pensions through transfer to insurance companies. These four themes come together with the focus on data and data quality. EQPaymaster wants to grow its share of the market. Ric Williams, and his Executive Team, stood back from the business and identified that to achieve this they needed to implement some changes. Ric commented, “it is important to me that everyone in the business is thinking about the client and customer outcomes we are delivering and judges everything we do by the quality of those outcomes.” It was clear to Ric and his team that if they didn’t intervene, the business would not meet the performance levels, both financial and non-financial, to continue to grow profitably. It was important to secure the support of the Group Executive, and the budget to fund the Transformation Programme to move forward.
RIC WILLIAMS CEO, eqpaymaster
Market changes in this competitive environment are driving EQPaymaster to assess what they need to do to sustain their position as one of the leading third-party administrators and providers of pensions, flexible benefits and data services to this sector. News at One met CEO, Ric Williams, who told us more about their Transformation Programme that will take them through to 2020. This will result in EQPaymaster building the capability required to optimise a simplified way to do business and engage effectively with their clients, customers and the wider market.
angie glover consultant, project one
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five things Project One did tomake a difference Leadership amongst Trust in driving CEO’s agenda, driving his leaders and holding a ‘collaborative team’ Knowledge of the industry and competitors, with a lens on what EQPaymaster were doing Best practice approaches to delivery and governance; embedding change and delivery governance, focusing on outcomes and realisation of benefits Produced a directional TOM for the CEO to measure progress against. EQPaymaster leaders and support of CEO agenda
Client focus
“Project One bring discipline and control. They have not been distracted by a
day job - this was their day job. They helped us to maintain that focus on what’s important, as well as bringing skills and capabilities that we just didn’t have within the business.” Ric Williams, CEO.
eqpaymaster EOUINITI
The approach - ‘EQP 2020’ The Transformation Programme, named ‘EQP 2020’, focuses on a three-year horizon of delivering this change. The intention is to make the necessary changes in 2018, embed them through 2019 as the business resumes growth, and deliver a clear and proven competitive edge by the beginning of 2020. ‘EQP 2020’ is absolutely focused on client and customer outcomes. There are eight critical workstreams that address the following themes: clearly articulating how EQPaymaster can deliver complex solutions that address client needs and deliver meaningful value simplification of what they do for clients to increase agility, flexibility and the quality of customer outcomes; using technology as a tool to drive quality outcomes effective client engagement; speaking with a common voice and focusing on the things that make a difference to client and customer outcomes. The programme is underpinned by a new Target Operating Model with clarity around end-to-end processes, responsibility and accountability for delivering the right outcomes. Most organisations don’t have the depth of change capability in- house that is required to lead a programme of this nature, with wide- reaching complexity across eight inter-dependent workstreams. To deliver the change to the trajectory that they wanted, they needed more space, more time and more capability. Ric recognised two areas where they needed support – the Target Operating Model (TOM) work and mobilising and governing the programme.
Project One - making a real difference The Target Operating Model work was a discreet first phase completed by Project One Consultant, Marion McDonald. In parallel, Angie Glover, also a Project One Consultant, led the programme - focusing on mobilisation and governance - driving it through to the approval of the business case sign off from the Group Investment Committee, mobilising all the workstreams, delivering the work and resourcing it appropriately. Angie kept a constant eye on the benefits and milestones and ensured everything was tracking against the overall project plan. “Angie and Marion brought experience, insight and discipline to the programme. There was rigour in the support we got, which in part comes from their own personal experiences, but also from the broader support behind the scenes from the wider Project One Team, which I think is invaluable.” “Both Marion and Angie are extremely impressive. I think their ability to engage in a proper dialogue, really encourage thinking from my team, as well as encourage and develop the team that we have got working on the programme around them, is top class - they are both fantastic and I wouldn’t hesitate to call upon them for other complex programmes.” Said Ric.
Outcome EQPaymaster is at the beginning of a three-year journey. The programme is on track and is seeing some early benefit realisation. This is an adaptive and dynamic programme, where they will reinvest some of that benefit back into the business to achieve other objectives and their end goal of improving those client and customer outcomes. The changes to the Operating Model are already resulting in greater alignment and consistency of their management approach and the way they are harnessing increased system automation and robotics is driving simplification, reducing risk and increasing the quality and timeliness of outcomes. The strong foundations laid for the programme are standing EQPaymaster in good stead to address
Ric commented “it was important that we started the Transformation Programme in the right way, heading in the right direction.”
“I was introduced to Project One by our Director of Transformation and Change within the
Equiniti Group, who was working with Project One on a different programme. It was clear they could bring the discipline, capability, expertise and control we needed.”
the challenges and opportunities presented by the marketplace.
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Client focus
“What’s really important to us as an organisation is trust, and we want to work with partners who we can trust. From the one piece of work we’ve done together, I would trust Project One to work on future projects with us.” Mike Madine, Head of Asset Management Transformation
creating an unrivalled customer experience
Did you know that Northumbrian Water Group (NWG) is one of ten regulated water and sewerage companies in England and Wales, providing services
Every day, they supply 1,104 megalitres (that’s 1.1 billion litres) of water, drawn from reservoirs, rivers and groundwater sources, where it is collected and stored. It is treated at their works before being delivered by a network of pipes to homes and businesses across the North East and South East of England. In the North East of England, the Company also collects the wastewater from homes and businesses, delivering it to treatment facilities where it is treated before being returned to the environment as either clean water or sludge which can be recycled as fertiliser or used to generate energy. NWG has an ambition to be the leading provider of water and wastewater services. Working with customers and stakeholders, they have long-term plans in place to become the industry leaders in Asset Management, and in doing so, deliver an unrivalled customer experience. News at One met Board member and Programme Sponsor, Ceri Jones, and Head of Asset Management Transformation, Mike Madine, to find out more about their business-led, technology enabled programme that would take them through to 2020.
to just under 4.5 million people?
NWG employs 3,100 people and operates:
• 55 water treatment works • 303 water pumping stations • 326 water service reservoirs • 25,678.3 km water mains • 413 sewage treatment works • 29,923.1 km sewers (including 13,510 km of transferred network)
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Client focus
The challenge NWG is an asset intensive business. Key to their success is how they manage their assets - they need a good understanding of what’s happening both underground and above ground with their pipes, pumps and sewage works (making sure pipes are working and there are no leaks or flooding resulting in sewerage flowing into homes or the environment). With dated systems, they were facing some issues around understanding the health of their assets and receiving high-quality, accurate data and information. Building upon strong historical performance and in order to continue to maintain high levels of service to customers, in 2015 they embarked upon a major programme to transform their Asset Management activities. The Intelligent Asset Management Programme (‘iam Programme’) sets the foundations for ‘leading
Project One adding value It was clear to NWG that they needed a partner to help them develop the TOM, and in parallel bring the learning into the team, so they have the capability internally should they want to do this again
asset management’, not just in their sector, but across most utility sectors. But this was bigger than just updating the IT systems. The programme is made up of a set of individual projects around the themes of better data and information, better business processes and improved technology. This is all underpinned by people having the right mind-set and a shared vision of what NWG is trying to achieve as an organisation. An external review had identified the importance of developing a Target Operating Model (TOM). This would help them understand the capabilities they required as an organisation and; take advantage of the investment in technology; resolve issues that exist in the business; clarify accountabilities and responsibilities; improve customer service and lower operating costs.
initial discovery day, we were very much aligned on what we wanted to achieve. The methodology that Project One and Nick brought was the type of process we would be comfortable with and wanted to follow. He was not a consultant who knew the answer already and imposed his views - he worked through a process to help us identify where we wanted to be, not where he thought we should be. The additional governance from Project One’s Account Director added great value, providing the right amount of challenge to make sure we were following the right process.” Said Mike. “It didn’t matter that Nick did not have detailed knowledge of our sector when he arrived, although he picked this up very quickly. Nick’s expertise brought a well- structured approach. He did things in the right order, to get us to the answer we wanted to get to at the end. It was a really good learning process for us.”
“It was really important, for myself and my team, to have the right person helping us.” Mike Madine, Head of Asset Management Transformation The process drew people into the conversations and made them feel part of the development of what NWG were doing. It challenged their thinking on their vision, values and the strategies that they had in place, to pinpoint what they were really trying to achieve at an organisation level, before looking at the capabilities that they need to deliver these things.
in the future. The Programme Director recommended Project One to be considered for this role, following a previous experience of working together. Project One consultant, Nick Woodward, led the NWG Executive Leadership Team, Second Line Leadership and Business Transformation Team through a disciplined process, over a three-month period, to reach a facilitated agreement across the business on the Target Operating Model to implement. “It was really important, for myself and my team, to have the right person helping us, and after interviewing a number of different parties, we got a really good feel for working with Nick. From the don’t want this just to be a great customer experience, but also able to deliver a great employee experience. If we make things really easy, and positive for our employees, they will be able to really buy into the vision that we’re trying to deliver and create that unrivalled customer experience that we want.” Ceri Jones, Programme Sponsor, said “We
nick woodward consultant, project one
NWG values: Customer focused: We aim to exceed the expectations of our external and internal customers. Results-driven: We take personal responsibility for achieving excellent business results. Ethical: We are open and honest and meet our commitments with a responsible approach to the environment and our communities. Creative: We continuously strive for innovative and better ways to deliver our business.
The Outcome The iam Programme overall will help NWG deliver sustained and improved levels of customer service. By having better data and information, and the joined-up technology, it means that when someone turns up on the doorstep they will know the customer’s history before they get there – including any problems they have experienced with the service in the past and what was done to remedy that - delivering an unrivalled customer experience. As well as these direct customer benefits, NWG will be able to manage the service more efficiently, by better managing their asset base - avoiding unplanned interruptions to the service or major outages of any kind. The new Target Operating Model was developed and signed off by the Executive Leadership Team in 12 weeks. It covered all activity from strategic planning, through to asset delivery and operation, to maintenance and repair (including customer-driven activity).
One team: We work together consistently, promoting co-
operation and mutual support, to achieve our corporate objectives.
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Client focus
Mobile Transformation at Virgin Media Virgin Media is the UK & Eire arm of Liberty Global, the world’s largest international TV and broadband company, which connects over 21 million customers through operations in 10 countries across Europe, subscribing to more than 45 million TV, broadband internet and telephony services. It also serves 6 million mobile subscribers and offers WiFi service through 12 million access points across its footprint. Virgin Media was formed in 2006, by the merger of NTL & Telewest, with the agreement to the use of the Virgin brand. The company created the UK’s first quadruple-play media company, providing TV, broadband, fixed line home phones and mobile services. Virgin Media was acquired by Liberty Global in 2013, and in 2015 started to focus on a digital transformation agenda designed to connect homes and businesses, and their customers and communities to the things that matter, through the provision of their four multi award-winning services. Virgin Media’s agenda continues to be ambitious and aims to make things happen.
Since 2007 Project One have worked with Virgin Media and from 2015 have supported with their transformation journey. With specific reference to their mobile service, Virgin Media realised that to remain competitive and relevant in the digital world and to continue providing their customers with even more innovation and fast, flexible products and services, they needed a transformation programme that would empower them to fully manage customers by moving from a light Mobile ownership over their customer base by supplying their own SIM cards with their own number allocations from Ofcom. They also control the call, sms and data exchange interfaces which would otherwise be handled by the Mobile Network Operator partner. The Mobile Transformation Programme saw the combination of vendors coming together to jointly work on designing and building a first-class solution. Project One provided the programme management and leadership across business (process & organisation) and technology (Network & IT), alongside Huawei as the Prime System Integrator. This transformation journey required change to all parts of the business to enable connectivity for over 3 million customers. Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) to a full MVNO. Full MVNOs have greater
Sian Stapley, VP Mobile and UK Voice Delivery, said “The Project One team members were integral to the successful delivery of the Mobile Transformation Programme. They worked collaboratively with our teams and delivery partners, took on accountability, demonstrated excellent stakeholder engagement and management skills and had an ability to get down and in on the issues and actions when needed.”
A 3-year+ transformation programme in which we
and delivery of a platform that provides a final end- state which will enable the successful migration of their 3 million+ subscribers. The way in which the new service has been imbedded into the organisation is testament to the skills and experience of the team who designed and built the solution. Whilst there were many challenges along the journey, the leadership style and management approach ensured that all stakeholders were aware of the impact and the continuation towards the end outcome.
established a change network across the business, ready to support and own strategic change. Leading, shaping and coordinating all the business and technology change activities required to ‘implement’ the change successfully into the business teams and technical support functions. Owning and leading on the resolution of key and cross-functional issues that could otherwise have hindered the deployment. As a result, the change was successfully implemented with quick stabilisation, minimal disruption to Customer Services
jo battam consultant, project one
Peter lewis consultant, project one
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Staying Relevant Digital is at the top of everyone’s agenda, both internal and customer facing. We led the programme approach to formalise the provision of application business services, through Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), building in efficiency and standardisation to the way the new digital banking layer interacted with the legacy core systems. The organisation had several offshore digital delivery factories, and we injected the required expertise to set-up and drive a scaled agile delivery approach, enabling, for example, targeted customer messaging to mobile devices. In one of the UK subsidiaries, we led the programme to enable Apple ‘Siri’ voice payments. For each of the above, we helped to define the strategy and drive the implementation towards a single digital technology platform. One of the European Divisions needed to re-platform its legacy core banking platform to enable its products to stay relevant to the customer. Not all complex change goes to plan. We have the experience to undertake programme recovery, and here we recovered the failing Programme Management Office (PMO) function, turning around a new delivery plan, utilising a combination of our programme management expertise alongside our mixed-shore PMO service.
two major regulatory challenges that we helped our client face into. Our teams worked across the initiation, design, delivery and migrations streams, dealing with changes to complex legacy platforms, that in some cases had not seen significant change in many years. The programmes involved significant customer implementation was seen as a great success. Furthermore, in a very topical theme of the national political agenda, we have been working on the architecture and design support into the Brexit Programme, ensuring that solutions were joined up and fit for purpose across the Pan- European landscape. Controlling Global Portfolios of change With several billion pounds of change delivery being undertaken each year, strong interaction and migration, and the resulting smooth provided the required Enterprise Architecture experience to shape and design assure one of the European business unit portfolios. We injected a delivery assurance team to ensure the initiatives were mobilised cost effectively and in line with business expectations. In addition, across the Global Sales and Distribution portfolio, we provided the portfolio management expertise to ensure spend and key delivery milestones remained visible and under control. control and governance is essential. Our teams have
Data is integral to business today and making efficient use of available customer and corporate data is a key enabler of staying relevant. We worked in both the Operational Data areas and the IT Delivery Management Information area with consultants from our Digital Information Service, driving optimisation in the use of data, particularly in the form of Part of the organisation’s cost challenge was the sheer scale of its back-office operations and the cost of customer contact. We provided a small team to manage several proofs of concepts for a range of automation initiatives, including AI and robotic solutions. We led a number of these successful initiatives through to delivery, all enabling an increase in efficiency and a reduction in back- office cost, for example; leading the solution architecture definition work to streamline global customer correspondence, and providing the design assurance statements via mobile devices, as well as the implementation of optical character recognition for the Asian market. Keeping Pacewith Regulation Financial Services is one of the most heavily regulated industries. The ‘ringfencing’ of the UK Bank and the European GDPR were global reporting. Cost Reduction around several deliveries, including the ability to view
Client focus
The European CIO, said “The Project One team was instrumental in managing a Central Design Team for a large and complex financial/ IT change programme. Expert programme managers provided support and drive for some of the more challenging elements of the programme. Their collective work the team and overall delivery experience have contributed to the huge success of the programme. A hugely valuable partnership.” ethic, desire to be an integral part of
Financial Services Transformation The challenges facing global financial service organisations are many and varied. Staying relevant to ever more demanding customers; competing with new low overhead digital market entrants; keeping pace with increasingly tighter regulation, all whilst managing and reducing operating costs. These conflicting agendas are complex and even more so when operating across global geographies and business unit silos with the constraints of ageing underlying technology platforms. Global change portfolios are complex in their nature. Over the last three-years, Project One have supported a number of team-based initiatives with one of the leading global financial services institutions, helping to navigate the change landscape across a range of programmes. We provided deep change leadership experience, along with the requisite Financial Services and functional expertise, across shaping and delivery phases in several complex, global initiatives.
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PROJECT ONE
“David Izzard has been a breath of fresh air on our programme. His calm objectivity, hard work and enthusiasm for tackling the thorniest challenges has really helped us to achieve certainty of outcome, and clarity of progress where it was previously lacking. He’s not afraid to be pragmatic and has the intellectual capacity to retain sight on the bigger picture at all times.”
“what our customers say” SHOP D I RECT “The role that Project One has played has been invaluable. They have provided us levels of experience, knowledge and capability above and beyond anything we had. The level of support we have had from Project One has been fantastic and I look forward to a long relationship with them and each of the individuals we’ve had the opportunity to work with.”
business growth strategy at the AA The AA engaged Project One to provide programme leadership support for their flagship ‘Rio’ programme. This programme represents a major investment for the AA and delivers a number of key operational and systems improvements that will create the foundations for the future business growth strategy.
UINITI
Ollie Holden, CIO, The AA
“The acquisition and integration of the Wells Fargo Shareowner Services business into Equiniti Group, is a key strategic priority for the group. Project One has provided invaluable Project Management Office support to the delivery team during integration, bringing a depth of knowledge and experience to secure the positive outcomes achieved by the team to date.”
Chris Woolnough, Financial Services Digital and Commercial Director, Shop Direct
Spencer McComb, Programme Manager, EQ Integration
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PROJECT ONE
RPA is revealing new business possibilities and customer benefit opportunities all the time.
Your digital RPA workforce is waiting ... but make sure the juice is worth the squeeze!
What is good about Robotic Process Automation? The best thing about RPA is that it can replicate the role of a human undertaking low-value, routine, and monotonous work. RPA works well where transactions for a business process are high in volume and where rules can be applied to their execution. Many RPA activities still focus on Macro or Scripted Process Automation, with simplistic ‘Bot’ front-ends to provide clients/users with a humanlike interface. Examples of RPA implementations include insurance claim handling, or HR on- boarding processes, where software agents keep the ‘paperwork’ moving. Other examples include Customer Services, dealing with customer requests in real-time with software that mimics a human, and Customer Relationship Management, where tasks to follow up with customers, set meetings or gather customer research, are automated. However, the real RPA innovators – producing the next generation of RPA – are taking the Cognitive Artificial Intelligence concept and stretching the boundaries of human imitation with intelligent thinking behaviour – merged with Optical Character Recognition, Intelligent Character Recognition, Voice Recognition and Speech Synthesis to potentially replace the human. This could be a whole new ball game. The benefits of using RPA are real Significant cost reduction, consistency of application, availability of the solution, resilience of the service you provide, and new opportunities for your workforce to focus and deliver on more complex and high priority tasks, to name a few. RPA enabled processes don’t need sick days, they don’t get tired and then can run 24/7. Even better, RPA takes away the mundane repetitive tasks, enabling a business to realign its workforce to more value-adding activities that really drive customer loyalty and value. Improvements in RPA (and links with the associated automated workflow and Artificial Intelligence technologies) are being made every day and there is a myriad of suppliers happy to provide your RPA business solution. RPA really is a powerful disruptive technology – it is revealing new business possibilities and customer benefit opportunities all the time.
So, what’s not to like? A lower cost digital workforce doing the same job as humans but far more effectively. Your digital RPA workforce is waiting – but before you implement it, make sure the juice is worth the squeeze! The real challenge with RPA is implementing it properly, in a positive way that supports your business strategy and the outcomes you want to deliver. single system you just install, turn on and magically your business is automated. RPA is not a cloud service you log into, create an account and everything is there. RPA can be difficult to implement as it’s not a
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) provides a real opportunity to increase value by delivering a digital workforce – software technology that automatically interacts on high volume processes with established businesses and customers. Many organisations are already starting to see the benefits of RPA deployment. But there are pitfalls; ensure you have the right tool for the job, don’t separate the implementation team out, don’t believe all the hype, use an agile approach to implementation, and finally, don’t ignore the security and licensing implications of your applications.
Continued...
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Project One helps organisations to think about RPA in a way that delivers the best business outcomes for them. If you need help on where to start, how to implement RPA or you just need some ideas on where RPA can help your business, get in touch. Learn more about our Digital Information Service on our website projectone.com. This article was written by Project One consultants, Kyri Karsa and Steve Calder.
PROJECT ONE
So how do you successfully implement RPA? Business change and digital expertise will help you understand how and where to start your RPA journey, what processes to target and how to build your own capability to continue your RPA journey.
In addition, experts know the pitfalls. Our advice would be to: Be very clear on the business benefits of RPA. There can be efficiency and
Experts know the RPA market – with its many specialist vendors such as; Automation Anywhere (AA), UiPath, Thoughtonomy, NICE, Kofax Kapow, Pega and many others. We also have experience of most of the large solution vendors who covet this space, with Microsoft embedding RPA into some of its Macro development and SAP deploying scripted process management into its ERP portfolio.
Start small and grow. Get the foundations right before scaling RPA, target a manageable number of processes in the first wave, be mindful this may be new to the organisation and that you may need different internal technical capability for RPA. Ensure that the introduction of RPA will make a positive change for your customers – and that you will be able to measure the success of the implementation of RPA. Ensure that the case for RPA will deliver a return on the You will need a clear approach for identifying processes throughout the organisation. Questionnaires, surveys and process discovery tools can be used by all business units to understand which tasks are manual, repetitive and use digital data. Have clear criteria for assessing those processes and prioritising them. Ensure the appropriate support. Although RPA is a new technology, the ‘rules’ remain the same – a good support model is needed. If something happens that causes the robot to stop running, understand the business impact and have a strategy for continuous monitoring and a clear service model for support. Remember that this is not just about the technical implementation, you are also likely to need to implement RPA within a wider business environment; getting the service level agreements right will be critical. investment you are making. Be clear how you will assess ‘target’ processes.
financial benefits of RPA, however it has the power to remove administrative tasks that inhibit your team’s potential. Ensure that you are making positive changes to people’s roles and responsibilities. Consider how you will harness additional capacity across your organisation that will be realised through the implementation of RPA. Share knowledge and leverage existing investments. Be more proactive in sharing the knowledge and creating awareness you have gained on optimising business processes, whether it is through RPA or simple, human-powered actions. If you have already implemented Business Process Management (BPM – improving and optimising business processes) then leverage its capability. In some cases, RPA can be a valuable tool in boosting gains achieved with a traditional BPM system.
kyri karsa consultant, project one
steve calder consultant, project one
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PROJECT ONE
Our customers’ organisations have
Being able to support our customers requires the right level of control & governance to sit at the heart of the delivery function. We want to deliver our services in a more comprehensive, client- tailored and in-depth manner. Our partnership with Brightive brings teams of Project Management Office (PMO) specialists, with expertise in deep business analysis, data analysis and business process optimisation capability. They tailor the solution to the organisational culture and requirements of the business and programme, creating a safe outcome-based environment, without the need for overbearing bureaucracy. Whatever your business size, industry or scale of agenda, our service is focused customer experience and digitisation demands, but all with the goal of driving their business forward and remaining relevant. on creating value - offering rapid, flexible, high-quality, compelling value management & control services to any project, programme or initiative. significant change and transformation agendas, more strategic and holistic in nature than previously seen. Their complex agendas look to address challenges with ever- changing technology,
Working in partnership to deliver added-value
We are working in partnership with Brightive, in Bulgaria, enabling us to offer a ‘mixed-shore’ delivery model, enabling a flexible and adaptive response to project demands through their Sofia-based team and Professional Service Centre. Our delivery model is focused on value-adding activities, overseeing, coordinating and challenging individual project managers, whilst ensuring high- quality project delivery. Consultants are fluent
Operating in the UK and Europe, with a range of clients, our flexible delivery model allows us to provide location independence and cost optimisation. Access to our wider knowledge data and resource base, as well as external knowledge transfer, helps to build and realise client capability.
Our professional services come with zero wasted effort & expense and maximum productivity & efficiency. We are customer- focused and highly flexible due to the people, process and technological capability we have.
PMO support to our customers
in several European languages and hold
certifications across wide range of methodologies.
If you want to find out more about how we can help you, please get in touch by visiting our website: projectone.com
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