Mobilising the largest transformation programme for the UK’s most trusted package holiday brand
The Value Add and Outcomes By the end of our first year, the programme was successfully mobilised, with initial delivery on track. It grew from 3 to 110 team members across 7 delivery squads, and the full business case was approved by the board. The first customer-facing services launched 18 months after programme inception. Project One added value by: Implementing a bespoke delivery and governance structure Blending best practices from partners, group companies, and internal frameworks. This enabled delivery squads to operate autonomously within consistent guardrails, while ensuring transparency and stakeholder engagement. We supported internal team transitions into the new product-centric agile model, which is now running effectively with new tools and cross-company connections fostering shared value and capability growth. Once delivery was underway, we introduced Change Management expertise to define Business Readiness plans, enhance internal capabilities, and shape communications, engagement, and training for platform releases. This helped the organisation prepare for go-live, track progress, and build confidence in its transformation readiness.
Our Approach After the customer completed their strategy and vision work, Project One joined to shape the delivery programme and mobilise teams, initially focusing on vendor selection and onboarding. Leveraging our Programme and Project Management expertise, we supported the customer by establishing delivery structures, governance, and coordinating funding rounds, culminating in board approval of the three-year re-platforming business case. We assisted in selecting and onboarding the delivery partner, ensuring effective planning, resource modelling, and value for money. We also developed a tailored delivery and governance model, incorporating best practices and leadership requirements, with the goal of transitioning to in-house digital teams. Escalation frameworks were set up to manage critical external deliverables. A notable aspect of the transformation was minimal reliance on existing architecture, allowing teams to focus on outcomes and adopt innovative, value-adding solutions. Key challenges included managing dependencies across the wider group and adapting to the evolving working styles of the main software vendor.
The Challenge Despite a strong brand position in the UK holiday market, the headwinds of increasing competition of low-cost market entrants, increasing customer expectations and an increasing challenge to update and adapt ageing platforms which underpin the business’s products and services meant there was a need for change to maintain and grow performance. Therefore, a large-scale business technology transformation was required to deliver a new technical platform which could better support their services to meet this changing demand. The legacy product, sales and servicing platform had been in place for over 15 years and had been highly customised during this time with the result that any changes to the platform came with high development and testing costs on a long lead time but struggled to deliver requisite value, hindering the business’ agility and ability to adapt in the evolving market. The internal digital delivery capability was in place but recognised a need for organisational transformation to adopt a product centric approach, embracing agile ways of working, to better align and respond to market demand.
Our customer is one of the UK’s largest holiday companies offering carefully chosen hotels, resorts and villas in the most amazing places underpinned by access to the extensive global air travel network of its parent company and wider group, putting them in a unique position to create holiday packages with convenient flights across the globe. “You’ve done an amazing job bringing structure to the programme and doing so whilst always being calm and considerate. You’ve taken everything in your stride and led the way.” Senior Delivery Lead
“Thanks for everything. You’ve been an integral part of initiating the programme and getting our business case approved. You’ve left us in excellent shape!” Head of Strategy and Digital
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real change • real difference
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