Service Transition Highlights Need for Organisational Change

The Requirement:

A major gas utility decided to undertake a significant transformation programme, which entailed new business systems being developed and delivered on a new hybrid platform encompassing both cloud and traditional platform services.

The transformation necessitated a major change to the supplier eco-system, with some services providers being phased out and new ones being introduced.

Our original involvement with the client began when we were engaged to design and write the tender documentation and assist in the supplier evaluation process. This initial engagement then expanded to include the programme assurance activities required to effect the various supplier transitions and, ultimately, expanded further to encompass the design and creation of a new target operating model for the in-house IT organisation.

Our Approach:

During the supplier evaluation process we began to build a framework to govern the upcoming transitions. Our programme assurance methodology provides a superset of tools and models. From this we constructed a detailed approach that allowed us to independently assure the transition plans our client would use to control the complex set of supplier and service transitions.

Throughout the duration of the transition programme we held weekly checkpoint sessions and used our assurance framework to perform “soft touch” investigations to ensure the plans remained coherent, realistic and were being actioned in a manner that was likely to lead to the desired outcome.

It became apparent early on that the current in-house organisation was not fully equipped to manage the new world of integrated business systems and expanded supplier eco-systems.

To address this we began a parallel stream of activity to design a new target operating model for the IT function. Following an initial baseline discovery phase we worked through a structured process involving functional requirements, capability requirements and organisational design.

Delivered through an iterative sequence of workshops and evaluation sessions, the approach gained the buy-in of the senior IT leadership team and a new structure – including additional resources – was ultimately approved by the board for implementation.

The Outcome:

Our client has been able to progress through a complex transformation programme in the knowledge that ImprovIT, acting as a “critical friend”, is providing the security of professional programme oversight which allows problems to be identified in sufficient time for remediation actions to be deployed effectively.

The newly developed target operating model, developed in parallel to the assurance activities, provides a capable and resilient structure to manage the new services going forward. Collectively, the combination of services we delivered has provided our client’s IT organisation with a solid foundation capable of handling the challenges of the future.

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