Engagement Samples
The situations noted below are samples of assignments where TLIR has helped clients resolve significant issues and/or exploit opportunities.
¨ Significant corporate divestiture in the technology/telecommunications market space required quick and complete re-engineering of infrastructure, systems and processes. Project centric mindsets that focused on scope limits rather than business imperatives caused significant process disconnects in ERP, e-commerce, CRM and PRM systems across the global business.
As with all significant transformation efforts: multiple projects were sanctioned, each focused on one or more critical aspects of what had to be dome by a certain date, without fail. Although each project was well staffed with good, capable people the absence of an overarching authority over all projects caused project chaos – projects were bumping into one another, users were pulled in different directions, vendors threw their arms up in horror and stakeholders grimaced as costs mounted.
TLIR realigned projects to business realities; recommending that some projects be stopped, others be consolidated and that others speed up. As a result, the business met the divestiture deadline while enjoying overall cost efficiency increases of 10% and eradicating process disruption losses.
¨ Client business model focused on business partners and alliances as primary revenue streams in technology and service sectors. Leadership and guidance of teams defining and implementing a global, single instance architecture that enabled ‘balanced connectivity’ between business units and external partners, integrators and third parties was less than effective since the culture was still very much 'inward facing' and 'engineering driven'.
TLIR realigned and reenergized teams to ensure objectives were met; 65% of inbound (telephone/e-mail) information requests (2.4 Million p.a.) migrated to the new virtual channel, partner sales force productivity increased by 28% and technical support received significantly higher satisfaction ratings from customers.
¨ Internecine warfare between integration teams and business unit management threatened the objective of quick, effective consolidation of technology, processes and people during integration of a $17Bn acquisition.
TLIR was brought in to suppress ego, power and control conflict during transformation. John acted as advisor, mediator and arbitrator to ensure that critical decisions were made, when they had to be made. Since he had no ongoing role in the organization after integration, John was able sidestep internal cliques and factions, propelling momentum toward objectives.
¨ Broker peace between business units operating in 35 countries who knew exactly what they needed to manage their business and a global ERP ‘project’ team who also knew exactly what the business needed in order to manage their business. Needless to say, a significant number of cost overruns, delays, quality problems and stakeholder acceptance issues were seriously disrupting a $225Million project.
TLIR put an end to the conflict between the factions and to do it quickly since more time was being spent in ‘pissing’ contests than resolving problems. John stopped the bleeding, secured quick victories and realigned the teams.
¨ Client’s US ‘domestic’ telecommunications market was in turmoil. Leadership opted for outsourced manufacturing and logistics arrangements that alleviated overall cost pressures yet raised obstacles for international operations. ‘US Domestic’ perspectives about how outsourcing would work in the ‘Global marketplace’ backfired, leading to serious revenue leakage and customer relationship issues in international markets.
TLIR guided international technology and process engineering teams retrofitting 32 major process flows spanning sales, manufacturing, logistics and delivery functions with the result that order cycle time was reduced by 15% and monthly order rejection rates equal to $35 Million in lost sales were driven down to less than $500K.
¨ Assess the effectiveness of a global decentralized transformation model where business improvement projects were handled directly at the local, national or regional level. The client organization ($150 Billion Asset base) consisted of a mix of organization structures aligned to vertical lines of business, customer segments that crossed lines of business and product management matrices that spanned multiple lines of business and multiple customer segments. When asked how many improvement initiatives were underway across the business, no one could put a finger on the number…
TLIR analysis of projects completed over the past two years revealed that cohesion between organization centric intent and project centric execution was essentially non-existent and at the whim or mercy of ego, power, NIMBY and control conflict across the global business.
In summary; local demands dictated local solutions in isolation, meaning the global organization had potentially spent $675+ Million building the same things, in part or whole, over and over again. To fix the problem, TLIR defined and deployed a Corporate Clarity & Cohesion framework to ensure future duplication of effort would be identified and quickly dealt with.
¨ Analyzed conflicting ‘outsource project’ dynamics where disconnects between client expectations and BPO realities threatened original business case rationale. One side thought they knew what the other side would be doing, when, where and to what end; the other side knew full well what they going to do, when, where and to what end – except, the ends did not meet up!
What was envisioned was a very good, long term opportunity to save costs ($170Million p.a.) while enhancing corporate flexibility to accommodate changing market dynamics. Unfortunately, client side assumptions about what the outsourcing supplier was committed to do were very different to what the outsourcing supplier intended to do. TLIR bridged the expectation gap between the parties while adhering to the spirit and intent of the contractual relationship. TLIR laid the groundwork for common understanding of how the residual components of the contractual agreement would be addressed by both sides.
¨ Organization of some 15,000 staff across the Province of Ontario were accountable for timely disbursement of $5 Billion in transfer payments to hundred’s of external agencies and partners looking after the needs of the socially disadvantaged. Due to the high sensitivity associated with the socially disadvantaged groups, the organization was beset by a multitude of information requests of varying importance from internal and external stakeholders. While the requests for information were doubtless valid in the eyes of the enquirer - the time and effort spent by staff and partners responding to hundreds of requests per month were severely disruptive of effective day-to-day operations. Management recognized the need for improvements and retained TLIR to assess where gaps, disconnects and chokepoints existed and to recommend ways to address them.
John examined the mechanics, dynamics, optics and politics of the requests and recommended a suite of process/technology corrective actions (short, medium and longer term) that would allow the unit to better address information requests. The Project Sponsor noted he was surprised and pleased at just how quickly John had go to the heart of the matter and identified critical deficiencies, several of which were able to be addressed quickly by internal staff.
¨ Investigated why project centric assumptions rendered a $450 Million ERP project tenable on paper yet the reality of the project pointed to eight times the investment cost; would take three times as long and the payback timeline would extend far beyond acceptable limits.
In this case (as in many other ERP initiatives) the full cost and time to achieve full, seamless and complete integration into the operating fabric of the organization was understated. The cost, time and effort necessary to re-engineer business processes to extract the real and worthwhile benefits of ERP functionality is usually so significant; vendors and parties who espouse ERP applications tend to downplay the non-technological costs! As Phil Knight, CEO of Nike so eloquently stated… “Look what I got for $500 Million! Nothing!”
¨ A service delivery program with extremely high visibility in the public eye was, for various reasons, not working as well as it should and, given the program was approaching its mid-point (3 year program); improvement opportunities had to be identified quickly.
In less than six weeks, John conducted a multi-pronged assessment where he examined each of the delivery channels (web, voice, assessment centre and external agencies), consulted with internal subject matter experts (channel specific and program wide) and mapped the information elements – informational as well as transactional – from the perspective of internal users and members of the public looking for information through various channels. As a result of his analysis, John identified a complex web of hot buttons and pain points across all channels which, when rendered into a matrix form presented clear evidence of significant issues. John laid out 22 specific recommendations for improvements; 5 to 7 of which constituted quick wins where with minimal effort, the business could make dramatic and visible improvements to the ways program information was hosted, synchronized, communicated and utilized through the multi-channels.
¨ A Crown Agency responsible for arts grants and awards across the Province of Ontario was looking for ways to improve systems and processes that it used to engage both artists and the general public – including event planning/hosting, web/media communications, translation, patron/donor solicitation, award/grant applications, jury selection and assessment panels, etc.
John consulted with key members of staff to determine hot buttons and pain points in the regular course of business. In short order, John identified 105 aspects of various business functions that presented significant improvement opportunities through the use of collaborative software tools, thereby streamlining less than effective or efficient legacy processes. At the conclusion of the consultations, John developed a cascading implementation model that enabled management to select which improvement opportunities to action first – based on criteria of cost to deploy, time to deploy, value to the business and complexity of business function migration. John’s reasoning for recommending this model is one that is often ignored or forgotten in the rush to deploy new way of doing business – improving the business must be done in a manner that minimizes interruption to the day-to-day business.
¨ Five Ontario Provincial Ministries – Ministry of Natural Resources, Ministry of Northern Development & Mines, Ministry of the Environment, Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs and the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs requested an assessment of the potential value for Place Based Information Management spanning the five ministries, other OPS ministry’s, lower tier municipalities and external agencies thereby enabling staff to pinpoint and research multiple information subject areas from a variety of data repositories – GIS, Spatial, Tabular, Linear - anchored by a single, common, denominator – a place, a community, an area or a region of the Province.
John led a team of IM and GIS experts in assessing the potential value for Place Based Information Management. The team analyzed over four hundred information sources and identified several hundred critical hot buttons/pain points where timely information provisioning was problematic. The assessment was conducted within budget and on schedule with 5 Deputy Ministers accepting and approving John’s recommendations as to potential value and next steps. One of the key sponsors noted at the assignment wrap-up… “Now, this is how a project should be run!”
¨ External financial advisors had analyzed how a significant acquisition ($8.5Billion) would allow the combined company to dominate the transportation / logistics market, on paper. What was missing was real world advice about the probable and probably very expensive issues associated with deployment of corporate applications into the acquired company’s operations.
Client leadership’s initial thoughts were to ‘force fit’ corporate applications into the acquired company; thereby quickly achieving economies of scale and commonality. John laid out reasoning why the ‘force fit’ approach was not necessarily the wisest course in this particular case since ‘shoehorning’ unfamiliar systems and processes into foreign, potentially ‘hostile’ environments where legacy systems and processes were tried, tested and beloved by staff and customers could well prove extremely costly to execute. Subsequently, John recommended a ‘waves of change’ approach that would derive the same value over a slightly longer period with far less risk of cost overruns and customer dissatisfaction.
¨ Acquisitive Corporation was gathering views on probable integration issues and opportunities inherent in a potential $13.5 Billion hostile acquisition. They turned to John to obtain a fresh perspective since certain Board Members had read John's analyses of the HP/Compaq and Nike debacles.
John shone a light on certain issues that would probably arise from attempting to integrate and combine the assets and resources of two companies into one, both of whom ‘sold’ themselves as master acquisition integrators to clients and prospects and who were now about to be consolidated into one entity!
¨ Venture Capital Firm looking for independent viewpoint of IT and BPO Outsourcing trends prior to committing £2 Billion+. Depending on who is asking and who is telling - Inshore, Near Shore or Offshore Outsourcing is the very best solution. Each brings different value propositions to the table yet each presents differing problems of varying orders of magnitude.
John helped the client understand the risks and downstream benefits of each form of outsourcing from a market/client perspective and helped them determine what the true market potential might be for each.
¨ Major Global BPO Corporation was looking for an unbiased assessment of market receptivity for the value propositions of Indian BPO Service providers vs. those of Western BPO service providers. This corporation exhibited the classical tendency to look inward with admiration and outward with derision.
John helped senior leadership appreciate the reality of what the market was looking for and what the market thought of the client corporation and its primary competitors. As a result, the client organization embarked on an internal refurbishment campaign designed to boost market receptivity for new and far better value propositions.
¨ Forward thinking financial institution planned to establish autonomous R&D facilities to test and institutionalize virtual technology including smart cards, wireless and loyalty program trigger devices (RFID). The corporate centric vision would launch the business to the front of the pack; however, organization centric egos fought to attain command and control of the autonomous entity to meet their own needs, promulgating project centric chaos.
TLIR aligned R&D entrepreneurial practices with corporate practices without limiting or stilting intellectual innovation. John acted as the gatekeeper to ensure that corporate demand was funneled through correct channels. TLIR created a buffer zone to insulate the R&D function from the actions and protestations of business unit leaders anxious to secure the competitive edge the R&D function brought to the whole corporation for their own business purposes.
¨ De-regulated energy markets offer much promise provided that the myriad of special interests that seek to gain market advantage can be effectively managed. In an environment consisting of pseudo private enterprises (government backed corporations), government policy, private sector interests, environmentalists, engineers, academics and union representation; creating the new processes and systems necessary to operate and oversee the deregulated energy market was viewed as an almost impossible task.
TLIR transitioned what is arguably the most important collection of systems, processes and people (those that keep the lights on) from what were old and inherently frail methods to modern and robust ways of managing the distribution of electrical power in a deregulated market; in addition, John was tasked with creating a brand new commodity trading ‘house’ to manage bid/buy, offer/sell and settlement functions in a $15 Billion market...
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