Case Studies: Process and Projects

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National Health Service - NHS

Task: Procurement and supplier Management

For nearly three years we participated in the NHS IT-program (NPfIT) in a supplier management role. This £6 Billion extensive programme is one of the most ambitious programmes ever undertaken by the British Government. The goal is to be able to supply elementary information about every patient in the UK to any hospital in the health service.

Logsys transferred substantial key functions into the programme, which extended over the whole range of the procurement process. In detail this was:

• The support of the procurement procedure
• Its technical security
• Contract Management support
• The support to switch processes in the case of dissagreements with suppliers

Our activities focused primarily on guaranteeing high quality delivery to find economical solutions and to adapt the solution gradually to the original Business Plan and its origin. These tasks covered:

• A detailed formulation of the user requirements
• A review of the existing functional supplier specifications
• A review of the supplier Projects and Project plans
• The taking over of the Project Risk Management
• Development of acceptance criteria and test results
• Validation of achievement models and capacity plans
• Re-negotiation of contract elements with the aim of incorporating changed requirements backinto the overall solution
• Renegotiation by Project milestones and acceptance criteria if the original base lines were not reached
• Preparation for and participation in the OGC (Office Of Government Commerce) Review Meetings

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British Telecom

Task: RH engineering Business (Sales) - process

In Great Britain the telecom community grew at a rapid pace leading to a very diversified range of markets. This led to British Telecom having an inordinate number of business processes and systems.  Quality and compatibility were no longer achievable. The organisation was therefore no longer able to produce accurate Sales Forecast numbers and thus not able to produce accurate business forecasting and planning.

Logsys worked with BT to unite menbers of the Board to achieve the following objectives:

• Supply the detail of budgeting up to the planning process
• Identification of process owners
• Definition of a model for key performance indicators (KPI) as well as a reporting tool aligned to end of the month
• Design of a bonus system to support the salesforce
• Specification (including feasibility study) of a new information system for the support of the new processes

Logsys stood alongside BT in the introduction and implementation of the new processes in an advisory capacity.  As a result of this engagement, BT were able to achieve substantially shorter forecast cycles enabling accurate data for planning and budgeting.

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Department for Work and Pensions

Task: The guidance and Review of an Outsourcing project in a Multi Vendor environment

An outsourcing partner provided the central system on behalf the department. The purpose was rationalizing the work with the public to simplify the operational sequences and create intelligent front-ends for the different Legacy systems available. The system was introduced 50,000 workers and cost over £100 million. The project consisted of a number of parallel operational sequences, into which different suppliers were included. Because of the lack of co-ordination there were doubts about the projects success. Logsys was selected due to its relevant experiences in leading numerous multi-vendor projects to successful conclusion.

Subsequently, a high level review body selected Logsys to take the Lead for the test runs in a Model Office and a technical test project. Logsys was responsible for the planning, co-ordination and execution of all test phases with the different suppliers and responsible for the adherence to all of the dates, cost budgets and objectives and was made an independent entity reporting to the client and senior management.

Because of the companies positive experience with Logsys, we were invited to help in the development of the contracts for the next phase, and to calculate the requirements of all outside vendors and suppliers.
Logsys was successful in shaping and implementing a number of test strategies, which brought the different solutions from the vendors and the customer together.

This ended in a much clearer picture for all parties and permitted us, with further steps, to supervise the companies own detailed plans. The ability of Logsys to understand the agreements between vendors, negotiate the engagement process of all the suppliers and the customer, was the key to the success of the project.

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DHL

Task: Piloting an Email outsourcing project

This world-wide and global logistics company used a number of internal Email services. Although by outsourcing the service to an individual service provider was thought to provide considerable cost savings and service improvements, the actual problems had been completely underestimated at the beginning of the project. DHL is a various and distributed organization, which resides on six continents and by acquisitions has grown and is now in over 150 countries. Local support and migration of the users and their data became the crucial question of the feasibility of the project.

Logsys defined and led a world-wide pilot project, in order to understand the feasibility of migrating all the users, based on in house services to a single service. Users from 20 countries participated in this project, in order to make sure that all geographical issues were completely represented.

The pilot successfully recognized the central problem Email functionality, the migration, the safety requirements, the service levels and the user support. All this information was transferred to the planning of the following outsourcing project, which is at present still running.

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An important Government Institution

Task: Project Review and Project Reorganization

At the start the situation the customer presented to us was a project framework costing approx.£100 millions for an initial 5,000 users. The project failed due delivery dates not being met and permanently rising costs of the project.
Logsys performed a project review to accomplish the goal of identifying the causes for the project difficulties and submitted suggestions for measures to eliminate errors and perform some reorganization. Taking this in order we examined technical architecture, project planning as well as the control of the project. In addition, we established new procedures from reliable evaluation generated by our investigation. The information resulting from it was transferred to regular project reports given to the Project Board.

The result of the reviews was that the technical architecture was perfect. The main issue was the implementation of the software. In detail the following lack of process were found as key errors:

• The absence of a generally accepted project methodology
• The insufficient monitoring of the project progress
• Lack of any steering of the project
• Ineffective management and co-operation with the main supplier

A change of the main supplier was the result. Together with the customer and a new main supplier we compiled the bases for the introduction and use of industry standards as well as “Good Practice” procedures, supported by our broad experience.

The project was re-started and was delivered on time and to budget.

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