Integration of catalogue and online retailers
A major catalogue retailer had recently acquired an on-line business and established a multi-million pound integration programme to merge the two companies. The programme comprised 12 workstreams with over 80 projects and was due to run for 30 months. During mobilisation it became apparent that labour-intensive processes for consolidating plans and reports lacked standard protocols and that poor data quality was affecting report integrity. An IPMC team deployed to assess the programme office discovered that:
- Over 10,000 tasks and milestones were being reported on across the programme but there was no central repository for tracking against the baseline leading to serious data integrity issues.
- Plans and reports were being submitted at 17h00 on a Thursday. The consolidation of plans took four planners up to five hours (on Thursday evening) before the first milestone report was available for review.
- The initial report typically required extensive rework due to poor data integrity – this uncertainty had also resulted in high levels of tension between team members leading to numerous staff retention issues.
- A team of nine controls and assurance people worked all Friday, removing irrelevant information and identifying the real issues (slippage, threats, risks, issues). This work continued through Monday in preparation for the management meeting on Tuesday morning.
- Despite the best efforts of the controls and assurance teams the reports typically contained an unacceptably high number of errors, effectively undermining the authority and credibility of the programme office.
- Total effort to produce and assure the milestone report: up to 144 hours of work per week.
The IPMC team introduced standardised processes and templates for planning, change control, risks, issues and action tracking. We then implemented our proprietary planning and reporting toolkit, customised to collate and manage multiple data sources as well as automate key reports. This removed the need for manual intervention and ensured the integrity of information published to decision-makers.
The result was a dramatic improvement in the performance of the programme office:
- All milestones were now tracked against a centrally managed baseline, restoring trust in the data integrity.
- Two people from the controls team gathered, consolidated and printed all draft reports within an hour of submission.
- The assurance team was left with two full days to deal with the real issues, cooperate with client teams on recovery plans, prepare reports for Exec Summary and agree on RAG status and recovery plans in actions by Monday afternoon.
- Staff retention was no longer an issue, the team switched from conflicting to collaborating.
- The Tuesday morning meeting was used to confirm agreed actions and distribute milestone reports and dashboard progress.
- Total effort to produce and assure the milestone report: 2 hours
New online service for major UK retail chain
A major UK retailer was in the process of revitalising its online sales business. IPMC was engaged to set up a PMO for the implementation of the new online service offering and took responsibility for release planning, live operations reporting (detailed system performance, users, sales), automated product availability reporting, bulk product data uploads and store locator data (information cleansing, bulk uploads, GIS, product and service information).
Bulk product uploads for online retail
A UK retailer was experiencing data quality issues with their bulk product upload process. New products and product updates were being loaded into their website on a weekly basis via templates completed by business users and suppliers. This included detailed product information, supplier questionnaires, product attributes, cross and up-sell information, supplier logos and product images. Issues with the data included bad characters and faulty product information with respect to cross-sells and duplicate records which in extreme cases caused severity one incidents. Our team created a process for inspecting and validating the template information before the commencement of the bulk upload. This led to a dramatic reduction in the number of incidents and a restoration of trust in the bulk upload process.
Strategic planning model for retail chain
A major retailer was producing a 3 year strategic plan across its retail, corporate, trading, supply, online, IT and customer divisions. Each of the initiatives within the portfolio needed to be aligned with strategic themes, including core growth, risk and renewal, new sources of growth and operational efficiency. Capex and opex budgets were to be reviewed across the entire portfolio and adjusted according to relevant benefits estimates. IPMC designed and implemented a strategic planning model that allowed senior executives to forecast the impact of adjustments and plan accordingly.
Global strategic planning model for medical optics
A distributor of laser vision correction and lens removal systems needed to co-ordinate the roll-out of strategic initiatives on a global scale. An IPMC team conducted an assessment of the operations of the firm and implemented a Microsoft based solution that allowed executives to plan and manage strategic initiatives across the group.