Ostensibly brought in on a business transformation agenda and to manage the IT Services function, it soon became apparent that IT Services had major functional and reputational issues and that these would prove a barrier to successfully delivering a business transformation agenda

The primary task was to give the IT Services team a framework within which they could work with delivery and performance metrics agreed with the business and the Leadership Team. Complimentary to this was the need for an agreed IT Strategy that aligned with the overall Corporate one, the raising of expectations within the team and the need for a set of operating processes and procedures that supported this (the existing ones were all at least 5 years out of date)

Working with the Leadership Team I was able to agree a set of objectives for IT Services and an understanding of the strategic/ tactical requirements that the organisation had over the next 3 year period. This detail was supported by an internal IT Audit that, combined with the above, enabled the creation of the IT Strategy together with an action plan for the team. The issues with the “team dynamics” were tackled through a series of team workshops, psychometric testing and one to one sessions with the input from the HR function. The results from this were built into the overall action plan. Working with some previous contacts I had at Lloyds LRQA the team worked towards ISO20000 (ITIL) and ISO9001 TickIT Plus.

The team was re-organised with redefined roles and Job descriptions. The Service Desk was completely restructured. Performance metrics were introduced to compliment the management reporting and the Team started to deliver against Plan. The reputation was further bolstered by the very visible accreditation against the ISO20000 and ISO9001 standards. The resultant delivery of new flexible working capabilities to the organisation saved circa £1m/ Annum with opportunities to further attract revenues by renting out freed office space. Improved supplier and contract management processes saved £100K in the first year. This against an overall IT Budget of £2M