The Situation

Northern Gas are an award winning Gas Distribution company based in the North of England. The CEO Mark Horsley has been transforming NGN into a high performing asset management business over the last five years. Changing the culture, the ways of working and the technology to both improve customer service and at the same time reduce waste/cost. Mark recognised that to continue in his ambition to make NGN a world class company that he would require a shift in how technology was both used and delivered.

The Task

Mark asked my to join the executive team as Innovation, Improvement and Information Director and to lead/champion the change in both IT and the way in which technology enabled programmes and projects were delivered whilst also looking at ways in which to reduce the overall cost of IT to the business.

The Action / Approach

Following my appointment I developed an integrated digital and information technology strategy which meant bringing back in house many elements of IT which had been outsourced to offshore providers. At the same time I introduced the principles and concepts of using agile delivery techniques, not only for software delivery but to improve work flow and visibility from the board room to the depots. NGN gradually moved away from the stop/start environment of the traditional projects towards “continuous delivery” workstreams built around business capabilities.

In addition I introduced the principles of service design/design thinking techniques to ensure we developed systems that people actively found easy to engage with and fulfilled the needs of our customers and colleagues. In practice this was achieved by introducing a User Experience team into NGN.

Along side this shift in the IT mindset we established a hybrid model for Infrastructure and Operations blending both on and off premise models.

The Result

A reduction in technology spend of close to 40%. A radical reduction in technology enabled delivery timescales, in areas (audited) this meant we were delivering software in five to ten days that had previously taken 100+ days. Greatly enhanced departmental morale which resulted in NGN Digital/Technology services function getting special recognition at the UK Agile awards.

Removed silo thinking and lead the creation of multi-disciplinary NGN teams which included IT, HR, Operations, Finance, Procurement, etc and who focused on delivering outcomes rather than outputs.