Supporting business change and a major technology transformation

Background

By late 2022, the commercial team at this government department was experiencing extraordinary and unprecedented demand on their capacity and capability. 

This was due to long term plans for the department to take on new expansive powers for Government being accelerated. 

After a tender process in early 2023, the department appointed Socitm Advisory as the partner to advise and support their commercial team through the necessary business change and major technology transformation. 

“Socitm Advisory’s level of engagement, support and passion was outstanding. We have a lot of appetite to continue this relationship.”

Head of service, a government department

The biggest challenge

The overall biggest challenge for this programme was undoubtedly the short timeline and pace required by all parties for a successful delivery.  

Specifically, it required our Socitm Advisory team to ‘hit the floor running’ to digest an unusually large ‘mountain’ of information from a whole suite of documents.  

The high speed that the department had to move at to accelerate the programme, meant some areas of the brief evolved over time, bringing about changes to work packages and the need for new pieces of work being added.   

Understandably, this pace of change caused a lot of expectation-based anxiety from the department’s stakeholders, which was successfully managed.  

Our project brief and goals

Our approach

Part of Socitm Advisory’s success in bidding for this work was the holistic approach we can offer. Having all the skillsets in-house gives Socitm Advisory a rare if not unique one-team approach with all the seamless collaboration and communication benefits that brings.  

For this programme, our team included Socitm Advisory specialists in: 

• Business analysis 
• Technology 
• Data management 
• Procurement 
• People change 
• Business change 
• Communication 
• Stakeholder engagement 

“The strategic workforce plan Socitm Advisory designed and implemented is exceptional!”

Head of service, a government department

We were able embed ourselves into the culture of the department quickly, engage with key stakeholders to gather information, understand impacts, and help bring clarity and a sharp focus to the desired outcomes.  

Simultaneously, we were also able to review the existing technology, understand the requirements and put forward our recommendations quickly.  

Close collaboration and great communication were at the heart of our approach and key to the programme’s success in overcoming the challenges, presented by the set-up speed, short programme timescale and fast-moving environment, where new requirements were added into the mix. 

Outcomes and benefits

At the core of the technology requirement was the need for a new single source case management system. From our stakeholder engagement work, we were able to understand the outcomes required and build that into a market approach for requests of information. This activity has helped the department transform this area from a basic state to a much more valued position. 

Another technology outcome was the design and implementation of the Strategic Workforce Plan. This supports and benefits the team enormously, by providing a 5-year view of the future pipeline of work, to identify gaps in resources and better-understand team capacity.  

Our work on stakeholder engagement beyond the commercial team has provided greater understanding, insight, and clarity for what other areas of the business require from them. This has given the commercial team the opportunity to develop closer more collaborative relationships with these internal customers, for better outcomes.  

Notable project learnings

• Having a close and collaborative client relationship keeps up pace and momentum in a programme
• The close and collaborative client relationship enjoyed on this project also enabled golden opportunities to be identified, realised, and maximised

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