Successful projects are rooted in a clear strategic need. Almost as important is articulating how meeting that need generates financial value or strategic advantage, using language that enthuses business stakeholders and then describing how the solution fully meets that need to generate cross-organisational alignment to what is going to be implemented. A holistic approach that embraces processes, data, metrics, competencies, organisational design and culture is critical for success. This is the challenge that C-level leaders face when tasked with delivering transformational initiatives – and one where often they lack the required expertise in their teams. Sopra Steria can help. Our business consultancy team works with IT teams to facilitate efficient and effective transformation. We support clients cross the implementation lifecycle through:
Capability evaluation
This involves working with business functions to understand their strategic, operational and financial priorities in terms of the KPIs and metrics that the business most wants to improve. The second part of the process is uncovering the challenges and pain points that the function is facing – both current capability levels and gaps with what is required to achieve target performance levels. Drawing on their expertise in customer centricity, digital transformation, business analytics and finance change, this team identifies the priorities in terms of gaps that need to be addressed – the key value levers. At the same time, through their knowledge of current solutions, they are able to evangelise about the art of the possible, beginning the process of engaging business teams in the transformation journey.
Strategy definition
Based on insights gained, our consultants then work with business teams to articulate their vision and strategic priorities. This prioritisation is critical to limiting scope creep and customisation that add costs and delays without delivering additional value. A second advantage is that it enables objectives-driven requirements definition – what the solution needs to enable – rather than just relying on user-defined requirements which weight what the solution does currently more importantly than what it needs to do.
Business case development
Gaining buy-in to an initiative requires clearly defining the operational, financial and strategic benefits that it will deliver and the costs of implementation. Sopra Steria’s consultants can determine these benefits using the work done in the capability evaluation and strategy definition phases while the cost definitions come from working closely with the enterprise and solution architecture teams.
Operating model design
The IT solution being delivered needs to fit with the other elements of the operating model – the key processes that it will automate and control, the performance measures that will be tracked, the data flows required, where the processes will be executed, the skills needed to do so, and the culture required to handle the myriad of possibilities that cannot be predefined in process maps or FAQs. We can also draw this together to ensure the model is synergistic without being over-engineered.
Change management
New operating models and new IT solutions require new ways of working. Sopra Steria’s consultants are also experienced at performing change impact analysis – capturing who will need to work differently and what those differences are. This provides the basis for the communication and education required for success. And our consultants are experienced in translating these requirements into communications and engagement plans.
Project review
The final stage is reviewing the project to ensure that it has delivered the envisaged value and captured learnings for future initiatives. We can also help with tracking benefit realisation (a related skill to business case development) and the process of collating the inputs from across multiple stakeholders.
