Our approach to
Managing Ambitious Delivery
Six months to implement a global benefits administration technology and new broking services across 12 countries. This was a daunting prospect for our high-tech client, which our UK-based team member managed. It would require careful coordination of internal and external players to maintain trust, commitment and focus on rapid execution across a multinational team.
Question: How to build collaboration across these countries, all of whom were accustomed to managing their programmes independently, that would be critical to success?
Answer: Retain an expert with deep expertise in managing global deployments, from both the client and solution provider sides — an expert whose project management style was the perfect blend of easy-going encouragement and hard-nosed insistence on meeting deadlines and foucsing on the details.
The opportunity before us
The client was seeking to automate the aggregation of employee data and reporting to local insurance and benefits providers around the world. The goal was to improve efficiency, compliance, and consistency in managing employee coverage and claims in its markets.
To achieve this, the client had appointed a benefits firm to provide global governance of employee benefits using its consultant network and software.
The challenge was that historically its markets had largely handled employee benefits locally, with little automation or corporate oversight.
The external provider would need to engage with the client’s local managers and collaborate with them to capture requirements, setup and test the system, and launch the new services. And they needed to do this rapidly — within six months.
Based on our experience in global deployments – on both provider and client side — we were brought onboard to facilitate and direct this programme.
We setup a joint provider/client programme management office which involved:
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Establishing a combined governance board that included senior leaders from both sides.
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Planning and phasing of the work across the 12 countries being impacted.
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Managing weekly governance reporting and meetings to oversee progress, risks, and issues across the 12 country projects.
This set a collaborative tone that was adopted by the wider programme stakeholders across the provider and client organizations.
From this starting point we are able to work alongside individual delivery teams to help them monitor tasks, deliverables, resources, and constraints. As a result, we were well positioned to identify and escalate decisions and actions in real-time. This ensured delivery teams received the support and attention they needed to work to the aggressive timescales.
In our facilitatory role as an ‘honest broker’ between the two organisations, we were able to help resolve conflicts rapidly without jeopardising the focus on collaboration and mutual success.
Ultimately the client achieved its six-month target of having a new, automated, coordinated benefits management approach globally.