Customer Case Study

Konvergent has supported BT in their Transformation of Corporate Functions for over two years. Our engagement supported a variety of Corporate Functions areas, including HR, Finance, Fleet, Supply Chain and IT.

Recognising the need to invest in the Technology Organisation at all levels, BT’s IT Leadership called in Konvergent to help them formulate a strategy for managing this need in the Architecture organisation.

After an initial discovery phase, we embarked on an ambitious target archtecture and strategic roadmapping initiative for a group wide ERP transformation. Finding an effective way to engage the business partners in the critical investment planning and onboarding a large and diverse stakeholder group would be key to success for the journey ahead.

The Ask...

“ The project allowed us to accelerate building out capability models for two critical areas of our business that were about to undergo significant transformations.

Having artefacts in business language helped enormously with building trust with our stakeholders that we understood their business domain and provided a transparent level of objectivity in the evaluation of alternative options. The project also upskilled our internal team so that they can now go forward and build out these critical models on their own. ”

The Outcome...

Transforming Corporate Functions at BT

PROJECT DETAILS

Client: BT Group

Konvergent Team: 4 Consultants & Design Studio

Goal: Support BT in a business led corporate ERP transformation

Project Dates: March 2017 - December 2018

Rachel Higham, Managing Director of IT

BT

Business Strategies Validated

4

Programme ROI

5%

Results Sample

Programmes Unblocked

5

Konvergent Work in Corporate Functions at BTIn each of our engagements in Corporate Functions, one of our consultants worked with a BT architect to not only deliver the requird outcomes but also mentor them in our approach to Strategic Enterprise Architecture and Business Capability Modelling.

Supply Chain

In the Supply Chain workstream, they succeeded in forging excellent relationships with the business and supporting programmes to achieve strategic goals. BT Supplier Management were early adopters and advocates of business capability this architecture approach used the approach to drive a £20m ITT process for a new IT solution – They attributed a 5% cost saving in development cost to using the approach which represents a ~1000% ROI on the incremental cost involved based on a PACE layering approach.

HR/ERP Transformation

Our long-standing support in HR has seen us work with the Senior HR Management Team to set their Strategy, work through their long-term goals for the organisation, and finally develop a target state architecture informed by HR market factors, employee imperatives and best HR practices. We used a Business Capability-led approach to reach out to Supply Chain, Finance and Procurement to fund a joint investment for a joined up ERP solution. The engagement continues to support HR through the RFI and RFP process to select a vendor for the ERP solution that will deliver strategic HR functionality for BT.

Customer Case Study

Employee Services

The Employee Services workstream took a Business Capability-led approach to analysing employee-facing services to develop a target solution to deliver value across IT, HR and Facilities Activities. We developed a set of recommendations based on employee pain and their issues with using the available tools to develop a roadmap to support improved employee engagement and experience.

Finance Planning, Budgeting and Forecasting

We were asked to engage with the Finance Transformation programme to help identify the issues within Finance Forecasting that were blocking progress on requirements gathering. Our architect worked with BT’s Finance Architect to develop and validate a Business Capability Model for this area that was then used to identify which activities were causing the issues and what some possible process alterations could be made to enable the programme to continue.

Customer Case Study

Because the understanding of architecture at BT was mainly technical, and because we had to move quickly to catch opportunities, we needed to limit the amount of analysis we performed to a few key models/techniques:

Our Architecture Approach

X Business Architecture Models: Business Motivation Models, Business Models and Value Streams (others as required), Gap analysis, demand analysis, target state assessments,

X Enterprise Architecture Outputs: Target Architectures and Technology Roadmaps.

X Solution Architecture Outputs: High-Level Designs, Solution Options.

Business Capability Models make great communications tools. Our approach for using them at BT was simple:

X We would construct quick prototypes (re-using material if possible) of a capability model and outputs,

X We created a buzz about Capability Modelling by meeting key stakeholders and showing them the prototype,

X We found our golden opportunities to create and use capability models to solve problems at BT during our stakeholder meetings (see ‘Targeting Opportunities’ below).

Deployment and Mentoring

X BT architects learned how to package the work and sell it to the business,

X We introduced the standard approach to Business Capability Planning and the BT architects helped us tailor our approach to the intricacies of their environment,

X We didn’t just leave our models and guides behind - BT’s architects gained the skills and experience to take the practices forward - in fact, they are now in the process of setting up a Centre of Excellence to apply their knowledge across the organisation.

We partnered with architects at BT to co-create deliverables and coach them on the techniques and models we introduced. This method has several advantages:

Customer Case Study

Extra wins for BT

As a byproduct of the work Konvergent were engaged for the positive ripples went further than expected.

X Programmes and projects that couldn’t get off the ground in the areas of wholesale and ventures started to gain traction through capabilty led approaches.

X Created champions in business areas that would welcome new approaches to tranformation plannning.

X Helped the technology and architecture leadership design a modern enterprise architecture practice to support the future journey of BT.

As a Strategy & Architecture leader, you’re under pressure. Even with the best internal team, you’ll still need external support when you can’t meet business demand.Konvergent’s dynamic service model has been specifically developed to support you. Our relationship-driven approach sets us apart from traditional consultancies: we bring no downstream agenda or vendor tie-ins to the engagement; we only bring our expert architects and a roadmap for your success. Over the years, we’ve engendered great loyalty from our customers and consultants which has, of course, only been possible by repeatedly doing a great job. We try to keep things as simple as possible, lose the consultancy jargon and only deal in plain speak. We enjoy what we do: we have fun and work hard. Learn more at konvergent.co.uk

About Us

Programmes Unblocked

5 10

BT Architects Mentored

Business Unit Created (Employee Services) 1

Results

Business Strategies Validated

4Programme ROI

5%