SAP Programme Delivery Case Study
Programme Recovery and Governance on a Public Sector Telehealth ERP Programme
ABOUT THE CLIENT
The client is a telehealth advice line in the UK.
It provides out of hours triage for those who are unwell (or their carers), advice for those unable to visit their GP, and additional services like mental health advice, information for carers, and stop smoking support.
CHALLENGES
The organization was established as an out of hours service to provide support and advice to the general public when channels like GPs and pharmacies were closed.
While the client was providing only out of hours services demand was comparatively low and maintenance, changes, and patches to the system could take place during the day while the service was not in use.
Overtime, additional services were added by the client like stop smoking, dental, and mental health advice lines.
10 years later, and the client provides a truly 24/7 service that must be available to the general public at all times.
In 2020, the client embarked upon a major upgrade to their IT infrastructure and core applications with the aim of ensuring that the service would be available 24/7, resilient and secure. The client managed this programme of work themselves, supported by their key partners.
Resulting became involved in the programme after being approached to provide independent advice, help create the business case for change, and to review proposals.
After running the programme for a few months, it became apparent to the client that their approach - employing a number of independent contractors to manage the programme - wasn’t proving effective.
The complexity of the programme was compounded by the fact that alongside improving their ERP, the client was also upgrading their telecoms infrastructure, network, and data centres.
In order to improve programme governance, and to better align the programme with the wider portfolio of work, the client appointed Resulting IT to manage and deliver their ERP programme.
RESULTING SOLUTION
Resulting began by placing a number of senior delivery leads into key roles on the programme. Filling these roles with experienced people from a single organization provided stability, cohesion, and improved communication compared to using independent contractors.
We then used our Compass tool to run an in-flight check of the programme to assess its maturity against 15 research backed success levers.
This assessment contributed towards an action plan on how to improve the programme and identified key areas of weakness and dissonance.
We were able to take the existing programme plan and shape it to better fit the programme as it stood today, and consolidated it with other programmes ongoing within the business.
We also deferred some deliverables to a second phase that would come later. This helped the client realize key benefits as quickly as possible based on the limited capacity within the team.
We turned an unmanageable 4,000 line project plan into a concise 600 line schedule detailing the activities and dependencies that really mattered and setting new dates.
We also introduced daily stand ups to ensure the programme had a ‘heartbeat’ and a forum for escalating issues and making decisions quickly to keep delivery on track.
We made the plan visible and kept it at the forefront of people’s minds to bring momentum to the programme.
Stage gates were introduced with firm checkpoints to force people to make decisions, provide realistic expectations, and provide more accurate reporting on targets. This removed the vagueness that had been holding the project up and provided the programme with much needed rigor.
BENEFITS DELIVERED
Thanks to Resulting streamlining the plan and improving programme governance, the programme was put back on track and the following was delivered:
- 6 weeks of systems integration testing
- 8 weeks of user acceptance testing
- 2 rounds of regression testing
- voice and application performance testing
- external penetration testing
- 2 Trial Migrations
- 2 Dress Rehearsals
- 1 Rollback
- Capture and management of 1,236 RAID items including 197 risks, 66 issues, 86 decisions, 932 actions
- 2,000 activities within a project plan
- 400 environment tickets resolved
- 300 cutover activities
We improved resilience through active-active design which allows the system to keep running even when some services are down, reducing the amount of downtime whether planned (patching) or unplanned.
This programme also put the client on the latest version of SAP, giving them access to operational assistance, fixes, patches and minor updates when they need them as well, as fixing securities and vulnerabilities that come from running older versions of software.
This activity ensures the client’s technical environment is secure, resilient and supported until 2025.