Konvergent was approached by the Programme Director of Group Technology to develop a strategic roadmap for eight core business areas across global services and group technology. The core focus was gaining clarity on what the team were doing and demonstrating to the Global CEO in a way that could be instantly understood.
The main challenge was to help the domain leads map their projects to four core objectives that the CEO had already defined. The CEO had identified the four objectives as critical to the company’s overall strategy, and projects needed to align with those. The second challenge was to develop a visually appealing roadmap that could wow the Group CEO.
The domain leads often needed help with prioritisation and focused on the wrong projects. This led to projects that did not have strategic importance getting budget allocations. Therefore, Konvergent had to develop a bespoke solution that could help the domain shows prioritise the right tasks whilst sympathetic to the work that had already been done to date.
Konvergent started by conducting an extensive analysis with crucial stakeholder interviews of the eight core business areas to identify the critical strategic objectives. This analysis helped to identify the areas where the business could reprioritise efforts and resources.
Based on the CEO’s four core objectives, Konvergent worked with the domain leads to help them map their projects to these objectives. The part leads often needed help prioritising and focusing on suitable projects. Konvergent used a structured approach to help the domain leads identify the strategically essential projects aligned with the core objectives.
Once the projects were identified, Konvergent developed a visually appealing roadmap that presented the tasks clearly and concisely. The roadmap was designed to be easy to understand and helped to highlight the strategic importance of each project.
To further enhance the roadmap, Konvergent grouped applications based on agreed features, technical suitability, capabilities, purpose, attributes, and project type. This helped to provide a more detailed view of each project and how it aligned with the company’s overall strategy.
Konvergent also developed a bespoke filtering element that allowed the domain leads to filter projects based on criteria such as project type, business area, or strategic objective. This made it easier for the programme leads to identify suitable projects and prioritise them accordingly.
The feedback from the domain leads, and the Group CEO was fantastic. The CEO was impressed with the roadmap and said, “It is fantastic, I love it, I love it.” The domain leads were also impressed with the solution and found it easy to use. They appreciated the structured approach, the clarity it brought to the project prioritisation process, and the filtering element that made it easy to find and prioritise projects.
The roadmap helped the domain leads focus on suitable projects that were strategically important and aligned with the core objectives. This led to more efficient use of resources and helped to ensure that the company’s overall strategy was being implemented effectively.
12 months later, not only is the roadmap still in constant use, but its breadth has also expanded far more comprehensively across the organisation and is considered a core strategic communication tool.
In strategy and architecture, an often-neglected aspect is the Return on Investment (ROI). As financial professionals demand concrete figures when considering investments, more than a mere mention of process improvement or technology optimisation may be required. In their eyes, such endeavours represent costs, making it challenging to secure the necessary funding. Considering this, it is crucial to demonstrate ROI, regardless of how impressive a project’s visual outputs may be. How did Konvergent do this on this project?
“Value is a number, everything else is noise”
On the final version of the roadmap, Konvergent was able to remove 36 projects that were deemed unnecessary. The original version had 83 projects, but the final version had 47 projects that needed delivery over the next 12 months. The total average value of these projects was estimated to be between £2.2 million and £3.5 million. Konvergent conservatively estimated that the client may have concluded that 50% of this number needed to be postponed without the involvement of Konvergent. Even on that basis, Konvergent delivered an ROI of between 9x and 14x the original investment.
At the presentation meeting, the CEO was impressed with the results, saying, “It is fantastic, I love it, I love it.” The strategic roadmap developed by Konvergent helped the organisation focus on projects that were aligned with the CEO’s objectives, and the bespoke filtering element helped to identify low-priority projects that were unnecessary and could be cancelled.
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