Case Study

Transforming Corporate Functions at BT

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 HR.

Project Details

Client:

BT Group

Konvergent Team:

4 Consultants and Design Studio

Goal:

Support BT in a business led corporate ERP transformation

Project Dates:

March 2017 – December 2018

Formulating a strategy for ambitious targets.

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.

Upskilling BT's internal team.

“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.”
Rachel Higham, Managing Director of IT - BT

Programmes Unblocked:

Business Strategies Validated:

Programme ROI:

Working across different corporate functions.

In each of our engagements in Corporate Functions, one of our consultants worked with a BT architect to not only deliver the required 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.

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.

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.

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.

Ensuring analysis was kept tight.

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:

Business Architecture Models: Business Motivation Models, Business Models and Value Streams (others as required), Gap analysis, demand analysis, target state assessments
Enterprise Architecture Outputs: Target Architecture and Technology Roadmaps
Solution Architecture Outputs: High-Level Designs, Solution Options

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

We would construct quick prototypes (re-using material if possible) of a capability model and outputs
We created a buzz about Capability Modelling by meeting key stakeholders and showing them the prototype
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

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:

BT architects learned how to package the work and sell it to the business
We introduced the standard approach to Business Capability Planning and the BT architects helped us tailor our approach to the intricacies of their environment
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

Extra wins for BT:

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

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.
Created champions in business areas that would welcome new approaches to transformation planning.
Helped the technology and architecture leadership design a modern enterprise architecture practice to support the future journey of BT.