Sectors_

The Challenge:

As one of the busiest providers of 999 emergency services in the world, our client – and the health and safety of the general public they serve - was heavily reliant on their voice and telephony communications infrastructure. This mission-criticality meant that ongoing maintenance and upgrades were often high-risk implementations, requiring changes to be made in real-time, yet without jeopardising system availability (emergency call taking!).

As part of the CIO’s continual improvement programme, SPG was commissioned to review and assure the approach, plan and timescales of a major telecommunications platform upgrade. The project had been in development for a number of years, with previous upgrade attempts unsuccessful due to the complexity of the environment.

The Solution:

SPG began the engagement by executing our Lightning Insights methodology, examining the major artefacts, dependencies and datasets on which success was predicated. This speed-to-value activity identified and assessed the completeness of project documentation, delivery feasibility, technical and operational preparedness, and overall chance of success (if the incumbent plan had been followed). From here, we made optimal recommendations, established, and ultimately delivered the plan of action, delivery operating model and implementation over a 12-month period.

The Difference:

SPG is vendor agnostic, and our neutrality allowed us to take an independent view of all delivery variables on behalf of our client. That said, we recognised that success would only be possible with the firm commitment and buy-in from all parties – client and suppliers alike – given the high level of complexity and sheer number of dependencies across the landscape. Key to the success of the delivery was that everyone felt part of the same team under the banner of “right role, irrespective of company badge”.

The Change:

The high degree of trust placed in SPG by the client team – gained through demonstrable and incremental wins – allowed our team to perform at maximum capability. By marrying first-rate programme delivery, unparalleled vendor management and industry recognised technology expertise, SPG delivered the change successfully.

The Challenge

An essential component in the delivery of first-class Customer Service is effective communication, and one of the world’s leading Business Process Outsources faced a major business-impacting challenge when accepting telephone calls on behalf of their clients. Delays in speech audio, call quality issues and drop-outs were resulting in not only missed KPIs, but also driving negative online feedback, as frustrated customers took to social media to complain about their experience.

Our client enlisted SPG to perform a high-impact, high-speed analysis of their technology estate in an attempt to identify and isolate the root cause of the quality and performance issues, and to recommend a get-well programme of work that would improve the services delivered by their many thousands of employees.

The Solution:

SPG’s “CloudOps” service brings together industry-leading reliability engineering tools and techniques with best of breed root-cause analysis, underpinned by highly effective technical Project Management. With many years of experience in identifying and remediating application, network and cloud performance issues, the SPG team performed non-invasive analysis of the technology estate in just 4 weeks. We quickly determined where the performance anomalies were materialising. Furthermore, our analysis identified not only a wider range of quick-win improvements, but also a number of bone-fide cost reduction opportunities relating to infrastructure consumption and technology operating model efficiency.

The Difference:

Our 100% success rate. SPG’s CloudOps team are experts in performance analysis, management and reliability engineering. This expertise has been gained in a number of different sectors and with a wide variety of technologies, managing and optimising the estate on behalf of our clients. Only by knowing where to look, understanding the patterns of behaviour and isolating the root cause analysis can remediation begin and the CloudOps team have been 100% successful to date in identifying root cause.

The Change:

By presenting empirical evidence of the root-cause, backed by a robust plan of improvement recommendations, our client trusted SPG to help make the changes to improve customer service. In setting out the steps to success and monitoring outcomes at each stage in the process, we remediated performance issues, reduced cost and provided an improved experience for both internal users and external customers.

The Challenge:

SPG worked with a large Central Government client to assist in the procurement of an integrated Telephony, Customer Relationship Management, Knowledge Base and Workforce Management Solution. The existing in-house platform was unable to scale to meet the growing demands of the business, and it was also becoming increasingly important to obtain a consolidated view across many disparate data sources. With limited inherent capability and expertise within the department, our client asked for help to define the specification of what a technology-enabled contact platform should look like, prior to market engagement and a subsequent procurement process. 
 
The Solution:
 
Members of the SPG team assisted in the management and definition, procurement, and mobilisation of the £5m digital transformation programme. We helped our client to realise their multi-channel vision by determining the approach to market segmentation, key metrics, staff optimisation, call deflection and cost reduction. By assimilating each of the strategic components, SPG defined a set of joined-up requirements on which to base the procurement of a communications solution. A solution which would provide the best experience for both external customers and, just as importantly, the internal operational teams. Having defined the requirements, we assisted in the assessment and evaluation of each of the proposed solutions, ensuring deliverability, technical competence and benefits realisation. 
 
The Difference:

Probably best summed-up by a quote from our client who stated that: “This has been a colossal effort and is a huge milestone. I am grateful to everyone who has worked so very hard to get to this point - thank you all for everything you have done.” 
 
The Change:

Thought leadership. Sometimes it’s hard to know what you don’t know without having been through the experience previously. Drawing on our extensive sector, market, vendor and technology knowledge allowed SPG to define the most advantageous path for our client. Without this, the risk of selecting a sub-standard solution with low value for money would increase significantly.

The Challenge:

A Financial Services client had undertaken a digital transformation, moving a number of line-of-business applications to cloud. Having been in service for a number of years, the applications themselves resided on legacy infrastructure and had evolved over the years from traditional client-server mainframe applications, towards a self-service mobile and web app stack.  
 
One particular critical application had been built as one large monolith, making dev/test and releases cumbersome, and constraining the number of production changes that could be made in any release cycle. Furthermore, clear lines of demarcation between the infrastructure and application support and development teams made change hard to manage, with multiple service lines required at varying points of the release journey. 
 
The Solution:
 
SPG evaluated the architecture of the existing platform, documenting the as-is setup to identify any in-life changes that had been made in “Business As Usual” operation. Once clearly understood, we assessed the major cloud platforms to determine feasibility prior to recommending the most appropriate vendor and services to migrate to. Of key consideration was cost – a move to cloud would be deemed unfeasible if the costs to do so exceeded the as-is run expenditure. To mitigate, we produced a Total Cost of Ownership estimate in comparison to the current on-prem costs for inclusion in the business case. 
 
The Difference:

Speed and independence were the big differentiators in SPG being awarded the project. We used our Lightning Insight methodology to produce feedback and findings quickly and iteratively, reducing the lead-time to value. Being vendor independent was also a plus – like many organisations, there were multiple cloud platforms in-play, with some preferred more than others depending on function/department. It was essential for the client to obtain an unbiased view of the best-fit platform on which to migrate and the costs associated with doing so, something that was entrusted upon SPG to deliver. 
 
The Change:

A transformative approach to legacy technology rather than “lift and shift”. A clear and unambiguous forward plan despite prior uncertainty. Selection of a cloud technology vendor with assured confidence of suitability and cost.

The Challenge:
 
A leading Financial Services organisation had unfortunately experienced major delivery challenges while undertaking a multi-million digital transformation programme. As with any large, complex technology delivery, many moving parts made it difficult to pinpoint the exact reasons for failure. Given the size and scale of the programme, the ongoing costs were significant and hence it was essential to quickly find a solution.  
 
The Solution:

SPG provided technical architecture services covering a variety of disciplines. One of our most prominent activities was the assessment of the data architecture underpinning the organisation’s Digital Transformation Programme. In support, SPG was instrumental in the creation of a data architecture function responsible for assessing the suitability of supplier and in-house solution proposals. SPG redesigned the data architecture governance procedures to drive agility, yet with adherence to agreed technology and corporate standards. The Technology Operating Model was redesigned to include the data function that had previously resided elsewhere within the organisation.  
 
The Difference:

Tenacity in the face of complexity. Bringing together real-time business operations, financial transactions, people and technology under one Digital Transformation programme is a typical – yet challenging – approach. It’s easy to be blinded by many competing hypotheses of root-case for failure, with multiple sources of (sometimes spurious) data. By remaining steadfast in approach, relying only on empirical evidence and producing hard and fast facts to ratify theory, the SPG technical architecture team made a high-value contribution to the programme. 
 
The Change:

A reset of the Programme Architecture function, driving consistent and repeatable analysis. A newly-defined data architecture, re-using as much of the previous investment as possible. The re-definition of the architecture roadmap to include new suppliers, new technologies and new ways of working.