CASE STUDY: Efficiency project recovery

An IT system brought into a central government department was supposed to have delivered efficiency benefits that could be translated into performance improvement and budget savings. The trouble was…it hadn’t done so.

The IT system was introduced to automate some of the processes carried out by the department to collect and analyse data, for inclusion in a regular report. The idea was to streamline the work, reduce delays in issuing the reports and reduce the headcount by two people. In practice, the system seemed to require more time and effort and none of the benefits were being realised.

An INPACT assessment found that the department was working in a mix of Pragmatic/Anarchic and Structuralist management cultures. Managers were largely focused on meeting the plethora of targets by which the department’s performance was measured and had developed their own, fairly efficient ways of working to achieve these targets. Their teams were not sharing information efficiently and gave little priority to getting the report out on time if that conflicted with more urgent work.

Process capability was mostly a mix of level 1 (ad hoc process) and level 2 (defined process) with some cross-dept systems, such as finance, at level 3 (repeatable processes). There was little visibility of end-to-end processes and where new systems like the IT system were introduced (with little consultation), they impacted piecemeal on the workload of individual members of staff.

The assessment identified that there had been no consultation when the IT system was introduced, so the level of local buy-in was nil. The system was not very easy to use, training had been inadequate and much of the work was still being done manually. Resistance was therefore high – and heightened further by the silo working and low levels of trust in the dept. No formal benefits realisation plan had been put in place and local managers had not accepted accountability for realising the headcount savings.

A recovery plan was developed to remedy these failings, which succeeded in realising the planned benefits. More importantly it helped the dept to recognise the underlying problems and to put in place strategies to build up their organisational capability.

UK public sector ICT spending currently stands at £16.8bn and is set to grow to £20.2bn by 2011/12. Research suggests that less than a third of this will succeed in producing the desired performance improvements and cost savings.

If you are facing this situation, you might be interested to find out how INPACT can help you focus on the cultural and process capability foundations needed to enable successful implementation of change projects in your organisation.

Take a look at our INPACT Project Readiness Assessment demonstrator and then contact us.