PROJECT KILL OR CURE?

Do you relate to any of the symptoms described below?

• Is your service delivery or technology project burning cash?
• Is your service delivery or technology project not yielding the benefits originally expected?
• Are you under budgetary pressure to cut costs, yet need to improve quality and efficiency?
• Has your relationship deteriorated with a key service or technology provider and you are challenged with turning it around?
• Are you faced with slipping project implementation timelines and cost overrun, and don’t know who to turn to for confidential help?
• Do you need expert help in getting a service delivery or technology contract quickly back onto track?
• Or are you fed-up with trying to make an agreement work and simply want to exit expeditiously, orderly and cost effectively?

BPG have the expertise and methodology necessary for quickly turning around under-performing contracts. We have proven strategies that quickly put underperforming projects back on track, deliver the expected benefits and provide better value for money. On the rare occasions when project turnaround is not viable, we assist rapid contract exit whilst minimising ongoing project costs and liability.

For more information about BPG and our unique kill or cure service please call us on 0845 345 0130 or send an email to killorcure@bestpracticegroup.com

Some Client Feedback:

Mr Phil Colledge, Head of Finance,

“The most important things BPG gave us were expertise and perspective. We had been making little progress with a very overdue project, but [BPG] helped clarify our thinking. It gave us the confidence to step up our actions and enabled us to bring the contract to a satisfactory conclusion. I’d recommend bringing BPG in to evaluate difficult projects as early as you can.”

Mark Rayner, CEO

“Over the years Best Practice Group consultants have been popular speakers at our CIO forums and so when we came up against issues with one of our IT suppliers, we naturally turned to BPG for advice. They reviewed our situation and presented us with a clear, comprehensive overview, mapped out a step-by-step course of action that we could not have done ourselves as it required both contractual expertise and legal experience.

The end results were excellent and have delivered up considerable financial savings.”

Ms Jayne Bacon, e-Learning Manager

“When I first moved to the Colchester Institute, I was put in charge of a set of contracts I didn’t feel were delivering. In a single, one day workshop, BPG fixed the problem. They opened up a lot of possibilities to make older contracts deliver. BPG now helps with every tender, quote and legal issue that comes across my desk. They’re invaluable whether or not you have in-house procurement-contract experts. When I first started working with BPG, I was well out of my comfort zone with contracts. But now my organisation and I are very confident negotiators.”

Ms Catherine Leddy, Director of Corporate Resources

“We have had excellent advice and practical assistance from BPG in relation to a complex and substantial IT implementation which was not progressing well. The assistance we received was timely, based upon in depth knowledge and experience, and has been absolutely invaluable. Following this BPG are currently project managing a major new implementation which is progressing well and demonstrates their top quality project management skills. I would recommend them as excellent practitioners in their field.”

Ms Mary Fairman, Assistant Solicitor

“Would I recommend other Councils use BPG? Yes, and I’m not just saying that. At the end of a single workshop we had learned so much about identifying our business objectives, detailing our requirements, developing and constructing ICT contracts, and the necessity of overlapping contract and project  management. Naturally, we did the next contract very differently. It’s so easy to get yourself into a difficult situation. But BPG can help with focus, strategy, and determining which of the alternate actions available to you is best. In the case of our consortium, BPG was invaluable not only strategically, but also in helping with the practical side when we needed to finalise a difficult project.”

Mr Derek Walker, Assistant Head of ICT

“I’m more than ready to recommend Best Practice Group PLC. Any organisation will have contract lawyers but sometimes you need advice from someone with specialist knowledge of ICT contracts. In our case, we have a mentoring agreement with BPG that lets us call them whenever we need a more in-depth knowledge of a specific contract issue, but also means we manage the majority of the process ourselves. If you’re going to use BPG, it’s best to involve them early in the process - the cause of most problems will be there, even if the problems themselves don’t surface until later.”

Dawn Tumbridge, Interim IT Change Manager

“We were not receiving the quality of service that Westminster City Council expected from our ICT provider and needed to establish an improvement plan to ensure the contract obligations were being met. We commissioned BPG to work with us to ensure the supplier was clear about what was expected, that the contract was applied properly and to advise on alternative options should the quality not reach the standard we expected. They helped us understand what was needed to turn the service around and what our other options were should the improvement plan be unsuccessful.”

Tony Glew, AXC Consultancy and former interim CIO

“When the council started to review its provider.s 1500 page service contract we discovered that numerous uncontrolled changes and additions had been made over the years, some of which had been implemented and some which hadn.t. The problem was that because no single person had oversight of the relationship, the service deliverables were never properly monitored. In order to understand where we stood, we brought in BPG to analyse the contract from the standpoint of governance, service quality, financial transparency and risk exposure.

Having helped us to understand the contract and the issues that needed to be addressed, BPG then undertook direct talks with the supplier, negotiating a 120 day period in which they had to prove their ability to fulfill the council.s expectations. In clarifying the provider.s contractual obligations and by instituting a firm deadline for delivery, BPG has put council in a position of strength to decide whether or not to stay with the incumbent or to seek a new provider.”

Mr Kevin Nacey, Head of Finance

“Even when you think you have a good relationship with your systems supplier, are you sure you’re getting the best deal you could get? Even when you’ve been with the same systems supplier for a number of years, can you demonstrate to others that you are getting value for money? We all encounter problems in any major ICT project but do you know whether these really are “just teething problems”  or “only to be expected” or should you be tolerating any of the problems you experience? You owe it to yourself, and of course to your employers, to be the best client you can be and so I engaged BPG to see if they could improve our existing contract management approach. BPG provided excellent advice and pointed out where we were deficient in documentation and experience and explained the vendor’s obligations to SCC based on what the vendor had proposed to us. As soon as we put BPG’s assistance into practice, our vendor immediately sat up and took notice and took SCC as a client more seriously. The result was that our problems began to be resolved and both sides understood their respective position so much better. A good relationship became a very good one and BPG’s charges for their advice were recovered fourfold in savings from additional costs that we may have paid out to our vendor. We now feel confident that we can demonstrate to our stakeholders that we are following best practice and getting value for money.”

Mr Gary Wallace, Financial Director Tullis Russell Paper Makers

“Having been burned once with an expensive system that never lived up to expectations, Tullis decided to bring in a procurement, contract and business transformation specialist to project manage its new mill-wide production, sales and warehousing system implementation. This involved mapping every step of the operation from business objectives to system specifications, sourcing the supplier, negotiating contracts, software testing and all stages to go-live. The end result was a solution that delivers what the company wanted, on time and on budget with no scope creep.. Not only was the new system installed at half the cost of the previous application, it caused no interruptions to Tullis high-volume production schedule, and therefore no revenue loss.”

Alastair Wright, HBOS  (ex-Scottish and Newcastle).

“Scottish and Newcastle used BPG's healthcheck workshop to review a multi-million pound programme we felt was in danger of going awry. That workshop identified a number of classic procurement pitfalls that can affect anyone, regardless of the size or experience of both parties. The workshop really helped us identify and prevent future problems.”