Executive summary
As part of a wider improvement programme, the client outsourced IT operations and management to a new set of suppliers while introducing new internal Business CIO roles. Frontwalker was engaged to help define how the new multi-vendor delivery model, and the collaboration between the client and its suppliers, should function in practice.
The challenge
1. Business challenge
The client needed to define how the new multi-partner IT delivery model would work, clarify collaboration between the client and its suppliers, establish the evolving role of Business CIOs, and align existing operations and management terminology with the new service model.
Key business challenges included:
- The client needed to define how a new multi-partner IT delivery model would work, replacing more centralised prior arrangements.
- Collaboration needed to be clarified not only between the client and each partner, but between partners themselves where required.
- New internal Business CIO (BCIO) roles needed to understand their evolving role from technical manager to business-driven “orderer”.
- The client's existing operations and management terminology needed to be reconciled with the supplier's ITIL3-based service model.
2. Technical challenge
The project required clear service interfaces, alignment between existing operational terminology and the ITIL3-based service model, and defined ownership for processes spanning multiple Business CIO system areas.
Key technical challenges included:
- Service interfaces between the client and its partners, and between different partners, needed to be defined so that ITIL support processes would function optimally.
- The supplier's IT Service Model already had a mature ITIL3 approach, requiring the client's terminology and expectations to be translated rather than a new interface model designed from scratch.
- Clear ownership needed to be defined for business processes that crossed multiple BCIO system areas.
What we did
1) Frontwalker’s approach and solution
Frontwalker worked with the client and its suppliers to define the multi-vendor delivery model, align the client’s existing operations and support terminology with the ITIL3-based service model, and clarify responsibilities and organisational changes needed to support the new operating structure.
2) Delivered solution
- A clarified multi-vendor delivery model defining how the client's Corporate IT, BCIOs and suppliers would collaborate going forward.
- The client's legacy operations and support terminology translated into the ITIL3-aligned concepts used in the new model.
- Identified organisational actions needed to support the transition from a technical-manager role to a business-driven orderer role.
3) Engineering & delivery
- Working sessions with the client's supplier-contract owners to understand each party's commitments and responsibilities.
- Interviews with the client's Corporate IT staff, all six BCIOs and other stakeholders to surface needs, expectations and concerns.
- A dedicated interview with the client's CIO to capture guiding direction for the work.
- On-site working sessions with the supplier's India-based team in Stockholm, plus workshops with Corporate IT and BCIOs to build the target working model.
- Ongoing participation in the programme's weekly meetings with continuous progress reporting.
4) Collaboration model
- Direct engagement across the client's Corporate IT team, all six Business CIOs, and the supplier's Stockholm-based delivery team.
- Facilitated alignment between the client's service expectations and the supplier's existing, ITIL3-based standard operating model.
- Continuous reporting into the programme's governance structure throughout the engagement.
Business impact / results
Outcomes achieved
- The client's Corporate IT and BCIO teams gained a clear picture of what the supplier would deliver and how their new orderer role should be shaped.
- The client's legacy support concepts were fully transformed into the new ITIL3-aligned vocabulary used going forward.
- Clarity was achieved on the internal organisational changes needed to successfully shift from technical manager to business-driven orderer.
- Clear ownership was established for business processes crossing multiple BCIO system areas.
