Situation
Our client, a leading provider of credit cards and loans, had a technology and change department which was experiencing challenges in providing management information (MI) to the CIO and his team to help them understand the health and performance of the organisation. This was primarily down to a lack of governance and was resulting in inconsistent and incomplete MI. The CIO would regularly not have the requisite information required for executive-level meetings and have to chase the team for key MI.
MI reporting was very ad-hoc and inconsistent in quality. In some cases, there was a complete absence of MI provided to the CIO. For example, there were suppliers providing services to the business, but no knowledge on how they were performing, or how effective they were.
Approach
Valcon was brought in due to its deep experience in analytics. Valcon started the collaboration with a discovery exercise to get a clear understanding of the issues and inform a proposal for a ‘virtual office’ for the CIO to solve these MI issues.
Valcon took a top-down approach to scope out the virtual office for the CIO (OfCIO). Valcon wanted to create a template for this virtual office that could be re-used and adapted across the group. Valcon ran workshops with different functions within technology and change – such as the head of change and the PMO – to better understand the requirements of the OfCIO and how it would operate.
Identifying what had been wrong in the MI was critical so the right governance could be put in place. Valcon also educated the MI providers on the importance of consistent and timely MI.
Valcon provided a breakdown of requirements for the virtual OfCIO against each functional area. Valcon also defined the roles, responsibilities and outputs of the OfCIO, as well as ideas to ensure the virtual office became more mature over time. Valcon also developed a CIO monthly metrics pack, with dashboard views of the health and performance of the technology and change division.
Results
Better decision making: the OfCIO is now able to provide up to date, incisive MI to the CIO and leadership team resulting in better decision making and informed choices.
Improved tech leadership: the Valcon solution resulted in a control for efficient & effective IT management services for technology and change leadership.
Up to date information: a MS Teams-based repository of information regularly refreshes with the latest MI, ensures the CIO and senior leadership team are well armed for meetings.
Ongoing improvement: the IT leadership is being supported by a virtual control function that is reviewed on an ongoing basis and is maturing all the time.
