Birmingham?s transformation programme -?CHAMPS2 is a proven, vision led, benefit driven business change methodology supporting holistic change across processes, organisation structure and technology. The method was developed in 2006 by Birmingham City Council in conjunction with its partners and has supported the delivery of the most comprehensive IT-enabled transformational change programme in the UK public sector.
Large IT-enabled transformational change projects are notoriously risky ? according to figures from the Boston Consulting Group, on average 71% of major change programmes fail to deliver the benefits on which they were originally based. CHAMPS2 was designed to manage out that risk, and it has succeeded. Birmingham?s business transformation programme (with ?683m of investment probably the largest IT-enabled change programme ever undertaken in local government), is on track to deliver over 95% of the intended benefits.
IT-enabled change projects fail because they focus on:
- implementing the technology, not the comprehensive change that is required; and
- managing inputs and milestones and ignore the need to manage outcomes.
CHAMPS2 was designed to overcome these limitations ? it is both systemic and systematic. Systemic means that it takes an holistic approach to service redesign, encompassing all components of the future service model ? people and process as well as technology. Systematic means that it insists on clear definition of outcomes and then follows a defined path to the realisation of those outcomes.
Specific local challenges
The main challenge that Birmingham City Council faced in delivering an IT-enabled change programme was not specific to Birmingham, it was far more general. IT projects in the public sector so often fail to deliver the expected benefits that failure is now the expectation. And despite numerous attempts to investigate and propose remedies (the parliamentary Public Accounts Committee first looked at this in 1983 and has carried out well over twenty subsequent investigations), failures continue to occur.
That was core challenge facing the City Council. Significant change was required to improve a number of under-performing services. In addition, whilst the Council was prepared to make initial investment in improving those services, overall the change programme was required to realise substantial savings. It therefore needed a way to ensure that the improvements and the savings flowed from the investment.
A secondary challenge was that a change programme of the scale envisaged would inevitably need to be broken down into subsidiary projects. A single approach to business transformation was required that would provide consistency across the Council and its partners. Adopting the common approach across the partnership was designed to establish a common language, reduce duplication of effort, provide best practice tools and templates and minimise risks and reduce cost. The common approach provided programme teams with a best practice and benefits-driven method, tools and templates, complemented by a quality management framework.
To address these challenges, working with Service Birmingham, a joint venture established through a strategic partnership with Capita, the Council developed CHAMPS2. And it has succeeded in its ambitions. The result is that in Birmingham IT-enabled change projects do not fail.
Key achievements
CHAMPS2 has supported the delivery of a major IT-enabled change programme, the largest such programme ever delivered in the UK public sector. It set out to:
- To achieve a step-change in the quality of services, placing BCC in the top decile compared with other UK local authorities, with an emphasis on significantly increasing customer satisfaction
- To deliver a 15% productivity improvement
- To increase employees? job satisfaction, again placing BCC in the top decile of UK local authorities.
At the mid stage of Birmingham?s ten year transformation, by April 2011 the change programme has realised major improvements for taxpayers, for customers, for managers and for employees.
Benefits for taxpayers
- Recurring annual savings have now reached ?100m and the total saved to date is ?250m.
- By streamlining processes and using the latest mobile technology, rent arrears reduced by ?5 million;
- Contribution based incremental progression has been implemented, realising a 50% saving in the cost of increments.
- Off contract spend reduced to less than 1%.
Benefits for customers
- Streamlined customer services with first time resolution through channel of choice.
- Real-time information for customers on the progress of their requests.
- Customer insight capability introduced to develop a deep understanding of customers? needs and preferences.
- Introduced a choice based lettings service which puts customers in control when they are looking for a new home.
- More than 30% of eligible adults had an individual budget by end of March 2011.
- Better for business customers too ? 95% of invoices paid on time (compared with less than 70% previously).
Benefits for managers
- Clear objective and target setting for individuals which allows the Council to maximise and reward contributions.
- A consistent performance management framework with timely, accurate, and accessible management information.
Benefits for employees
- A self-service HR system cutting out layers of unnecessary administrative process.
- Refurbished, fit-for-purpose offices supporting agile working with 50% increase in occupancy.
- All financial transactions available on-line and consistent across the Council.
In many ways the most significant achievement, however, is the development of CHAMPS2, which has enabled the realisation of all the other achievements.
By using the CHAMPS2 eight phase framework, organisations can create the vision but, critically, also ensure the programme defines and refines benefits at every stage. The vision is supported by defined outcomes; with each outcome linked to key, demonstrable benefits. The framework prompts the organisation both to define the required outcomes, and the measures that will be used to demonstrate whether or not outcomes and benefits are achieved.
Taking this approach ensures CHAMPS2 can support an organisation in managing risk and in sustaining its focus on realising benefits throughout the programme lifecycle. The model is split into 8 phases. The first phases take the organisation through the development of the business case, strategic, outline and full. This provides an organisation with a comprehensive business case, supported by detailed outcomes, plus the costs and benefits of the new approach.
In the middle phases of the CHAMPS2 programme, the solution is designed, developed and tested before it is fully implemented. Throughout these phases, the outcomes and benefits models are continually refined and benefit ownership is allocated to ensure specific individuals are tasked with the responsibility for achieving these benefits.
The last two phases of CHAMPS2, arguably the most crucial ones, focus heavily on realising these benefits. Monitoring and alerting is used to raise awareness of any problems in achieving benefits delivery, allowing the organisation to undertake rapid review and reallocation of resources or skills as required ensuring the benefits realisation gets back on track.
CHAMPS2 is both comprehensive (there are over 500 potential activities, supplemented with templates, guidance, and completed examples) and flexible (which of the activities you deploy depends on individual circumstances).
The full CHAMPS2 methodology has been placed in the public domain (www.champs2.info) and is available free of charge. Training with formal qualification is available, accredited by APMG International
http://www.apmg-international.com/APMG-UK/CHAMPS2/CHAMPS2home.asp
Supporting Evidence
In addition to the evidence of success presented on the previous section, the business change projects supported by CHAMPS2 have garnered numerous awards:
- Innovation and Progress Customer Service Award in the Guardian Public Service Awards
- e-government national awards 2010; e-government excellence: Innovation in strategy at a local level.
- HR Efficiency & Business Impact Award ? Public Sector People Management Association
- ACCA Award for Talent Retention ? Chartered Management Institute
- The Personnel Today Awards ? Award for Excellence in Public Sector HR
- British Council for Offices Regional Award Winners ? Fit-out of workplace (Lifford House)
- West Midlands Safeguarding Awards 2010 ? Focus on Lessons Learned Award
- Municipal Journal Awards Highly Commended 2011 -?workforce transformation achievement of the year?
- BREEAM (environmental assessment method) rating ?excellent? (10 Woodcock Street)
There is worldwide interest in CHAMPS2. Over 1,600 people from over 40 countries and all sectors have registered their user membership on the CHAMPS2 website, which is increasing at an average rate of 40 new members per month.
Secret of Success
There were three key secrets to the success engendered by the creation of CHAMPS2:
- The recognition that IT-enabled transformational projects fail not because of the IT, but because their focus is on the technology and the inputs. CHAMPS2 focuses on outcomes and how people, process and technology need to be shaped to deliver those outcomes.
- Working with partners to draw on their wide experience of change elsewhere in both the public and private sectors to shape the development of CHAMPS2. Central to this were the partners involved in Service Birmingham, in particular Capita and HCL-Axon.
- Realising that transformational change was not somehow a magical process, or one that required a charismatic leader; it could be turned into a systematic process that can be applied consistently and which will deliver the required outcomes.
The CHAMPS2 method provides answers to the questions posed by change programmes which make a real and lasting difference.
- How do we radically rethink our processes, organisation and technology?
- What is the potential scope for transformation?
- What are the real benefits for our customers and stakeholders?
- What happens if the change programme goes off course?
- How do we ensure that we deliver real results?
- What can be done to make sure the solution is implemented consistently and efficiently?
Value for Money
The Council has invested ?683m in its business transformation programme, with the spend profiled over a ten-year period. Financial years 2010/11 and 2011/12 represented a critical period on that decade-long journey, as it when that the annual savings delivered from transformation exceeded the annualised costs. As at 2011/12, the business transformation programme is making a net contribution of ?44m to the Council?s revenue budget, which will rise to ?96m by 2014/15. To put this in context, to gain this ?44m through local taxation would have required Council Tax to increase by over 14%.
CHAMPS2?s contribution to this cannot be overstated. CHAMPS2 has provided the golden thread that has linked the definition of outcomes at the start of each transformation project to their final realisation. Benefits definition and tracking is the core of CHAMPS2; through using it the Council can monitor the realisation of each individual benefit and combine these into a comprehensive picture of the progress that has been made.
Summary
In the last year Birmingham?s major IT-enabled change programme started in 2006 has made good on its promise to greatly improve services and to realise very significant efficiency gains. In the last year, recurring annual savings have reached ?100m and the total saved to date is ?250m. Substantial service improvements have been achieved in both the back and the front office, including enabling customers to join up their interactions with the Council through creating a citizen account.
Central to this success story has been the creation CHAMPS2, an approach to IT-enabled change that is both systematic and systemic. CHAMPS2 brings the accumulated knowledge about transformational change together in one package and has been placed the public domain for others to freely access the method on-line www.champs2.info
CHAMPS2 supports you on a logical change journey ? scoping; identifying and quantifying benefits; designing, building and implementing new ways of working; and realising the identified benefits. It is both comprehensive and flexible. Most importantly, it is proven in practice through Birmingham?s successful business transformation programme.
In essence, CHAMPS2 is about enabling innovation. That means not only having great ideas but providing the tools and techniques to turn them into reality. It takes the rhetoric of ?better for less? and puts into practice.
gabrielle union mark wahlberg merle haggard ladainian tomlinson apple announcement yu darvish pipa
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.