Webinar: Better Benefit Articulation in Procurement Technology Projects

Transcript

Kyoda toco silverio toco ingoa Tenako to Tenako to Tenako to Katoa. A very warm welcome to all of our guests and speakers based out of New Zealand and to all of our guests who are not in New Zealand and predominantly based out of Australia. An incredibly warm welcome to all of you and I would like to begin today by acknowledging the traditional custodians of the land from which you meet with us today and pay all of my respects to their eldest past and present, as well as extending that respect to any Aboriginal and Torry Strait Islander peoples here today as well.

Really, really amazing to have so many attendees from across Australia and New Zealand and I believe Further afar will be watching this a little bit later on too. So welcome today’s webinars on better benefit articulation in procurement technology projects. Over the next hour we’re going to try and unpack what an ILM actually means, an investment logic mapping. I’m not sure if anyone on the call today has come across that, but hopefully some key takeaways out of that.

During the course of today’s session, we’ll be discussing benefits mapping and realization process and the power that it can bring and actually helping you get your procurement technology projects across the line, but also any non procurement technology projects as well. So anything you take away today that you can share with any other of your colleagues who might sit outside of procurement who want to try and get those technology projects across the line as well?

Now just before I get started, just a little bit of housekeeping from us today, ask your questions, please. These are always much more enjoyable when we have questions asked from the audience. There’s a section here out of this particular software that we’re using to take all of your questions and we will try our best to answer all of them in the Q&A session at the end. This particular technology that we’re using today, I believe there are a few buttons that you can decide to click away to and and change the display.

If a particular box disappears, just click on the corresponding icon at the bottom of your screen and that should fix it all up. And finally, if you do miss anything, you’ll be able to catch up later. We will be sharing with all those who have registered to attend today’s session a link to an on demand copy of today’s webinar. So without further ado, I would love to introduce my 3 guests today that are going to help facilitate the conversation.

First and foremost, Kyoto Mandy, Mandy Lacey, PhD specialist around transformation, change and benefits realization. Lovely to have you here, Mandy, thanks for inviting me, It’s great to be here. Wonderful. Down South out of Dunedin. Welcome, Serge. Serge Coleman, who’s the procurements and contracts manager at Dunedin City Council.

Welcome, Serge Kyota. Thank you. So very nice to be here. And and last but not least, at Mr. Overwater, Welcome, Mike. At Business Improvement lead at Hamilton City Council. Welcome, Mike Kyota. Welcome, everyone. Yeah, thanks for the invite. Thank you. Our pleasure. Welcome. So I guess we begin with a little bit of a, an overview of the problem. And I imagine many of you, if not all of you here are are are here today because the idea that technology projects in general now more than ever are incredibly hard to get approved, incredibly hard to get over the line.

In particular as you would have heard in potentially other industry webinars and sessions that you’ve attended in particular procurement technology projects. What’s really interesting is on one hand it’s incredibly hard to get these across the line. But on the other hand, when you look at any of the big four’s research, they’re all telling us from research over the last few months that 72% of procurement leaders are pinpointing transformation and digital transformation as a paramount objective.

And not only has that come out of the research from the big four, but we’ve actually completed some research which I’ll talk to you a little bit at the end of this session. I’m very happy to share that with you, which is emphasize and further evidence that desire. So how do you get there? One of the critical things that we found and This is why today this webinar which is led by a software vendor called Port, is actually not about ports software.

It’s actually about trying to help all the organizations and stakeholders that are getting really, really frustrated at not being able to overcome these barriers and get those procurement technology projects across the align. One of the ways that we’ve helped a lot of organizations get there is through an ILM or an investment logic mapping and benefits realization. And today that’s kind of the the theme that we hope to share some ideas with you.

You may already have heard about some of them. You may have put some in practice, but we genuinely hope that you take some new bits and pieces of knowledge and information with you today that you will hopefully be able to share with all of your colleagues as well. So to kick us off, I might ask Mandy, are you happy to give us a bit of an overview of the concepts? What, what we’re actually talking about when we say those three really somewhat confusing statements of investment logic mapping, benefits mapping or even benefits realization, Absolutely. And I’m sure there are a lot of people on the webinar who are aware of investment logic mapping, I mean New Zealand and Australia in terms of Better Business case development, you know, quite sophisticated in lots of ways around the globe in terms of the processes of which an investment logic map is a good way to start.

Now what The key thing that I think about in terms of investment logic map is getting the the right people in the room, the key stakeholders, people, decision makers, leaders, sponsors, you know, potential benefits owners to actually define what the problem is or the problems are. And some people may call them opportunities of of this project, of this program. And it’s actually been every time I’ve been part of 1.

It’s constantly reiterates the importance of this process because it kind of starts out wide around all the problems and then it gets down to wordsmithing, you know, key statements that people agree on, the key stakeholders agree on. So you become you’re a facilitator of a group’s process and that has long reaching effects. So it actually underpins everything and so it’s okay if we solve these problems. But what are the benefits of solving the problems and what would be looking at the benefits in terms of my catch crowd with the benefit is can you measure the benefit, what would be the KPI for the for the benefit.

So it’s the other thing that in terms of it being long reaching is it’s constantly can be used in communications around the whole change management side of things as well. So that’s an investment logic maybe and we’ll look at some examples soon. You can link it to your investment objectives. If it’s for a program you know there’s lots of ways of tying it all together and from that you can then develop through in terms of doing your benefits map.

Now more bit of a disclaimer really. I mean I’m I’ve heard or picked up on sometimes the word benefits can create a bit of a glazed over phenomena. So people calling it, you know it could be your value proposition or it could be your impact analysis and all those things. But really it is around what you know, what’s the return on investment or from you know from this investment. So benefits the benefits map then delves deeper from the investment logic map and then you you’re picking out the KP I’s that you’ve as a group have decided you go, well actually how are we going to measure these things now we can use the SMART, you’ll all be I’m sure familiar with the SMART methodology.

It’s a really good one to apply around benefits. It’s also useful in terms of which ones. So they’re they’re measurable, are they being are they being used in other projects like typically around you know staff satisfaction or customer satisfaction can be measured by multiple projects. But it is a really fantastic process of and you know to take several stages and phases to actually get your measures that you can baseline.

So how will we know that this has made a difference. So what’s in terms of the current problem like what are the current metrics attached to their problem and and not every metric will have a baseline but most do. So that’s a really important too, so that you can track and trace it and a benefits map then sets you up for looking at benefits realization. So in terms of how you will embed this either within the project or in the organization or in the business unit that you’re part of is that happens after BAU.

Although I really like to talk about contemporary benefits practice where you start looking at benefits immediately like through your testing, through your, you know when you’re standing things up around what are people’s experiences about that you’re champions so that you can be starting to tell the story and testimonials around what the change and what the benefit and the return on investment of this is. But I can talk more about that a bit later.

Is that enough? So wearyo like I feel. I think that sets the scene really, really well in at least summarizing and providing a bit of an overview of those three different concepts which are actually very much intertwined with each other. I think what the most natural Segway is, at what point does someone actually get to the stage where they think okay, How do I start one or what is my current situation? And I think that might be something that Surge.

I might start with surge and maybe hand over to Mike afterwards. What stage were you, what what were some of the issues or challenges that you were experiencing before contemplating even kicking off a benefits mapping process? Sir, I might start with you. Yeah. So we were at the stage of procurement process, really the procurement planning and part of our procurement process. So we had had numerous audit reports I guess that indicated that we needed to invest in, in better conflict management capability within our environment.

And so when we started our planning process we we sort of knew I think what our what our problems were and what our challenges were. But we we didn’t really know in depth what those issues were that we were facing. And so as part of our procurement planning, we looked at various things and we decided that a Leanage, our procurement process was the way to go for us to source the, the contract management software that we were looking for.

And as part of the Leanage of procurement process, it’s really important to clearly articulate the problem that you’re trying to solve. And so benefits mapping exercise and ILM and logic investment logic mapping exercise can be really useful to do that and make sure that the problems that you defined are then actually translated into the users cases and that that you present at your Leanage of procurement process. So that was the biggest challenge for us.

What is really our problem that we’re trying to solve here? Really appreciate it. Thank you Sir. And just on that you you’ve reminded me of that lean agile procurement session that you that you ran. For those of you that have never heard of Lean Agile Procurement, we’ve done another great webinar. I’ll be sharing my contact details at the end of today’s session. But if you’re interested in learning a little bit more about what Leonard Child Procurement means for an end organization and an end set of stakeholders, just like search, connect with me at the end and I will.

I’ll happily share a link to that webinar which is publicly available too. Mike, a little bit more context for you at council. At what stage did you find yourself before deciding this was the path to go down? Yeah, well, I I came into council, I was doing some contract work here and then came on permanently June, I think 2022. And there’s a, there’s a a vast number of projects being delivered of all sizes, you know, multimillion to you know 10s to hundreds of thousands.

And one of the things that I think became obvious is that some of the projects the execution wasn’t happening is intended purely because they hadn’t thought through what problems they were solving first and going through the process of doing, doing all that thinking up front, going through the right procurement processes and getting, you know, putting in the right solution. For example, there was one project actually they got, they got stalled early because the general manager was wise enough to say, hey, we’re not going to rush out and buy this technology to solve this perceived problem because one, we haven’t defined clearly what that problem is.

And secondly and there’s different business units doing their, doing the processes around that around that problem differently. So until you get alignment there. So what happened then is they they realized that there wasn’t good thinking up front. We needed to do more around identifying you know what the problem is. What are we trying to solve. As you know, as Mandy and search was saying is you know, getting real good clarity on that because if you do all that properly and identify what successes, what you want to achieve, then the execution part becomes a lot easier.

There’s all there’s yeah, you solve quite a quite a few issues, budget issues and stakeholder issues and just getting the getting the delivery of the projects much smoother if you do all of that stuff up front. So that’s I think that catalyzed the requirement of having someone like having Mandy come on board and put a framework around. So yeah, so there was things and all sorts of there was no real consistent approach in getting projects delivered.

But going through that that way really has really started to help clarify. Thank you, Mike. That’s really helpful answers and I think we’ll shortly we’ll we’ll drill into potentially apart from getting the green light after one of these exercises to go and start well purchase, subscribe, implement that particular project. Apart from that benefit, it’ll be good to laser in a little bit with you in a few minutes around some of the other benefits that you guys have realized because I’m sure there are.

Before we jump into that though, I’m conscious by sheer coincidence a number of things. The four of us are based, all of us in our our Tierra, which is I think quite interesting. But the the the 2nd, the 2nd coincidence is that both Serge and Mike are working in the local council space. But Mandy, this isn’t something that just applies to local councils, right? Obviously, without disclosing any particular privacy details, company names, what are some of the other industries where you’ve had success in helping them with these kind of endeavors through running an ILM workshops?

Well, in New Zealand through the New Zealand Treasury, any major program or program business case is required to do an ILM, but it needs to be included. So it’s you know it’s quite familiar to a lot of people and I’m a gateway reviewer for Treasury. So we, you know it’s something and as I was saying in terms of the ILM having long reaching, it’s like the compass if you like or your your North Star you know or anything in terms of it giving you focus and direction.

But it does in terms of reviewing programs, large programs, it does help you as a reviewer too to go back and look at you know what the ILM is like, what are the problems that this program is wanting to solve. So it’s so across any industry I think that you know even in good business practice it would be a really useful thing to be doing before you you know think of your investment because as Mike pointed out in search that you know it’s also doing an ILM is also a mechanism for you know do we go ahead with this or not.

You know so it’s you know and and it’s again it’s something that stakeholders that leading and decision making on projects can decide together. So it’s it’s creating a process to have a conversation and to be able to look at all the different aspects, all the different dependencies. So you may not look at it just an isolation, it may be in terms of how it links across the organization to a whole lot of things. So it’s a, you know it’s a very, it’s a very effective process to be going through regardless of the outcome.

I I have, I have worked, yeah, I have worked with Mandy in the health sector and she’s helped me through some, some Ilms in in that area or in a previous life. Yes, that’s right. I mean it’s a tool. It’s a tool that that’s used across the industry. It’s absolutely. Yeah, thank you. And and I can think of more recently mining and also in the utility sector here in New Zealand, again more private sector, but lots of examples of where this has really been successful and really helped in particular procuring professionals to get that message across.

So not all, all good, thank you for sharing that guys. And as I said we’ll we’ll come back to benefits in a little while. But as you can see from this slide that we’re now sharing, we’re kind of getting getting our our sleeves rolled up. Mandy, can you help us interpret what we’re looking at at the moment? Sure. So this is one way. And when you look at and if you’re familiar with and I L M’s investment logic maps, you know there’s lots of different templates out there. So this is 1.

So it’s not saying it’s the best one, but it’s I it’s outlining a process. So it is around working with the group to identify the problem and that’s a lot of brainstorming and people putting up posters. It’s very always very good to do together as a group face to face, although I have done it on a mirror board with a group online, which you know, so it’s possible but it is around okay. So we’ve got problem themes that what’s the cause of the theme and what’s the effect.

So in terms of how they come up with a statement thinking about the you know what the benefits of solving those problems are or off or off. Some people call the problem an opportunity depending on what the project or the program is, but the response is okay, what would the intervention be And I get you know and that’s what leads us into the change, you know the business change, so the solution area and and are there assets, so you know that they’ve got physical assets there as you can see, but it may you know it may be a digital asset, it may be a centralized online system etcetera.

So it’s really it’s just showing the process of identify the problem. The same with the benefits the intervention would be. This is what the solution and so it’s you know it’s circular so it all links together waving my finger around in front of the camera. Sorry, thank you. And I’ve just, I’ve just realized with the power of magic that I think if I’m not mistaken I can I can do a little funny circles and and and point the point circle of impressive.

Anyway thank you thank you lots of tricks up my and Mandy I’m just conscious you mentioned a few minutes ago you mentioned smart was one of the terms that you mentioned. I see on this slide KPI’s having been through a couple of these with you. I know that a a lot of it boils down to measurements. Measurements are obviously really, really important because ultimately if I’m not mistaken it ends up being your guiding star what you keep coming back to as part of this.

Can you talk to us a little bit about the importance of metrics? And what I might do is just share a little one slide that you’ve shared with us that actually shows what I mean by metrics on the far left hand side. Let me, I just need to find you. Oh, that’s right. You’re on Google. Yeah. So this is a really good example. Some people again, it’s not, you know what, not wanting to have specific language or words.

Some people call them lead indicators, Some people call them measures. Regardless of what they’re called, it is around how will you know. So if we look at K PI1 continuous contract management maturity, you know how you’re going to know that it is improving. So let’s look. So on the right hand side you can see do we have a baseline in terms of what’s the current state. And then often, you know, I I always think never underestimate the business analysts work because you know, you get so there’s such rich data there usually from what the current stage is and what the current can help inform the current problems, but it also can inform some of the baseline work.

So yes, this is very thorough. Now what I wanted to point out was the asterisks here, you may be wondering what that’s all about. So they, you know, some softwares that people invest with. In fact I’d say pretty well all of them regardless of which one you choose will have automation, automation functionalities. So, you know, there’s a few key principles with benefits often less is more, you know, quality over quantity.

What data analytics can the software produce for you that you know doesn’t somebody else doesn’t have to do, will find because every time we have a measure that’s for me, I was raised the question of, well, who’s going to get that piece of information and who’s going to be monitoring that. So one of the things and we’ll perhaps get to it is around, you know, how do we embed benefits of practice within organizations or programs after things go live when project managers have gone off to do their next project.

So may have gone a bit off track, so Verio, but in terms of what this is, what this is demonstrating is this group spent a lot of time on looking at measures that would be really meaningful measures that could be automated. That you could have a dashboard that you could look at, you know you know every six months or whatever the the practice of the organization was going to be and it would start telling its story. And it also the other thing around the, you know it, it helps to find when is it going to happen.

So there we won’t get to today, but under every benefit needs to be a benefit profile which you know talks about The Who, how and when. And so this would be of a measure of one that doesn’t have an extra say measure 15 ability to report 100% compliance to the DFA. Well, who’s actually going to do that, you know. So I think you know as the group’s working through their benefits plan like and benefits map like we all love something on a page rather than a a big document and it’s you know thinking of the resources that are required and the meaningfulness.

Yeah. And that’s great. And we’ve found also too that it it does focus you on delivering the outcomes that you’ve that you’ve advocated for in the at the outset. So it’s it it you know it ensures accountability because the project was set there to provide a North star or direction. But who’s accountable and how do we know that we’re delivering unless we’ve got the measures to to see the behavior changes that are needed and and the changes that that your investment you know is is promising.

So thank you, Mike. Go on, please, please, you carry on. No, I wanted that because the other thing that factor that comes in and something that came out of the work with Hamilton City Council was a benefits practice where actually as a, you know, heuristic, a general rule of thumb, we’re going to, we’re only going to measure benefits for two years and we’re going to and we’re going to review them every six months.

So in terms of the software they were using, in terms of alerts popping up and who they would go to, and I thought it was a, you know, exceptional practice really because it’s, you know, it meant that every six months benefits had to be repaired. So it could be that you may drop that benefit because it’s actually not meaningful anymore. But hello, we’ve discovered this other this other this other data or this, other this testimonies or this things that we hadn’t thought of.

So we have emerging benefits. So we’re going to do that one instead. And it might be that actually financially we want to make it longer than two years because we want it to fit in to say the five year financial plan etcetera. So that what it does is that by having a system like that where we review them for every six months, it keeps it alive and meaningful and it’s and it needs to be someone who isn’t the project manager.

So there’s somebody you know within your department or your business unit that’s able to look at things after go live. Yeah, even though I don’t add to that still very early, I think you know why this is really helpful as well as often in technology implementation projects you you see a lot of scope Creek. And this will really help you through that implementation process. Ensuring that when people come and ask and wanting to have additional things added to the software or through the project that you can come back to the benefits that have been set in making sure that that those scope changes actually help or add to those benefits.

And if they don’t, you have something to say, actually not at this stage because these are the benefits that we’re trying to achieve and we need to stick to those for now and we’ll look at that at a later stage, for example. So I think that’s a really useful tool for that as well to ensure that that scope doesn’t happen. Yeah, that’s that’s a that’s a really good point and we’ve seen that here too.

It’s, it does keep you keep your focused and it and it makes decision making so much easier when you’ve got that because you know this is what we’re, this is the benefit, this is what we’re going to deliver. This is what we’re aiming for. Yes, that’s a really, really good idea. You know however we’re very, very focused and we need to you know align everything to deliver what you know on that. So yeah, that’s a super good point there.

One, thank you guys that was really powerful and it’s a couple of things have happened every one of the calls. I’ve already got a couple of questions in the box that I’m going to share with you in a moment cuz I think they are quite connected and topical for this section. To all the attendees, I know there are quite a few of you, but as I said, we will try and answer all questions at the end of today. Please don’t be shy.

If you have any questions, pop your question into the Q&A box and we will try and address that before the end of today’s session. Mandy, when I see this this particular output, I would say that from the three or four sessions that I’ve sat with you, this is one of the this is probably the big output that you get out of it. But this almost thanks starts like a a blank canvas first and foremost and and we’ll get into the process of getting there in in a moment.

But there are a couple of things that I don’t that that I think we can’t lose, lose track of is where did these metrics come from? These were not necessarily things that surge decided by himself or that Mike decided by himself. There are other people in the room and one of the questions that’s just come up, which we’ll talk about in a moment, is around resources, right. Great question, who what kind of resources do you need to?

But before we get there, I think one of the key aspects to delve a little bit deeper in is the executive buy in, the leadership buy in in this process. Because someone at that level needs to be in the room to help us complete this and to help us make sure that the metrics that we’re actually arriving at are directly correlated to outcomes that this leadership team is trying to achieve. Mike, how you found going through multiple times, I I believe you’ve run multiple ILM stations.

Who are the types of stakeholders seniority level, How far up would you encourage today’s attendees to go to really align the outputs of this exercise? Well, yeah, that’s a great question because it’s really around context and if you it depends on the on the scale of the of what you’re looking to, what you’re looking to do. If you’re looking at something that’s going to be organizational wide like an you know an HR replacement or payroll system or something like that, you need to go all the way to the top because it needs that exact buy in.

There might be smaller, you know, unit level, business unit level and systems that you want to put in and maybe you’re just going to the general manager or lower depending on how you’re structured. But but the higher up the better because you you really do need that executive direction. And and we always encourage too that there’s an executive leadership team discussion because every business unit or group or however you’re organized has got you know so many opportunities.

There’s there’s always more opportunities than you can try and satisfy. There’s never a shortage and there’s never a shortage of people that want to invest in you know making things better and because everyone’s there for the right intention so. So you need so you know so you might have dozens of Ilm’s going on across your organization at anyone time. At some point they’ve got to come together and someone’s got to say hey yeah we’ve got to we’ve got to move this so and that that does require executive line because you know it’s great looking at one ILM in isolation and say wow, that’s great.

We can deliver great things. You’ve got to think of it within the context of the organization and and how do we, you know how do we reach our organization nor goals best you know. And yeah so it’s it’s framing all that. So you do need the different lenses. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that’s really useful in particular with you and your role which is very much organization wide. If I understand correctly you, you need to pick the senior leader in the particular area of the transformation that you’re trying to lead, right.

Search exactly. In your case, which was a much narrower, narrower scope. You ran this ILM exercise as you said whilst you were running this procurement exercise to replace your contract management system. Who was the most senior stakeholder that you involved in this ILM that helped drive this forward as in what what level, What tier, What kind of, yeah, exact level. So whilst it’s a slightly narrow focus, it is a a tool that is DCC widely used obviously.

So we needed exact support and buy in. So one of the GM’s, the GM that I report to was part of the ILM process and it was also part of the, the actual lineage of procurement process to ensure that we had good visibility at an exact level and that the exact would get the benefits out of a contract management system implementation that they were looking for from a visibility perspective, from a financial monitoring perspective, from a reporting perspective.

So we were very fortunate I guess that whilst it’s a relatively minor piece of software, there’s a lot of attention on contract management within DCC. So our exact team was very interested in being part of it. And irrespective of what you’re trying to implement, I think Mike’s point is really valid. Having exact support for whatever ILM you’re running and for whatever program or project that you’re running is just key to getting, getting good buying and getting traction within your environment.

And so yeah, I would always encourage people to involve at least one member of the exact team if you can, depending on the structure that you’ve got in place. Brilliant, let’s we’ve, we’ve we’ve covered the importance of measures we’ve covered the importance of having the right stakeholders involved. We’ll talk about resources in a moment to address one of the questions. Let’s, let’s get into an actual practice.

How does it work? Right. So, so assuming that people understand and identify the needs and that this might be able to or that this might actually be an exercise that can help, how do they actually get started? How does that actually work? And Mandy, there was another slide that you shared with us which I might bring up. Now that that kind of brings us to the start of the exercise, talk us through a little bit, how do you begin to actually embed this?

How do you actually begin to plan this? How do you run one of these workshops and well, it’s picking up on what Serge and Mike have said around who the group wants to be in attendance and in terms of sponsors, such as an exact level. And then doing the workshop of which I always support it being a two step process because I think it’s either one day after another. And I think Serge quick before we did an afternoon and then a morning, didn’t we?

Yes, we did. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And because it gives people time to think about it, you know, go away and sort of compost around, you know what the group discussion has been about. Because with, you know, there’ll be people around the table who are unaware of other aspects going on. So it’s kind of a learning exercise as well. It’s a great discussion in terms of you know how the the transformation, the program, the project, you know the visualizing of success about that and how it may impact on others.

So it’s a exceptionally fruitful discussion that that we facilitate in terms of you know getting to the like what you’re seeing. There was probably an 8 hour process, wasn’t it surge, Yeah, it was about 8 hours. It’s pretty intense to be fair, but really useful and agree with Mandy that splitting it into two days is really helpful. You know, I’m one of those people that takes a bit of time to process.

It needs a bit of brain time to to get through. And so you come in the second day with quite a a good understanding and and had time to process and then really make that that the next conversation really meaningful around you know defining the benefits and but the conversation amongst the people that are part of the workshop is, is a key part I think as well of of the success of the program or the project going forward because they they’re all part of of driving that that problem solution I guess and understanding the problem and understanding what you’re trying to solve.

And so from a again, from a buying perspective and from a change management perspective, having the right people in that room definitely helps with the success of delivering the project. Yeah, I I don’t know about usage and but running these things that it’s it’s also an education. You know it starts out as an education thing because a lot of people that you’re bringing into the room never seen anything like this don’t understand that because they know some of them are saying, hey, look, I’ve seen the software, I want to implement it.

It’s gonna solve my problem. And then all of a sudden they’re into a workshop like this. So it’s a big mindset shift for them. So yeah, it’s so, so, so you get all sorts of different scenarios there. Putting myself in the shoes of potentially a lot of today’s attendees who have never, never had to go around a group of stakeholders and invite them to come on board and engage in one of these, everyone is always busy.

Everyone’s got a lot on the go. Serge was was the ILM that you run with Mandy your first one? And if so, how did you go about getting everybody on board, in particular people who had never done one of these before, to ask them for, as Mandy said, a day and 1/2 or thereabouts of their time to come and sit in a workshop? And then Mike, I’d love to hear some of your tips and tricks that some of the users might take away.

Yeah, so yeah, first one for us from a procurement perspective and doing it as part of a procurement process, obviously we’re doing lots of ILM’s as part of other projects and transport and Better Business cases that we have to do for a walk of die funding and stuff like that. But from a procurement perspective, yes, this was the first one we actually for, for the conflict management system one, we we did turn it around and actually and to be feared that this ILM after we had done the lenient job procurement process, but that was really a useful exercise as well to do just to make sure that we did articulate the problems that we had appropriately and funnily enough through this process that came through.

But it it’s not easy like you said Solario to get people in the room. I mean it is, it is 2 days or 2 1/2 days that you’re asking people to give up to make sure that they participate in a in a in a useful process that they may not understand. So I guess for us it was about planning properly, making sure that we had enough time to invite people to the sessions, make sure that we did some engagement upfront around why we’re going through this exercise.

And the benefits, again, it comes back to benefits, right? What is in it for you? Why are we doing this and why is it important that you specifically are part of this session. And so we we spend a bit of time on making sure that we engage with our stakeholders appropriately and and and gave them enough I guess what’s the word interest and to make that time available and be part of the process.

So we were fortunate we’ve we’ve got good existing relationships within DCC. And so that helps if you go and and ask and say look, we really need you to be part of this and here’s the reasons wise and here’s the benefit that is going to come out of it at the end. Typically most people are willing to participate. I would say at least at this, I can’t talk for Hamilton. But I’m sure Mike how are you looking at what Serge just said and and some key takeaways.

People can go away and try and build up the courage and the rationale to get these stakeholders on board. Yeah. So yeah, totally agree with what Serge said. Relationships are key. You know, it’s a currency of business really. So if if you’ve got good relationships, people trust you, then they’ll go out on the limb and they’ll say, well, if you say so, you know. And but what we, one of the things we did was we engaged with Mandy to put in a framework and that was driven from executive level.

So we put in a benefits management framework that included all of all of the the stuff and that was that was rolled out across the organization. So there was an education process around that. Then we built into the project management life cycle process that we start things off with a concept paper which is a basically one, one to two pages that needs to be supported by an ILM. And you know clearly you know when we first started it was it was all new, there was a there was a a change element, a mindset shift element and so it wasn’t always easy.

However, you know the the trust in relationships and explaining like search says the value that comes out of it and the need to better articulate in a coherent and structured way what we’re looking to do and so, so, so that we can sort of evaluate things you know on a like for like basis across the organization. So yeah, there’s a bit of cajoling and because everyone’s busy like you said and generally if there is a, you know, you can test, you can test the desire for them to accelerate the progress of the projects because they need to go through this process and they’ll make themselves available if they can see that, that’s gonna help.

So you know, there’s. Yeah, there’s no cookie cutter approach, right. Because we’re dealing with people. Yeah. You know it was interesting dynamic, like so many things in today’s world, it ends up falling down through to the what’s in it for me question. Right. Absolutely. Yeah. You nail that and you can, you can get to the point for each stakeholder that you feel is important to be in the room to to what’s in it for them.

Hopefully that’s going to be one of the key, one of the key ones and you use the word cajoling and I understand that that can be, it can be quite difficult. But Mandy from your perspective do you believe it’s when it comes to the number of stakeholders, is it quality versus quantity, quantity versus quality as far as how many stakeholders are actually involved? Yeah I think it’s policy for want of a better word. I think it’s it’s, you know those it’s you know what’s been discussed already in terms of executive, it’s decision makers, it’s leaders.

It’s those that if say the projects or program didn’t go well that would have to be answering the questions. It’s and then for those people to bring who they want along because as surgeon Mike have both said as educative as well. You know in terms of the conversation and the vision and the you know the argy bargy around hearing each each one’s perspective that they may have not have heard before. And you may only be involved in terms of procurement.

You may only be involved in one aspect. But sort of further in terms of the workflow around how things happen or the amount of duplication that’s happening in one area, you may not have even been aware of that. So I think, yeah, a grace is a lot of wear. So, so true. Yeah, we we’ve learned that, yeah, you do. You need diversity of lenses really. That’s the, you know, that’s the thing. Because I think like Mandy said that some of the executives, they don’t understand the issues at the coalface that we’re trying to, you know, fix in many cases.

So they’ll know conceptually at a high level year. We need a good process around this or whatever, a system to manage that. But you know, the reality on at the coalface is quite, quite different than that. And yeah, it’s really revealing to them. So, yeah, well this benefits map that you’re looking at now is you know as part of a pilot of within City Council of wanting to look at having an organizational wide benefits practice.

And so the steering group was formed with the PMO and the PMO was looking more externally at all the capital assets and projects etcetera. But the pilot group was an internal group, you know with 160 projects on the go. So this benefits map was, I said well let’s actually do, you know, let’s let’s do walk the talk and let’s do our own benefits map around what the steering group of what are the benefits of, you know, this approach. And so it was, you know, that’s what you’re looking at if you’re wondering what that was all about.

So, you know, I was getting the group to do a benefits maturity assessment, to do an investment logic map at the very beginning of that around what’s, you know. So you know, there was again a lot of osmotic, if you like, learnings. So it was if we’re going to be asking people to be doing investment logic maps with a concept paper and therefore, you know why, let’s do it together so that we get some understanding of, you know, what that is and how will that guide this, this piece of work. Yeah.

And what resources do we need? And it’s a good question. I believe there’s a question around resources. Is there true? Yes, indeed. Which which which kind of the team kind of wrapped around some of the key stake stakeholders that they would invite. Yeah. So does this project really addressed that in terms of. Because for me it’s all about how do you work with teams and organizations to make them sustainable.

They don’t need you, you know, you. And so it was working with two people who one was from within the PMO and another that was sitting in the team that had been asked to do look after the benefits side of things for that business unit. And so they were supported in terms of a PMG. There’s really great benefits courses that’s internationally recognized, but it was also doing like a train the trainer process as well and that you know that recognition of when projects end and project managers move on to the, you know, which happens everywhere in the world.

And it’s well in terms of BAU, you know when things go BAU. So I got OK who who’s going to be tracking and reviewing and looking after all benefits so that can be supported and underpinned by a digital system. You know PMO 365, you know has a benefits module on that in terms of alerts etcetera to keep things you know going after go live. But yes, resources are really important and I think it’s the investment and also the this, this project was very much about the executive person wanting to see a dashboard to say if you look at 160 projects, OK, what are all the benefits?

We’ve said that these projects will deliver and where are we up to with them being realized, you know, and what are the measures and and you know, and and that development. So you start in terms of resources, you, you know, having that central place around where you can have a, you know, a metrics library like, oh this would be a good thing to measure or you know, what are the data analytics that the software can create for us.

Yeah. So it’s fantastic. One of the one of the things that I think would be worth spending a couple of minutes on, we, we, we talked a lot about at the start, the end goal, which is getting all these measurements. We talked a little bit about the key stakeholders that need to be there. But Mandy, at a high level in just a couple of minutes, can you summarize how one of these actually takes place?

What goes on during those 2 1/2 days that Sergeant Mike have been talking about? OK, yeah, OK. So yeah, So what happens to start with is after the introductions and the vision that we have surge and you know that’s and they can be retrospective too because they that is as valuable because it can actually reorientate you or refocus or the redirection or the after. It’s been project scope. That’s So what happens is a lot of brainstorming around you know, good old post.

It notes you know what are the problems. Couple of words, a wild word from your own perspective, from your own role, from what you’ve observed, from what you’ve heard all of those things and as many as you like all over a wall. And then getting the group themselves to put them into key things and and then that can be summarized some someone, getting someone to summarize what that key theme is.

And you know, general agreement like checking in, always the people agreeing with us because it’s good to have that, you know, robust discussion checking out sort of yeah your own thinking your own biases about things. And then once there’s general agreement, like usually in the first part, you get to sort of some rough statements. I think actually we might have been to that with like maybe four or five states. Sometimes you need that with four or five statements.

And then there can be the beginning of what what would be good ways of measuring that, like what would be a good KPR of measuring if that problem was solved. You know, what are some of the things that the group’s thinking of would be good? You know, you know what do we already know about this in terms of it being a baseline measure, something to so probably initial thinking of that before the end of the first session and then come back the next time and we and we revisit the statements.

And often 9 times out of 10, if you’ve got four or five, you’ll end up with two or three because doesn’t that mean that I think that could be interpreted as that. So it’s another great discussion of fresh thinking, fresh looking. And often on the second session there’ll be a couple of people that weren’t at the first session which is actually, you know, I would almost suggest recommend because they see things you know they have, you know you’re having to explain, you know what are these someone says.

So what does that actually mean because the benefit of an investment logic map is that it’s a a communication piece. So to your governance, you know who you’re reporting to your governance, to the council, to Combs, to the public, you know it’s easy to it’s A1 pager that that’s the rule of thumb about an investment logic is that somebody could read it and and basically get the gist of what it’s all about and and the rest of the time is spent then okay.

So here are some of our initial thinking around KPIs and measures and there’s further work on that. So depending on the size of the group you might get people working in small groups might work all work together as one again lots of using walls and post its and and then bringing it all together with what people can live with you know because you don’t want to spend too much time getting about and and but you know totally thank you thank you Mandy.

I’m, I’m going to in a moment, I’m going to hand over to surgeon Mike and just ask them to summarize. If there were in no particular order, the top three benefits that that each of them would encourage or has realized actually out of running ILMS that they can encourage others to go hunting. But before I do is a really interesting question came up, which I think, Mandy, if it’s okay to ask you. Obviously there’s a potential drawback of running one of these processes.

Can you give us an example or some examples of some of the potential drawbacks of running ILM as well when not everything is rosy? Well, it brings a lot of things to the surface. Now is that a drawback? You know, I would argue it probably isn’t a drawback might be someone you know highly enthusiastic about an example that’s already been discussed about something that can really solve a problem. Yet when you look at it systematically or organization wide or from a procurement lens, well why would we do that when this when we’re investing in this project.

So I’m not sure that I think drawbacks are that individuals or the roles that we’re in, we may feel a drawback at the beginning perhaps or we may have highly invested or we may have influenced the decision and maybe something gets relitigated, you know it gets. But actually that can only be beneficial counter the more that these conversations happen with the key people that it is. You know you start looking horizontally if you like and ahead in terms of investment, you know of the public dollar.

Wonderful. Thank you, Mandy. I can’t believe time was actually flown quite quickly. I might just briefly before we start wrapping up. Serge, Mike, Serge, I’ll start with you. Three key benefits that you would encourage are right out there ready to be picked by today’s attendees. One, I think for me a much better understanding of what your problem actually is rather than what you think it is.

And so honing on that is really, really helpful to, like I said that scope creep. I think it’s really helpful to make sure that you can come back to a benefits map that actually is aligned to your project and helps you manage that scope. And three, I think the actual benefits realization and the measurement of that and and being able to stand up to you exec at the end of the BAU process and say, right, this project is actually delivering a good outcome for for us and having the ability to demonstrate that I think is really key.

Awesome. Thank you, Mike, over to you. Yeah, I’d say getting focused time because everyone’s rushing around, so getting the right people together to really focus and focus time to discuss the problems. And so that’s that, that’s a really big thing to get that. And then getting the clarity on a single page of what your problem is, what your North Star is, what you’re trying to drive towards, that’s that’s super powerful.

And then the other thing is around I guess executing on that like series mentioned that means you know you avoid all the scope creep and things of that you can execute much more clearly and faster and less risk of getting derailed. Brilliant. Thank you. Thank you so much. I’ve got less than 60 seconds for a quick wrap up first and foremost to our three speakers today. Thank you so much.

One of the other questions that we’ve got is how do I get hold of Mandy? Get in touch with me I’ll if anyone wants to get in touch with myself, very happy to share my these details or Mandy Lacey, you can find her online as well. I mentioned to you that all attendees will receive a copy or a link rather to watch this webinar again on demand. And I also mentioned that we’ve just completed that a NZ report across 300 senior procurement professionals.

If you want a copy of that guys just hook up with me on LinkedIn scanning that QR code, send me a quick invite and I’d be very, very happy to share directly with you. No need to register anywhere else. I will share that with you once again. Thank you everyone. A real pleasure. I hope you are successful in embarking on getting those business cases across the line and I hope there are some key takeaways that you would have got from today’s session. Khaki De.

I know. I thank you everyone. Thanks, Savara. Thanks everybody. Great. Thank you.