A UTILITIES COMPANY MIGRATING TO AN ORACLE-BASED BILLING SYSTEM
THE CHALLENGE
As companies expand and grow, a lot of the IT systems they initially used need updating, upgrading or sometimes completely replacing in order to facilitate and handle growth and demand. Not only do these types of projects need to be thoroughly planned and key milestones agreed, but all staff also need to be trained and educated in preparation for when any changes all goes live. An initial five stage plan had been created when our team entered, but there was a lack of visibility, no schedule or time frame, no baseline plan to measure from and no project completion date. This all meant that a number of decisions could not be made.
THE SOLUTION
Our team of project planners came into this project to provide planning support. We firstly created and agreed the planning approach so that the business had a clear vision of where they were going to go. This involved creating planning standards, processes and templates. The second step was then to put a system in place to track the project plans to make sure they were fit for purpose at each stage. This included ensuring that risks, issues and mitigations were all integrated into every step of the plan. In terms of preparing the business for this new service, both IT delivery plans and business readiness plans were produced to ensure that the organisation had everything in place to accept the new service. This involved planning elements such as training, business reporting and stakeholder communications.
THE OUTCOME
- By the end of phase three, all of the foundation work had been carried out by our team to ensure the completion of a successful project.
- Baseline and disciplines were established so that phases four and five of the project could then be tracked and maintained effectively.