the lottery theme analysis

the lottery theme analysis

Managing Change During an e-sourcing application

With annual procurement spend a lot more than £ 2 billion, Royal Mail – the United Kingdom national postal service – is an organization that the phrase "economies of scale" clearly has a particular meaning. In 2006, in an effort to reduce costs and increase efficiency and effectiveness throughout and beyond the extraction equipment, Royal Mail embarked on a transformation program that included three years the implementation of the SAP E-Sourcing platform, moving the organization out of the previous procurement process based on paper and the unification of all procurement processes Royal Mail and stakeholders in a single system.

The consequences of such a large transformation project were, of course, deep in the top of the significant financial and human resources dedicated to processing, the project involved a major shift in thinking for those involved in recruitment for Royal Mail – both inside and outside the organization.

Como, north of Senior Procurement Manager Stephen, Technology, explains: "Some of the challenges of change management were not significant, in terms of multiple actors, a lot of managers that we needed to engage more with. And it was not just give birth in terms of training, there was no basis for change management activities that we used. "

These activities show a willingness among the leadership change team to think outside the box – sometimes a long way outside. In the meetings held to explain the drivers of the new implementation and, especially, how the new system would work and affect the staff, the team gave vent to some of their creative impulses.

"We invented a series of cartoon characters who helped bring us, if you will, a sense of lightness to the project," says North. "We a series of videos * for different parts of the system, and that worked really well. And we had a piece of music – in a dance-music theme – which was all about e-sourcing, and people could download as a ringtone! That was a very clear thing to do.

"By far the most important aspect of implementation is management aspect of change. Run as an agenda for change. The technology is not difficult to use, you can sit and learn about that in, say, an hour – Does not really have much time to pick it up. Only the change of management and involvement with the category managers and sustainability that takes time. And that's why who did things like inventing the cartoon characters and run the videos. We had a lot of thematic presentations: one made throughout the Wacky Races, one based in Spooks, another around 24, which was 24 hours in the life of a category manager. We very imaginative things around that to get people's attention because technology can be boring, I guess, so if you can spice up a bit somehow and make it more interesting, then great. "

The commitment was due not only through this type of activity most light-hearted, however: North and his team did not overlook the opportunities presented the use of hard-nosed instincts of his sales staff.

"Some of the things we've done to get people registered in the courses training and be involved from the beginning there were people offering an iPod if you were registered and attended the training before a certain date. We had almost 100% of assimilation, and then the court then held a raffle and someone won an iPod. Simple things like that work, obviously people like to win things.

"Another thing we have done in the past – more than it refers to the MER, when we launched an update of last year – was a lottery ticket in the SRM e-procurement catalog, so when someone was formed last thing they did was they bought in the catalog of e-procurement, purchase the lottery ticket, in doing so, such training themselves as well, fulfilling the last part of their training. They bought the ticket, and printed as an end in our office, and then when we incorporate a raffle and the winner was 100 pounds-worth of vouchers. Sometimes you have to put some an incentive in terms of money, because people like to win things and is often a good and simple way to get involved. "

Of course, change management is not just about the participation of a team for the first time trying to maintain that commitment throughout the life of the project – and with an implementation such as e-sourcing, that life expectancy is indefinite – and maximizing the benefits the same system by optimizing the capabilities of their managers. North and his team recognized that as a relatively small unit, the Technology group needed a degree of ownership of technology in the equipment category.

"We created a network of Pals – recruitment area," explains North. "There is a person within each category of equipment – a type of e-champion if you will – and they're on point as the first line of support for their colleagues. So if one of the managers category is the use of e-sourcing to run a PQQ [Pre-qualification Questionnaire] or ITT and is not very sure about certain things – perhaps, how to apply weightings, or what happens if you click on a text box certain – they can go to your PAL, or e-champion in the team category, and they can be a bit of light-touch, maybe sit with them for half hour walk through the process, and then go ahead.

"It's pretty light touch, but it works very well, and I encourage anyone who is implementing a system such as e-sourcing to see how they can integrate support teams within the category rather than offering only self-serving – as it can be very expensive. We also have a support person continued to support events, so you always have one person in our team that can walk through, if we have any registered user in the role, and she is responsible for train and walk through the functionality – it is very important that you have someone at the point of which also .

North Korean colleague Kathy Giles, Director of Acquisitions, Technology, notes that the change management program requires a those responsible for implementing the system, as well as those who would use it.

"A key thing we did in the technology group, she says, "It was early commitment: to identify different groups of actors were, especially the group purchasing colleagues, and identifying key people in business units – and then both of which from the beginning. I guess a lot of decisions had been made about the specific tool and what we were looking do with it, but in the development of the tool and adjust to fit the processes that actually has a lot of people involved from the beginning so that they felt part it. It was not just a technology team delivering a tool: people really had a say in it.

"We meet regularly in focus groups, and made sure there were different people in each group as it was not the same people involved all the time. We did the things we call "state of nations "which were usually over lunch: we would have a sandwich and get everyone together and have a demonstration of an electronic auction or our ITT three minutes [Invitation to tender], and the introduction of cartoon characters again. We had little contests that people seemed to enjoy – is a good competitive group. We took that with us, in fact, we now have meetings we call "town hall" events are an opportunity for all together and to share news and updates. The key is to involve people into thinking they're part of it, sounds a bit corny, but go on the trip with you. "

The stakeholder identification was not only important for technology equipment, it was crucial to ensure a smooth transition through acquisitions Royal Mail, explains North.

"If you plan on hiring three key stakeholder groups – and this is the same for any purchasing function – you will have recruitment professionals, category managers, will also have business interest groups and it is very important that we have a close relationship with them and are looking to act almost as commercial problem solvers, and then you have sellers. And the key for public procurement is to enable a process and systems that make it easy for vendors to work with us, so it does not become onerous for the supplier. And I guess in a way public procurement is the glue that makes all sticking together.

"If you look at it in the context of e-sourcing, which had great impacts all three groups of stakeholders, so you have probably 60 or 70 category managers to access the system regularly and current developments. We have been a lot of events in the system and have a number of players that attend the events through e-sourcing, which brings us to stakeholders and increases the level of collaboration. And for sellers, all sellers have the same experience using the system. There is a coherence in terms of how we behave with our suppliers. "

Giles added: "There are about 100 users in the recruitment of the group, but then at the plate all vendors have been committed to all events, amounting to several hundreds if not thousands of low now, and then dozens and dozens of stakeholders within Royal Mail that are key customers, so we can seek to become involved, perhaps collaborate on an event, maybe sign a specification. The supplier base, the people of acquisitions the group and our internal stakeholders are our main users – and that's a big number. "

Unsurprisingly, perhaps, as a large application has not been without teething problems.

"I think one area that was identified is currently e-sourcing is not provided the fantastic possibility for optimization of supply, "says North." E-sourcing enables it to be much more complex and sophisticated in terms of how build your ITT – which can have multiple lots, can have sub-lots, which can weigh in very complex ways, can the weight of his question in silence complex ways, and what can be much more sophisticated than can be with a paper process. However, in compliance with such complexity, it becomes harder to do the analysis at the end of it, so you need a tool that will allow more sophisticated analysis of tenders in.

"Recently we found an event for asset management, and had numerous vendors, a number of sub lots and lots – and it was the management of farms across the country, so there were hundreds of codes postcards to be covered as well – and thus, the actual process of evaluation of bids would have been quite complex: the use of a lot of spreadsheets Excel, and do some manual, and category manager scratching his head quite often. What we did was to push a tool optimization specialist supply and uses a vendor called IAST to help us with that: SAP currently do not have that level of sophistication with its e-sourcing tool. So it was a gap we have identified, and I guess you would call a teething problem – and is currently an issue we have when we are no really big event.

"Other initial problems came when we were running large events in terms of sellers, and perhaps in the categories where sellers do not have been exposed to the technology long before – and I'm thinking of an event that we were in the area of e-leadership. PQQ was performed and was quite heavy on support, what sales we were playing quite often throughout the period PQQ questions about how to do certain things within the system. What we learned from this is that if you have a really big event like that, all high-profile event, perhaps to do something a little more in terms of support. So what did when it came to the ITT stage, we hosted an evening and a night at a Heathrow hotel, where we have invited in the region of 70 vendors and gave them a complete demo system and the opportunity to do some Q & A with us, and we started the business stakeholders to talk too, and found that it reduced the number of queries considerably.

"So I would advise people to have a very good, solid process in place in terms of support forward to vendors. What they tend to do is run, for example, a conference call, which is quite soft to the touch, but sometimes you need more than that, and really depends on the maturity of the category in terms of technology. There are some industries that has probably not been exposed to something like e-procurement, trade mail, e-sourcing, most of the processes running are probably based on the role and I think that means of transportation was a good example. We fell from grace that at first – but I think we've recovered and we were a success of the event. "

Despite these challenges, however, North and Giles are delighted with the overall benefits that the program has succeeded – and made sure that these benefits have been successfully transmitted across the organization.

North concludes happily: "In terms of communication, we have a lot of stakeholder analysis and identified our key stakeholders – And also what kind of actors who were, so if they were responsible or liable, if we had to consult with them or inform them all that sort of thing. We focus communications to key stakeholders, so everyone does not receive the same communication, the people received the communication that was relevant for them. We also had an intranet page e-sourcing, so we had all our latest news and articles about the not – we still do now, and in fact we have just updated it. We also ensure that any good news stories were published immediately through our weekly newsletter. We make sure that there were good stories in the news period before the coming into operation and after go live – even if that means we flew a little, always made sure stories that were good news for people to read. "

* Watch a video example of the team, with some of his cartoon characters, here .

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About the Author

Jamie Liddell has worked in journalism since he was a 17-year-old cub reporter for The Tico Times, Costa Rica’s highly regarded English-language weekly newspaper. Holding an MA in English from Clare College, Cambridge University, Jamie came to SSON from the world of overseas property publishing where he worked on the industry’s best-selling publications for the UK and Ireland, and gave seminars at consumer and b2b exhibitions and conferences internationally.

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