The Opportunity

Our client was experiencing a major period of change and expansion and were looking to transform their IT business by bringing in expert business analysis services.

Challenges with their existing demand and supply of BA services included:

• The process was slow
• Quality consultants are hard to come by
• Selection and onboarding required too much time from already overstretched team
• Management of existing teams is time-intensive.

Our client was therefore looking for a reliable Professional Services (PS) supplier to provide and manage experienced teams quickly to deliver specific projects and programmes. It was vital that the supplier supported managers by enabling them to hand over responsibilities for:

• Team selection
• Performance management
• Service reporting
• Ownership
• Mentoring
• Process improvement

This would allow the senior Business Analysis team to concentrate on high-level business needs.

Having successfully worked to provide a broad range of expert contractors prior to this engagement, RedRock were asked directly whether we would be able to provide a managed PS team and the support necessary to transform their Business Analysis services. We presented our managed PS offering and were delighted to be awarded the contract.

Our Solution & Approach

At RedRock we underpin all our MPS engagements with the same core values:

• Client Enablement
• Teams of Excellence
• Impartiality
• Ownership

From the outset, our Delivery Director had regular on-site meetings to collaborate with our client and ensure we fully understood the cultural core values required to succeed, along with the key domain and technology requirements of each role to ensure we selected the ideal team.

We collaborated to deliver an improved custom engagement process to ensure that going forward, the challenges they had previously faced could be lessened. The new process consisted of:

1. Request
2. Selection
3. Onboarding
4. Induction
5. Extension
6. Off-boarding

This process ensured a seamless end-to-end service, fully managed by RedRock to allow in-house teams to concentrate on higher value tasks.

The Outcome

Based on our detailed understanding of our clients needs we were able to identify and select the following:

• A team of 45 Business Analyst experts with a history of delivering successful projects.
• Majority of Business Analysts landed within 2 weeks from the initial request.
• Team co-located with in-house teams across 3 locations.

Due to the large, high quality resource pool we have built up at RedRock we are able to select specialists based on their ability to meet our client’s challenges and provide them when needed, rather than just utilise who we have available at the time.

With these resources at our disposal, we were able to supply key Business Analysts with the required domain and technology expertise to work on projects including:

Domain

• HR
• Finance
• Automotive
• Supply Chain/Logistics
• eCommerce
• Retail
• Procurement

Technology

• SAP Hana/FICO/Ariba
• Workday
• Hybris
• Adobe Experience Manager
• Salesforce

Our expert team were able to mentor and upskill their in-house junior team members, developing internal capability and embedding a sustainable solution, ensuring they could maintain the level of Business Analysis service implemented when our contract ended.

The experienced PS management team provided performance management and issue resolution, freeing the management team to invest their efforts in their permanent in-house team.

Our fast response to their resource request allowed a best-fit team to hit the ground running and to quickly and seamlessly be effective. This process, led by the RedRock management team reduced the time and effort required from in-house managers, freeing them to oversee the business and in-house teams.

The programmes implemented have resulted in:

• Improved speed of rollout for digital marketplaces from 1 every 2 months to 2 per month
• New HR services based on Workday
• New CRM solution based on Salesforce
• Expansion into new global retail markets
• Simplified procurement and sourcing process.

Throughout the engagement, our team built a legacy by mentoring and sharing the skills and experience required to work with the new programmes introduced, improving the long-term capability of our client.

By working closely with our client during the process and maintaining open communication lines, RedRock ensured flexibility with any changes to plans were quickly addressed to keep the service on track. Because of this, we were able to ensure effective project management.

Our partnership is ongoing, due to the success of the service and reliability of the team provided we are currently in talks to extend critical resources to support them with their wider programmes.