Client Successes
Our clients include:
- Transport for London (TfL): The creation of TfL involved merging 10 previous organisations, and HCL AXON supported this by developing a shared services model integrating over 30 separate back office systems (including 6 Human Resources centres, 20 Finance Departments, and 7 separate Procurement functions). By establishing a platform to support a single HR shared services centre, costs were dramatically reduced and the overall program has delivered over £250m in cost savings – far in excess of the original business case. (Case Study)
- Royal Mail Group: HCL AXON is working with the Royal Mail Group to deliver its People System Programme (PSP) designed to transform RMG’s HR service delivery. People account for at least 70% of RMG’s expenditure, equating to over £5 billion per annum and HCL AXON is creating an IT infrastructure which facilitates greater people engagement, increases management capability to support employees, drives cost efficiency and improves organisational performance.
- Birmingham City Council: HCL AXON Helps Birmingham City Council Realize Huge Business Value from SAP. Most private sector clients AMR Research talks to struggle with proving the actual business value realized from their huge SAP investments. It ’ s something that makes business executives even more sceptical about signing off on capital expenditures for further projects. For this reason, it ’ s inspiring to find a public sector enterprise that has measured and proved business savings from its investment on a massive scale. If Birmingham City Council (BCC) can do it, your company can too. (Case Study)
- Birmingham City Council: HCL AXON is providing services to the Council in support of all aspects of major transformational change. A world class SAP-based system is also being implemented for business process management, transaction processing and reporting for several thousand Council staff. (Case Study)
- London Borough of Harrow: Harrow is working with HCL AXON on a Business Transformation Programme and the remit of the partnership extends across the scope of the Council's activities. This will result in a number of benefits driven programmes being identified and, if appropriate, delivered throughout the term of the contract. (Case Study)
- Manchester City Council: The 'Pathfinder Programme' has simultaneously improved council services for MCC's citizens, whilst creating a more effective working environment for employees. The business improvements driven by the Programme are supported and enabled by a new SAP enterprise platform to deliver common best practice processes. (Case Study)
- Hampshire County Council: HCC first partnered with HCL AXON on the delivery of an e-procurement solution. Since then, we have further helped HCC with a number of key initiatives, including developing a management solution for measuring Key Performance Indicators.
- Jobcentre Plus: HCL AXON helped Jobcentre Plus to develop their organisational capacity in helping 1,400 staff to become experts in managing their wide range of contracts. Through the transfer of commercial, financial and management skills to staff we helped Jobcentre Plus to ensure that job seekers get the most from the taxpayer's investment in citizen facing staff. (Case Study)
- Lincolnshire County Council: HCL AXON delivered a ground-breaking implementation of an e-Government portal to provide the Elected Members of Lincolnshire with access to a knowledge portal to enhance their productivity and access to information. This was extended across the Council to support the Council's vision of mobility and intimacy with citizens. (Case Study)
- The Metropolitan Police Service: HCL AXON worked with the Metropolitan Police Service to implement SAP business planning and reporting tools to enable a clearer insight for managers into the strategic and operational level imperatives they faced. (Case Study)
- Post Office Limited: HCL AXON was engaged to work in partnership with Post Office Limited to more clearly define the social value provided by the wide network of post offices throughout rural Britain. Having demonstrated the economic value of the rural Post Office Network, HCL AXON worked with the Post Office to define the most efficient operating models and a blueprint for delivery. This work was instrumental in influencing government policy on this critical rural amenity. (Case Study)
Case Study
Transport for London
Business
Transport for London (TfL) was established to take responsibility for one of the largest integrated transport systems in the world. London's £25bn transport infrastructure comprises hundreds of miles of roads, railways and underground lines supported by over 20,000 people. Every day it supports over 25 million journeys on buses, railways and the Tube; by car, motorcycle and bicycle; and on foot.
Transformation
TfL and London Underground Limited embarked on a major transformation programme to support a world-class integrated transport system for London. More than 30 existing back office systems are being replaced with a single integrated business solution enabling improved management of business processes and information.
The solutions implemented included HCM, Finance, Procurement, Capital Projects, Facilities Management, Real Estate Management, and reporting and analysis. HCL AXON’s transformation program has also included change management, benefits realisation, value engineering, technology implementation, and hosting/applications management.
Birmingham City Council is the largest all purpose authority in Europe serving almost one million residents with a wide range of services funded by an annual budget of £3bn. In 2006, the Council's 57,000 staff taught over 175,000 young people, maintained 2,500km of roads and 68,000 council houses and provided over 3,000,000 hours of home care. In common with many public sector organizations, the Council seeks to continuously increase service levels, enhance employee satisfaction and improve efficiency.
The Council has established a Business Transformation Strategic Partnership to support these objectives. A Joint Venture Company called Service Birmingham has been formed with Capita and HCL AXON has been appointed as Business Transformation partner.
Glyn Evans is Assistant to the Chief Executive, responsible for Business Transformation at Birmingham City Council, "Birmingham City Council is highly ambitious and wants to see a radical transformation in the way it delivers services. We sought a partner who could increase the capacity and capability needed for true transformation. The challenge is enormous and not without its frustrations. However, since forming the partnership with Capita and HCL AXON, the pace and scale of transformational activity have substantially increased. This would not have been possible without them as partners. They are working closely with the Council to secure our business objectives and they adapt and respond to circumstances whilst providing us with a healthy and honest level of challenge."
Birmingham City Council and HCL AXON have used their combined experiences, toolkits and ideas to develop a complete transformation methodology for use across all service areas of the Council. The methodology will soon be published and made available to other Local Authorities.
HCL AXON is providing services to the Council in support of all aspects of major transformational change, such as business case definition, benefits management, process design and organizational design, implementation and change management. A world class SAP-based system is also being implemented for business process management, transaction processing and reporting for several thousand Council staff.
The programme has already delivered some cashable savings through quick win initiatives in advance of major process changes and £8M of net savings were delivered in the first year with several hundred million pounds of savings forecast from the wider transformation programme over ten years. These savings will enable investment in improvement to front line services for Birmingham residents.
The London Borough of Harrow serves a diverse community in North West London. Harrow has faced ever increasing pressures upon its services at a time of severe financial constraint for the Council.
In response to these pressures, the Council developed a long term vision with a view to becoming an excellent Council and in 2005 began a Business Transformation Programme. This programme was to be the cornerstone of delivering significant efficiency savings while providing higher levels of service to the citizens of Harrow and helping the Council to move towards an 'excellent' CPA rating.
To help the Council achieve its wide ranging transformation objectives, Capita Group was awarded a 10 year contract, with HCL AXON as the main subcontractor for the delivery of SAP enabled transformation.
The partnership was engaged by Harrow to work with the Council at a strategic level. The partnership was asked to identify and develop benefits linked business cases and identify the nature of organisation and process changes required to implement these projects. This resulted in a number of key initiatives which have allowed Harrow to move to a more customer centric and efficient operating model, with world class processes.
HCL AXON and Capita delivered these business cases through a combination of organizational redesign, process optimization and ICT solutions across ICT, HR, finance, procurement, property and customer relationship management. This was underpinned through the implementation of SAP modules including ERP, BW, SRM and CRM.
Furthermore, the partnership committed to enable borough citizens to have access to the Council through 'Access Harrow', a new contact centre and one-stop-shop. Access Harrow would allow for 80% of customer queries to be resolved at the initial contact and free up scarce resources in the Council to deliver front line services.
The Business Transformation Programme has delivered the initial programme of work, which has been well received by Harrow citizens and noted by the Audit Commission. As well as delivering cost savings in excess of £20m over 10 years and enhancing satisfaction for the public the work done by HCL AXON has laid the foundations for Harrow to more effectively manage its 'business' going forward.
The integrated SAP platform provides the Council with reliable and timely information with which to monitor the performance of the organisation. Now issues can be identified early and action taken to address areas of operational or financial difficulty by the executive and management team.
The Business Transformation Programme was intended not only to benefit the citizens of Harrow and the Council as a whole but also to make Harrow a better place to work for employees. Benefits to staff have included a focus on delivering enhanced skills and capabilities and the provision of a first class working environment in keeping with customer experience of visiting the contact centre.
While the first stage of the partnership has already delivered significant benefits, the partnership stream repeatedly reviews and authorizes opportunities for ongoing transformation.
The remit of the partnership extends across the scope of the Council's activities and will result in a number of benefits driven programmes being identified and, if appropriate, delivered throughout the term of the contract. These programmes will utilize HCL AXON's Benefits Card methodology - ensuring that benefits are identified, validated and locked into delivery.
"We have delivered a significant transformation of our operations in a short space of time with real benefits for the citizens of Harrow"
Carol Cutler, Director of Business Transformation, Harrow Council
With just under 500,000 residents and around 26,000 employees, Manchester City Council is one of the largest local authorities in the UK.
The past decade has seen a vast amount of growth and change in the city and as a centre for business, learning, shopping and recreation, Manchester is increasingly successful. In line with this growth, the Council has committed to deliver fundamental change to provide Manchester with the best possible service.
The Council asked HCL AXON to work with them on a programme named Pathfinder, on a project which would transform the back office organisation, processes and systems. This large scale initiative was designed to improve the way the Council delivers services to its citizens, and to increase efficiency of front and back office processes.
HCL AXON was engaged by Manchester as a solution provider and using SAP technology, delivered new back office systems covering Finance, Procurement, Human Resources, Payroll, Data Warehouse and integration with other Council systems.
HCL AXON provided the council with an intensive support immediately following system go-live to stabilize the environments, followed by an ongoing third line support.
This project expects to realize a reduction in cost base of between £2.0 million (base target - quantifiable) and £3.5 million (stretch target - quantifiable) through process improvements directly as a result of moving to the new ways of working based on SAP technology.
Developing Organizational Capability for Jobcentre Plus
Formed in 2001, Jobcentre Plus is a business within the Department for Work and Pensions.
Jobcentre Plus helps people of working age to find work; claim the benefits that they are entitled to; and offers a dedicated service to employers to fill their vacancies quickly and effectively. Jobcentre Plus also works with external training companies to provide jobseekers with marketable skills. The network of offices across the UK places thousands of people into jobs every week.
In its main role of securing employment opportunities for the unemployed, Jobcentre Plus undertook substantial procurement of 'client facing provision' i.e. the purchasing of training, education and other services that are provided to jobseekers to equip them with suitable work skills. Approximately £1 billion per annum was being spent on training and other services and it was essential that suppliers were subject to a robust and effective procurement and contract management process.
Jobcentre Plus asked HCL AXON to deliver commercial and financial management training and skills transfer to procurement and contract staff. The aim was to significantly improve staff and process performance levels and ensure the consistent application of policy.
HCL AXON initially undertook a strategic analysis of current skills, process effectiveness and competencies of the 800 procurement staff and their roles.
Jobcentre Plus accepted the recommendations of this analysis. HCL AXON then developed, delivered and managed a programme to provide a series of complementary training modules to staff across nine regions in England, Scotland and Wales.
A total of eleven bespoke one and two day modules were designed, covering subjects such as commercial awareness, managing provider underperformance, European social fund and contract monitoring. An initial series of bespoke modules were ready for delivery within six weeks of contract award to HCL AXON.
Through this programme staff was successfully given the skills, tools, policy and technical knowledge required to more effectively manage and monitor Jobcentre Plus training contracts.
To date HCL AXON has delivered over 7,000 delegate days of training to Jobcentre Plus staff, achieving an average delegate satisfaction rate of 83%, with over 98% of delegates rating the standard of presentation as either good or excellent.
Axon brings e-government to the people of Lincolnshire
As one of the largest counties in the UK, Lincolnshire is over three times the size of Greater London with less than one tenth of the population. It is a largely rural environment, which presents problems of accessibility for citizens to information and communication.
As part of Central Government's requirement to deliver 'Implementing Electronic Government' which was launched in 2001, Lincolnshire County Council responded to the challenge by establishing an e-Government programme. The first step of the programme was to develop an Elected Members portal to better equip Councillors with information necessary for performing their roles.
The County Council engaged with Lincolnshire's seventy seven Elected Members in the development of the portal. The rational behind this decision was to help Elected Members understand what the benefits of e-Government might be for citizens and staff, by bringing e-Technology into their daily experience of accessing information and communications. This first hand experience would enable them to have a greater appreciation and understanding of e-Technology as a tool to enable further on-line services to the citizens of Lincolnshire.
To complete the development and delivery of the portal, the Council's strategic outsourcing provider, HBS Business Services, asked Axon to partner with them.
Axon completed the first phase of portal development in a record six week period. During this time a selection of Elected Members from across all political parties were consulted throughout scoping, planning and reviewing stages. Additionally, Elected Members were provided with laptops and the appropriate training in advance, so as soon as the portal went live they could make use of it.
After a period of user testing by the selected member group and rigorous integration testing by Axon and HBS technical teams, the completed portal was rolled out to all seventy seven elected members over a three month period.
The portal gave elected members access to the following information:
- The County Council's e-mail solution including access to diaries
- Cabinet documents through the 'Document Imaging' solution
- Central government documents through access to .gov websites
- Political central office papers through access to party websites
- Lincolnshire district websites
An additional feature of the portal was that the look and feel of it was enhanced by political logos. These were presented and linked by logon information personalised for each Elected Member.
Successful delivery of the portal has led the way for further enhancements and already Axon has worked on developing the portal for use by County Council staff as part of its 'Working from Anywhere' initiative. Realised benefits from these enhancements include: delivery of real productivity improvements, a reduction in the need for office space and support of flexible working practices for staff.
The Metropolitan Police Service
Business
Founded by Sir Robert Peel in 1829, the original London Metropolitan Police Force of 1,000 officers policed a seven-mile radius from Charing Cross and a population of less than two million. Today, the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS or Met) employs over 30,000 officers, almost 12,000 police staff, 500 traffic wardens and 1,300 Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs). Since the realignment of police boundaries in April 2000, it covers an area of 620 square miles and a population of more than seven million, and manages a gross annual budget of approximately £2.8 billion. The MPS would rank 61st in the list of FTSE 100 companies by net operating revenue and is the largest Local Authority in the UK. Providing almost 20% of the total "public admin and defense" jobs in the London region, the MPS is London's largest single legal entity employer.
Transformation
HCL AXON is working with the MPS to implement SAP's business planning tools to better enable and integrate long-term strategic planning and short-term operational budgeting and forecasting. They have implemented SAP's Business Warehouse to provide detailed analysis of actual payroll costs, which account for over 75% of the total budget. They are implementing SAP's Strategic Enterprise Management to use this detailed payroll information to model the potential cost impacts of headcount changes across the organization by Rank and Grade, and to provide an integrated systems solution to support their end-to-end planning cycle. The MPS will continue to develop its use of SAP Business Intelligence to further enhance its management information and performance management process.
Post Office Limited
Business
Post Office Limited, part of the Royal Mail Group of companies, comprises the physical network of over 17,000 post office outlets across the UK providing a diverse range of some 170 products and services including access to cash and benefits, postal services, financial services and licenses. The network is made up of a number of different types of outlet ranging from large "Crown Offices" located in major cities through to post offices in rural areas serving small communities. This rural network of roughly 8,200 offices provides key services to people in more remote locations, where access to other facilities is limited, and where social or financial hardship is harder to pinpoint.
Transformation
The rural network of post offices provides a valuable service to the community that is widely recognized and respected, but difficult to objectively quantify. However, the relatively small population base it serves limits its commercial viability. HCL AXON was initially engaged to work in partnership with Post Office Limited to help define more clearly the social value that the rural network delivers to the United Kingdom overall. Subsequently HCL AXON helped the Post Office to define a future strategy for the rural network, secure financing for a further period and to pilot the implementation of the strategic concepts in a number of locations.
