"My yearly delivery plan is at odds with what I end up delivering, I can't easily explain why, and the figures from Finance cause even more confusion."
CIO, Global Hedge Fund

Our Brief

The IT function of this financial services company was running multiple complex projects. Individual projects could not be tracked effectively and there was no overall resourcing plan. Reporting internal to IT could not be reconciled with the Finance budgeting and forecasting without significant ongoing effort. Any change to priorities created huge headaches for all those involved. Our role was to recommend a course of action so that the portfolio could be managed more transparently with a reduced administrative involvement from both IT and Finance staff.

Our Approach

We defined a hierarchy of work across IT so that all costs and time could be tracked in a consistent manner that was aligned with both the IT reporting needs and the Finance budgeting models. We reviewed the existing processes across these two departments and recommended a set of changes to streamline them. We helped the client in the selection and implementation of a planning tool - including timesheeting - to support these process changes. This was then used as the basis for the client's annual budgeting, tracking actuals and forecasts via a consistent set of processes. Finally, actual and forecast costs were linked directly into the Finance systems so that financial and project views of costs were synchronized, requiring minimal manual reconciliation.

End Result

The client achieved a clearer view on forward resourcing, variances to budgets and delivery. A single view of the truth was established and accepted across IT and Finance. Time spent reconciling figures was reduced.