Partnership - The Real IT Awards - The Corporate IT Forum

Partnership

Everyone talks about Partnerships and achieving a 'win:win' situation when working with other organisations to deliver IT services or projects. Very few really achieve such an objective.

Whether working in the public or private sector, with suppliers or in collaboration with others; the reality is working with partners is often the norm rather than the exception. What then are the ingredients for making partnerships a success both for those parties involved and for the project as a whole?

Judging Criteria

The submission which demonstrates how a partnership approach has successfully delivered for all involved, and the lessons learned which have built confidence in this approach and which will be applied to the future.

Previous Partnership Projects Awards Winners

7th Awards			Volkswagen - New Vehicle System Programme This project set out to replace separate infrastructures and processes designed in the 1980s, used by five different brands, with a single platform. This involved the replacement of all core systems including sales, distribution, funding and CRM. Selection of the right partner for such a high profile and complex project was key. Some of the criteria used, in addition to value for money, were : the ability to work as a single team focussed on a single goal; willingness to commit; the best people with the right skills. A key element in all of this was the level of trust that had been developed between individuals. Equally important in such a big project is the partnership with the business in preparation for and during the implementation phase. Judges Comments "An exceptional project; a great example of partnership across teh group, carried out in a collaborative way. Tough decisions were made in the best interests of the overall group."

6th Awards			HM Revenue & Customs - Modernising PAYE processes The old PAYE system had been in place largely unchanged since the early 1980s. This was an ambitious project to transform personal tax operations and provide 30,000 staff with access to all of the PAYE data from any one of the 46 million customers. The challenge was to introduce the new system without disrupting revenue (£600m per day) or customer service. Nationwide implementation was completed in a month, one of the biggest 'overnight' changes to working practices in a UK Government department. Working together in a single team they did what many observers thought was impossible, implementing a large scale Government projexct without creating press headlines. Judges Comments "A large and complex project with multiple partners which achieved a massive system replacement to plan, with no disruption to departmental staff or customers. A very different outcome to many high profile public sector projects."

5th Awards			Hampshire County Council - Recruitment Portal Project Faced with an increasingly difficult and expensive recruitment market the Hampshire Regional Recruitment Portal was a project that brought together 12 of the 15 local authorities in hampshire. The partnership delivered a single technology solution for attracting candidates and managed the end-to-end recruitment process across the authorities in a single back office candidate maangement system. A key ingredient to success was securing support from 12 different authorities' HR, Legal, Brand and IT departments by focusing on the desired outcome rather than the exisitng processes involved in recruitment. Judges Comments "Good customer comments. Especially having c-sat metrics on portal usage. Interesting that the most significant partnership element was between the local councils as opposed to between customer, IT and provider. I was struck by it being 'customer getting house in order' element." "Simple but effective. High collaboration, excellent tangible & intangible benefits that are being realised."