Case Studies
Institute of Directors
The IoD offers a wide range of business services which include: business centre facilities (including six regional centres), conferences, networking events, issues-led guides and literature as well as information services and free access to a comprehensive business library and enquiry service. The IoD places great emphasis on director development and has established a certified qualification for directors - Chartered Director - as well as running specific board-level and director-level training and individual career mentoring programmes.
In addition, the IoD provides an effective voice to represent the interests of its members to government and key opinion-formers at the highest levels. These include ministers, constituency MPs, Select Committee members and senior civil servants. IoD policies and views are actively promoted to the national, regional and trade media.
Jim Stone, IT Director, is based at their headquarters in Pall Mall. In Summer 2004 he had been planning to attend a Seminar organised by the London based legal practice, Osborne Clarke, entitled "IT Projects; Litigation Challenges and Solutions." "I was particularly interested in hearing Andrew Krauze from CCL's contribution" said Jim "however I was unable to attend at the last minute, so I set up a personal meeting with Andrew the following week."
Jim's concerns were centred on the IoD's Membership system which had evolved over many years and was based on two separate legacy systems (one supporting the Sales department and the other the Operations department) on different platforms, with the inherent complications of maintaining interfaces between the two. He believed that there should be a better solution available that would both streamline processes and improve services to members. In order to kick-start the project, Jim was keen to retain Consultants who would be able quickly to assess the IoD's key business processes and provide recommendations on their various options in the form of a Feasibility Study. CCL's experience with other ‘not for profit' organisations along with their independence from the supply market were two of the factors that resulted CCL being retained.
"Amarjit Singh, CCL's main consultant on our project, has been very impressive, his quiet and professional approach has meant that he has been very well received by IoD staff which has been very helpful in gaining management and staff buy-in to the process" said Jim.
The outcome of CCL's work is two-fold, firstly it has resulted in a Feasibility study which evaluated all the IoD's options which included, ‘doing nothing', ‘developing one or both of the current Membership systems and rolling it out to the other department' or ‘going to market to source a packaged solution which could either be supported in-house or externally.' The latter ‘in-house supported' option was the solution recommended by CCL and preliminary work identified five potential solutions providers who could be further investigated if the IoD choose this route. Secondly, a review of the IoD's business processes has resulted in a plan which identifies several areas of potential improvement which can be implemented in the short term using the current systems, whilst a decision is made on the long term solution.
"CCL's Consultants were extremely professional in their support to us during this business-critical project and have delivered process improvement that will yield a short term payback for the project."
Jim Stone, IT Director
The Institute of Directors (IoD)
