International Project Management Day (IPM Day)
November 3, 2016 by Ivan Snell · Leave a Comment
Today, International Project Management Day, is a day to celebrate and acknowledge
the achievements of project managers and their teams around the world. We would like to recognise and thank all our clients, past and present, for continuing to select our consultants to support them to deliver, often on a global scale, complex, IT enabled business transformation projects and programmes.
Read more about our project / programme delivery work here…
Successful Completion of A Twelve Month SAP HANA BI Financial Reporting Recovery Programme
April 26, 2016 by Ivan Snell · Leave a Comment
Snell Consultancy is pleased to announce the successful completion of a twelve month recovery IT programme for one of it’s clients, a major Global FMCG Company headquartered in the UK. The programme had already been running for a year and it was beset by multiple delivery issues including poor governance, loose requirements, late delivery record, escalating costs and a demoralised programme team. It was based on SAP Business Warehouse (BW) and HANA Business Intelligence (BI) management reporting technologies.
Snell Consultancy Director Ivan Snell was appointed as Programme Director by our client’s CIO and the Group Financial Controller. Ivan led a forty-five day recovery plan which he delivered to the programme Steering Committee which was chaired by the FMCG company’s CFO. The recovery plan involved locking down the programme scope, implementing quality standards and quality gates, putting in place programme controls, conducting a review of the incumbent team’s capabilities and defining a twenty-seven week programme reset plan to deliver a final release of software. The programme reset plan was approved by the programme Steering Committee. The final software release technical and business ‘go live’ was achieved on time, the first time a ‘go live’ had been achieved on time in the history of the programme, and it was delivered without any emergency code fixes being needed and to budget. After a short programme Hypercare support phase the programme was closed at the final quality gate. The Snell Consultancy also provided two Snell Associate Consultants in the roles of Senior Test Manager and Global Reporting work stream Project Manager to support with the delivery of the programme reset plan.
Ivan Snell commented: “with organisations such as this particular client, where the software development delivery model is relatively immature, it is extremely difficult to provide assurance and predictability of delivery to senior stakeholders. This programme was also especially challenging due to the previously high turnover of individuals leading the programme. Winning the trust and respect of the incumbent programme team was really important to get the programme moving forward in the right direction. I am very proud of the short time it took for the Snell Consultancy to turn the programme around and put it back on a trajectory of success.”
Read more about the IT programme recovery at the global FMCG plc
Read more about The Snell Consultancy
Read more about the recommendations from the FMCG plc CIO and Group Financial Controller
Successful Delivery of an Independent IT Project Review for a UK Based SAP Consultancy and its’ Client, a Global FMCG Company
February 1, 2015 by Ivan Snell · Leave a Comment
Snell Consultancy is pleased to announce the successful completion of a brief independent IT project delivery review of a SAP Business Warehouse (BW) / Hana Business Intelligence (BI) management reporting project for a UK based SAP consultancy and its’ client, a major Global FMCG Company headquartered in the UK.
Snell Consultancy Director Ivan Snell managed the short review which involved interviewing all the project team members staffed from the SAP consultancy firm, the client team and a Big Five consultancy firm that was responsible for the overall delivery of the project. A number of key senior project stakeholders from the client were also interviewed and critical project control documentation was reviewed. He said: “this was a particularly challenging assignment due to small amount of time allowed to the Snell Consultancy to ascertain the main causes for the failing project delivery. As is often the case all parties were guilty but no one was to blame so great sensitivity was needed to present a balanced set of candidate recommendations to get the project back on track. I am delighted to say to all the recommendations were signed off and they have been implemented, the last I heard was the project was back on track”.
Read more about the independent SAP BW /Hana BI Reporting project review
Read more about the Snell Consultancy
Read more about the recommendation received from the client Global ERP Programme Director
Snell Consultancy Director – Guest Speaker at the SAP Magic Circle
March 14, 2013 by Ivan Snell · Leave a Comment
Today, Thursday 14th March 2013, in a session on programme implementation best practice Ivan Snell, Snell Consultancy Director, and Matt Dobbins, Head of SAP (UK) Consulting Services, spoke to an audience of over 100 SAP customers and partners on the benefits of programme quality gates, adopting a thorough testing approach and utilising early planning for testing entry and exit meetings. The venue was the Magic Circle’s infamous London headquarters close to Euston train station.
Ivan and Matt drew on their experience of recently delivering one of the largest ever global forecasting and planning implementations, utilising SAP’s Business Planning & Consolidation (BPC) software application, to a UK based oil and gas UK based major.
Ivan described the critical decisions that were made to choose his clients implementation partner. “There was no way this strategic project for the Group Finance Head of Planning and Group Financial Controller could fail” he said. He continued: “Why would you not choose the company that wrote the software, as your implementation partner, provided you had the highest confidence it could deliver? The outcome was highly successful with the project being delivered on time, to budget, with the expected levels of data accuracy in the financial consolidated statements achieved”. He closed off the session saying: “The project has been highly acclaimed with industry recogn14thition and, of course, Matt and I have been rewarded with promotions in our respective organisations”.
SAP BPC Planning & Forecasting Business Transformation, Programme Managed by the Snell Consultancy, Awarded the Silver Award of the SAP UK and Ireland Quality Awards in the Large Implementation Category
January 6, 2013 by Ivan Snell · Leave a Comment
A planning & forecasting business transformation programme which the Snell Consultancy programme managed for a global oil & gas company headquartered in London, UK, has been awarded the silver award of the SAP UK and Ireland Quality
Awards in the large implementation category.
Snell Consultancy director, Ivan Snell, seen here receiving the award with our client’s business and IT sponsors said: “we are delighted for our client that the programme has been awarded such an accolade and proud to have taken such a leading role in its successful delivery”.
Each year, SAP presents awards to recognise customers who have achieved excellence in planning and executing their SAP projects, delivering significant benefits to their organisations. SAP announced nine winners, who were awarded Gold, Silver or Bronze accolades. Each winner showcased the quality processes they put in place during planning and implementation phases, clearly demonstrating how fundamental they had been to the overall success of the project, resulting in significant benefits to their businesses.
The judging panel was made up of representatives from SAP and external experts who judged against strict criteria including adherence to SAP’s Ten Quality Principles, demonstration of time-to-value and a focus of how quality excellence was achieved through the entire implementation cycle.
“Successful implementations require focus, direction and clear quality standards. These customer projects were not easy tasks and deserve the recognition they have received with these awards. These prestigious customers make the extraordinary look ordinary, excelling in execution and delivering significant business benefits,” said Tim Noble, Managing Director for SAP UK & Ireland.
Noble continued; “Through the SAP Quality Programme, we aim to work even closer with our partners and customers and ensure that their software implementations are successful, providing fast time to value. I would like to extend my congratulations to each and every one of the customers and partners we recognised through this programme.”
Read more about SAP’s Quality Awards
Read more about the SAP BPC project
Read more about the Snell Consultancy
Read more about SAP Business Planning Consolidation for NetWeaver
SAP BPC Planning & Forecasting Business Transformation, Programme Managed by the Snell Consultancy, Selected as a Finalist in the BCS & Computing UK IT Industry Awards 2012
September 16, 2012 by Ivan Snell · Leave a Comment
A planning & forecasting business transformation programme which the Snell Consultancy programme managed for a global oil & gas company headquartered in London, UK, has been selected as a Finalist in the BCS & Computing UK IT Industry Awards 2012 – Project Excellence Section. We are delighted for our client and for SAP that this programme has been selected as one of the finalists out of the 476 entries to this year’s Awards and proud to have taken such a leading role in its successful delivery.
It represents an extremely well deserved accolade for all three organisations. In the words of Stuart Sumner, Editor of Computing: “The UK IT Industry Awards are rigorously judged and to be announced as a finalist is a great achievement.”
David Clarke MBE, Chief Executive Officer, BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, said: “Congratulations to the finalists; they can be proud of their achievements in reaching this stage of our prestigious Awards. Through the Awards we aim to demonstrate not only the innovation and professionalism of those working in IT but also the importance of IT in delivering business and social benefit.”
The BCS & Computing UK IT Industry Awards are a platform for the entire profession to celebrate best practice, innovation and excellence.
Read more about the SAP BPC project
Read more about the Snell Consultancy
Read more about SAP Business Planning Consolidation for NetWeaver
Global Energy Market Leader – Global SAP Business Objects Planning & Consolidation (BPC) Implementation, Finance Organisation
June 19, 2012 by Ivan Snell · Leave a Comment
Snell Consultancy is pleased to announce the live implementation of a business transformation programme for one of its global clients. The programme, delivers the next generation planning and forecasting solution for a global energy market leader. The solution took twelve months in total to design, build and deploy and is enabled by SAP® BPC™ 7.5 for NetWeaver, (a part of SAP’s Enterprise Performance Management, EPM, portfolio). BPC™ is now in live use by the global energy market leader’s community of finance planning and cost centre managers across five continents in over 25 countries. BPC will enable the organisation to accurately and effectively aggregate bottom up financial planning and forecasting data into a single version of the truth to inform corporate strategy and investor communications.
Snell Consultancy Director Ivan Snell managed the programme delivery involving a team of over fifty SAP specialist consultants responsible for the BPC™ solution build and integration, client and contract staff. He said: “this has been a remarkable achievement for everyone including our Blue Chip British client, a world leader in natural gas, SAP (UK) and the Snell Consultancy. At this time it is the largest SAP® BPC™ deployment in the world delivered with SAP as the integration partner. BPC replaces our client’s legacy solution with improved reporting capabilities and the benefits of a unified, predictive performance platform that delivers core business forecasting and planning process functionality and features from a single enterprise-scale application and database.”
Such large scale global programmes are highly complex and carry substantial levels of risk to the businesses that undertake them. Snell Consultancy’s provision of interim capability addressed the complexity and mitigated the risks through effective engagement with all impacted stakeholders, forming a strong integrated winning team, setting up an effective programme organisation governance structure and tightly managing the integration partner’s delivery against its’ contractual obligations.
Read more about the SAP BPC project
Read more about the Snell Consultancy
Read more about SAP Business Planning Consolidation for NetWeaver