Case study 1

Commitment

Our M&A client had just acquired a substantial stake in a large, global Power-Grid automation business (HQ in Zurich, Switzerland. Transitional Service Agreements for Infrastructure (TSAs) were all agreed with an approved deadline (circa 2yrs) in which to exit. Penalties for extension, even, if possible, would not be financially or operationally viable for our new client.

RedTail Consulting was selected as one of the vendors to delivery this high profile, global programme, due to successful, proven delivery and consultancy capability within the now divesting organisation over a period of 7yrs. During this period, we essentially delivered a similar, complex, global T&T programme of work in the Hosting Infrastructure and Test space (200k+ users, circa 450 Sites). We sat between the client and Near and Off-shore incumbent Suppliers, which were ultimately being rationalised as part of the Transition & Transformation.

When we joined the TSA Exit Programme in a purely delivery-based capacity, there was still significant IT Build Up development and delivery going on, largely target zone Infrastructure Build and Operational framework enablement. This added further complexity as we were then essentially operating in an environment where Build, Migration and TSA Exit were running in parallel. This of course added significant pressure, complexity and effort.

Our aim and commitment within RedTail was to achieve the end goal of safe, successful exit of all associated TSA’s within the entire End-User Compute & Services Towers by an aggressive, fixed date.

We did this following a clear set of guiding Governance Principles, such as there is One IT, IT harness technology to drive business growth, IT processes support Operational excellence, IT manages IT risks and so on.

Substance

Our first goal was to evaluate and identify the Team required in order to meet the tight, time-boxed deadline of TSA Exit, whilst analysing the Programme delivery governance and delivery methodology. Essentially dovetailing approach to strategy.

The intention of the Leadership was to execute a sequential, 12x Wave (300+ site) Country Transition approach from outset to safely transition each site and user (Circa 36k users, 45k assets) to our new target Infrastructure (End-User Devices, PLC’s, Shared Devices, Printers, Surface Hubs, Accessories etc).

Over a period of 3-6 months, we created an EUC Org structure/Team made up of RedTail delivery Consultants that would allow us to perform timely, manageable Migration, Transition and Transform (where required) across all of the Waves of Delivery. We operated on behalf of the client and ultimately managed a number of new Off-shore Suppliers who were tasked with overall Transition, Transformation and Operational Service Support, post TSA. As part of this, we had to face off to multiple internal and External Teams and Snr Leaders in order to fulfil the needs of the Programme. Our own RedTail Team consisted of Snr Management Consultants through to Desk-top L3/4 Engineers.

Shortly after commencing with a Pilot migration in the first couple of low-risk sites and taking account of the delays in IT Build Up, it was clear that a fully sequential delivery was not possible. At this point, we had to work with all associated parties to pivot and restructure the teams to be able to operate in a more disciplined agile way, where much of the Waves of delivery would overlap or run fully in parallel.

Close engagement with the PMO, Governance Teams, Change and Snr Leadership were a key and integral part of our day-to-day delivery.

Outcomes

Despite the delays with IT Build Up (completely out of our control), which ultimately led to a mid-programme governance and methodology change. We managed to safely and successfully migrate the following with regards to End User Compute and Service.

No End-User TSA extensions were required, and we managed to offboard many of the services and thousands of User’s (including their devices), months before the critical TSA Exit deadline.

All of this was done within timescale and under budget. The project was hailed by our client as a major milestone in delivery capability:

• 36,000 Users migrated
• Replace/Migrate (Inplace) all 36,000 User devices
• Replace/Migrate (Inplace) all 3,000 Shared Devices (PLC/Shared)
• Replace/Migrate all 2,500 Printers
• Migrate all in-scope Surface Hubs (circa 200)
• Support End of Life Device refresh/recycle as part of the Migration activities
• Document hundreds of Standard Operating Procedures with incumbent Suppliers
• Safely transition to Operations and support the Ops Teams in successful hand over
• Prepare our clients for any future internal/external audit resulting from the scale of the TSA Exit programme. Formal Closedown procedures (documentation, repository (incl clean-up) etc.

In addition to the major success of the TSA Exit Programme, RedTail was also able to onboard complimentary Consulting positions and Operational roles to support in areas such as Architecture (Workplace/EPM), Development (SNOW/ITSM) and Testing (Infra).