Context
First Central Group (FCG) is a successful and increasingly influential Guernsey-based UK motor insurance provider. Established in 2008, with an ambition to out-compete established brands through technology-based agility, it sold its millionth policy in 2013. It currently employs over 500 people.
In early 2014, FCG’s Group Technology Services division (GTS) completed the implementation of Focus, an award-winning new insurance management platform. This enabled FCG to significantly cut operational overheads, and offer better-targeted products to customers, faster than its competitors.
FCG commissioned CBO to define and support the implementation of a new Target Operating Model (TOM).
CBO’s Approach
To develop a TOM for GTS, CBO adopted a process based on four deliverables:
- As-is Analysis
- high-level TOM
- detailed TOM
- Implementation Plan
CBO’s first step was to conduct an As-is Analysis. The purpose of this was to build a rounded understanding of which elements of GTS’s current ways of working supported the new direction of travel articulated by the CIO, and which were not aligned with it.
Data from the As-is Analysis informed the second step of CBO’s work, the creation of a high-level TOM. The development of this TOM was primarily undertaken in a day-long workshop, attended by GTS’s management team and senior representatives of their key customers. In this workshop, practical elements of how GTS should work were worked through, using tools such as RACI matrices. Questions about GTS’s desired culture were also addressed, using a Change Maturity Matrix to structure conversation and turn abstract concepts into measurable targets.
At this same workshop, the participants also co-created an initial draft of a plan for the development of a detailed TOM. This included detailed work on processes, role profiles and use of information systems – details which some consultancies do not include in organisational strategy work but which CBO believes is beneficial to help ensure that a TOM is easily implementable. Work on the detailed TOM continued outside of the workshop, and eventually articulated 35 key changes that needed to be made to GTS’s ways of working to deliver the vision that its management, staff and customers now shared.
First Central Group drew on CBO’s pedigree in project and programme management to develop an Implementation Plan for those changes. We subsequently project managed their delivery, and embedded in this process two ‘review and direct gateways’. At these, GTS managers and key customers undertook structured reviews of work to make the TOM real, agreeing minor amendments to their vision, and the implementation approach, in reaction to learning ‘on the ground’.
CBO’s Impact
GTS’s new operating model has now been successfully implemented, underpinned by significant changes to its organisational culture. This has been proven to support First Central Group to deliver system improvements quickly, without compromising the day-to-day support of Focus 500 users.
