Aligning Leadership on their Enterprise Digital Transformation
Project Overview
In 2013, our energy client was acquired by one of the world’s largest independent oil and gas exploration companies, and the organisation was still operating semi-autonomously in 2022. When the decision was made to migrate to the global ERP Solution, SAP S/4HANA, the organisation was keen to utilise the new solution as a catalyst for enterprise digital transformation and alignment, but knew they needed a change partner to support this journey.
Afiniti was engaged to help develop the strategy and roadmap of activities required to transform the business in the discovery scope. However, the specific vision and appetite for transformation was unclear. Therefore, Afiniti proposed an approach to complete a pre-discovery exercise with an aim to help the client explore and qualify the scope and scale of discovery, including whether full transformation discovery was needed at all. Our approach helped the organisation align and agree on whether a whole business transformation [future state design] was needed across the business, embedded and driven by ERP, or whether the enterprise digital transformation needed to effectively govern, deliver and drive the adoption of ERP.
Our Solution
- Our approach to pre-discovery was engagement led, immersive and collaborative, framed by a core question set and aligned to explicit outcomes and outputs.
- We anchored our approach at the Executive Leadership level, with validation at the operational level and established the guidelines to underpin pre-discovery.
- We established principles and criteria for exiting pre-discovery with the Executive Leadership team.
- We established an initial workplan upfront, anchored to the exit criteria for pre-discovery and to help plan and schedule key engagements with colleagues from across the business to minimise disruption. The workplan iterated throughout the course of the pre-discovery phase.
- We were agile and flexible in our engagements and conversations, listening, gathering information and seeking to understand the business from the perspective of everyone we engaged with.
- We took the time to validate the purpose and approach to pre-discovery as part of initial 1:1 purpose-driven conversations sessions with each executive leader. This sought to frame the work we would be undertaking, serve as a catalyst for exploring their vision, concerns and priorities and gave us the opportunity to lean in, listen and understand the business from their perspective.
The Differences We Made
“Afiniti are different from the run of the mill consultancies who just peddle change, Afiniti were the best choice and did a great job of adapting their approach and being flexible”
Sr. Manager, Business Services, UK Client Transformation Lead
- As a result of pre-discovery, the Executive Leadership team agreed on the type of change needed and why, when it needed to happen and were aligned on the scope and outcomes they wanted from discovery.
- After 20 forms of engagement over 6 weeks (through 1:1s or smaller group sessions) the Executive Leadership team, and Afiniti as their chosen partner, achieved a clear scope, purpose and approach for discovery.
- In addition, the key risks to successful enterprise digital transformation had been identified – some of which would need to be mitigated from as early as the start of discovery. This was a key insight that enabled a more informed approach for discovery to be scoped.
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