City & Guilds is a global leader in skills development, providing services to training providers, employers and trainees across a variety of sectors in over 80 countries. With over 1000 employees, they reach millions of people every year across five continents.

City & Guilds qualifications are awarded to 2 million learners every year.

The Challenge

Our journey with City & Guilds involved a restructure of the digital team, an upgrade of the technology infrastructure and core applications and a review of key IT supplier contracts. For a global leader, their existing IT strategy was costly and inefficient, so they got in touch with us to transform their IT strategy.

Consisting of three projects, this is what our meticulous team carried out and achieved for City & Guilds.

Project One

IT Transformation

We designed and implemented an IT transformation programme to create a robust IT architecture and IT organisation. This plan for improvements addressed historic under-investment in core infrastructure and applications, laying the foundation for a strong digital future.

Leading Resolutions has been inspirational in leading our IT team through a significant change programme. Despite the level of change undertaken, the team’s engagement score improved by 15 percentage points.
Chris Jones
Director General, City & Guilds

The Solution

Leading Resolutions was engaged to design and implement an IT transformation programme. This included consolidation and redesign of key infrastructure including server virtualisation, along with the creation of a disaster recovery capability by utilising desktop thin-clients.

As part of the transformation core SAP and Microsoft applications were upgraded and the in-place CRM was consolidated.

In order to ensure the best possible cost reductions key supplier contracts were reviewed and a new hosting partner introduced.

 

To support the new systems and processes the service desk processes were updated, management tools were replaced, and the IT team was restructured and re-skilled.

Additionally, a new website was designed and implemented, and financial controls were defined and implemented.

The Results

1
80% of servers virtualised
2
Virtual digital workplace capability enabling flexible working
3
Applications portfolio reduced by 97%
4
Enhanced service levels from 75% to 92%
5
Improved customer experience – web-based feedback 92% excellent
6
Faster and more accurate management information
7
Improved financial controls.
Project Two

Sourcing

We conducted an in-depth review of suppliers and re-negotiated the highest impact contracts. We enabled City & Guilds to realise significant savings over remaining contract terms and created a contracts database to enable and streamline ongoing management.

A rapid and tremendous achievement to provide over £3m per annum savings across our whole IT supplier base.
Graham Shaw
CFO, City & Guilds

The Solution

To begin, we reviewed key supplier contracts to identify potential contracts which would have the biggest impact on the business. With this review, it allowed us to renegotiate data hosting agreements, including support for the newly upgraded SAP environment, as well as negotiate access to improved technical expertise.

The review highlighted a 5-year data communications contract, which presented a good opportunity to switch to a rolling 12-month contract. As rolling contracts are more flexible, this now allows City & Guilds to maintain year-on-year market competitiveness.

 

In order to improve throughput and bandwidth we made various changes to the networking infrastructure.

A single supplier was required to replace multiple existing suppliers of a telephony contract. So, a tender process was designed and managed through to completion to find such a provider.

The Results

We realised significant savings over the following remaining contract terms

1
Data hosting - £1.3m
2
Data communications - £983k
3
Telephony - £564k
4
Negotiated returns for services not delivered of £222k for data hosting and £187k for data communications
5
Negotiated a telecoms technology fund of £50k
Project Three

Service desk consultancy

Following the major IT transformation programme, we provided ITSM consultancy and drove the implementation of ServiceNow™ to enhance service desk performance.

A flexible IT service desk with increased capability to track, resolve and report on incidents and related problems/changes, resulting in improved customer satisfaction – at reduced cost.
Ian Turfrey
CIO, City & Guilds

The Solution

In order to carry out incident, problem, and change management processes, a new service desk tool was required.

Leading Resolutions helped to select and manage the technical implementation of a new service desk tool, and so, ServiceNow™ was implemented.

As part of this, we implemented a new set of streamlined key ITSM processes for incident, problem and change management were implemented within ServiceNow™.

 

This allowed for the provision of IT self-service for updates on incident statuses.  By utilising an IT knowledge base, self-service and self-help were further reinforced within the business.

On top of this tool set, automated reporting and management information (MI) was put in place therefore enabling more accurate reporting on the overall health of the IT estate.

The Results

1
End user satisfaction scores increased from 76% to 93%
2
Enhanced IT asset and software licence management resulted in savings of £120k per annum
3
Cost savings of £200k per annum achieved through self-service capability and automated MI