Managing_change_original

22 Finance and Management Faculty
June 2008 SPECIAL REPORTMANAGING CHANGE
Between March 2000 and March 2003, the Reuters share
price nosedived from over £16 to just 95p. It was a
reflection of the market’s slowly dawning recognition that
this pioneer of information-gathering was a company in
deep trouble.
What it did not show was that, by the time it had
bottomed, plans for recovery were well under way. But it
was to take another four years for the transformation to be
validated by last year’s announcement of a £8.7bn merger
with Thomson Corporation, the Canada-based
international media and business publishing group
It was a “somewhat dysfunctional, structurally
cumbersome and unnecessarily complex” organisation that
David Grigson joined as chief financial officer in 2000.
Under Tom Glocer, the new chief executive who was to
take over at the helm the following year, he was charged
with master-minding what was effectively a rescue
campaign.
“We found a company that had grown very rapidly with
no idea of where it was going or why,” says Grigson.
Through the 1980s and early 1990s Reuters had seen
revenue pour in the door faster than it could cope with.
But in 2000 the internet bubble burst and the financial
services industry was on the brink of a sharp downturn.
It was a downturn that Reuters was totally unprepared for.
At the heart of its problems were a product range with
thousands of price lines and a poor service record. In
contrast, its main rival, the New York-based financial
information group Bloomberg, was going from strength to
strength, offering a single product – what came out of the
box was what you got.
“We were competitively weak, our service record was
appalling and management was dysfunctional,” comments
Grigson. “We had data centres that were old, running on
old-fashioned technology, no disaster recovery or business
continuity. All the basic things that a tech-based
organisation should have.”
There was a view that
Reuters existed for the global
good rather than to make
money for its shareholders
David Grigson has been CFO of Reuters Group PLC since
August 2000. He was previously at Emap PLC where
he was group finance director and chairman of Emap
Digital. He is a qualified chartered accountant.
He is a non-executive director of The Carphone
Warehouse Group and sits on both the Implementation
Board and Culture Board (as chairman) of London
Legacy 2020 and on the board of ChildLine. He
formerly held senior finance roles in the UK and US at
Saatchi and Saatchi Plc (1984-1989) and held a number
of financial positions at Esso UK from 1980 to 1984. He
is a former chairman of Radianz and non-executive
director of Instinet Inc.
david.grigson@reuters.com
Interview: David Grigson
CASE STUDY: THE REUTERS STORY – 1
TURNING AROUND A GLOBAL
INFORMATION GIANT
In the early 2000s, structural problems emerged at the large international information-
based group Reuters – the share price fell and confidence eroded. Serious change was
necessary to rebuild the fortunes of the business. Financial writer Mike Tate talks first to
David Grigson, chief financial officer (CFO) of Reuters Group PLC, and then to
Carolyn Bresh, Grigson’s deputy at the time, about this vast exercise. He describes
some of the steps that were taken in an ultimately successful reorganisation.
CASESTUDY

Geographic
How had this happened? It is important to understand
that, despite its huge global reach, Reuters is a relatively
small company. For 150 years it had grown by just
planting its flag in a new territory and telling people to get
on with it, and it was still being run on this geographic
model. There was also a view held by many of the senior
management that Reuters existed for the global good
rather than to make money for its shareholders.
Crucially, however, all the power within the organisation
resided in the heads of the ‘geographies’. They made all
their own decisions – how they built their product, how
they supported it and how they priced it.
It was immediately clear to Glocer and Grigson that a
complete overhaul of the company structure was vital.
Only a reorganisation along divisional lines with ultimate
control restored to head office would give Reuters the
chance of a future.
Early attempts, however, fizzled out as it proved impossible
to wrest control from the ‘geographies’ without effective
financial management information systems and at a time
when the business was haemorrhaging badly.
The complexity of the existing structure provided everyone
with an excuse, something to hide behind. It enabled the
forces of resistance to grow and multiply. “So we said let’s
not try and fight that problem because we’ll just lose it and
meanwhile the company’s sinking,” Grigson recalls. “We
had another battle to fight – to get cost out and get it out
fast. Fortunately the ‘balkanised’ nature of the business
meant that there was a lot of cost to take out.”
In 12 months of near-carnage, some £450m – about 15%
– was slashed from the cost base. “That became ‘Phase
One’. It didn’t have a project name – just ‘Help!’”
Divisional
The transformation from a geographic to divisional
structure, while crucial to Reuters’ future, was shelved until
phase two. ‘Fast Forward’, as it was known, “was about
making a small number of very big changes that would
fundamentally change how Reuters did business,” says
Grigson. But ‘divisionalisation’ itself was to take three more
years.
While it was clear that power had to be prised away from
the ‘geographies’ it was far from clear how. Reuters did not
have the necessary management information systems in
place. A huge programme of simplification was going to
be needed first.
Grigson knew only that Bloomberg had shown what could
be achieved by its rapid growth over two decades.
Bloomberg, however, had the advantage of being a private
company. Operating under the public gaze was, for
Grigson, a major handicap. “You need more than one bite
at the cherry, because you can’t see more than a year or
two ahead, and markets hate that.” But he and Glocer
were turning it into an advantage.
In February 2003, they took what proved to be a
momentous decision. They went public with ‘Fast Forward’
and, crucially, their target – a further £440m of savings.
There were no detailed plans in place, Grigson recalls.
“We’d done some desktop calculations, but they didn’t
come anywhere near £440m. Our necks were on the line.”
According to Grigson, only then did the outside world
begin to grasp just how serious Reuters’ problems were.
What mattered was the impact it had internally. “Nobody
had an excuse for thinking we were not serious anymore.”
Transformation
The transformation began in finance, whose first task was
to get the company’s information processed in a way that
everybody could understand and act on. In order to drive
the same message consistently throughout the
organisation, finance had to be brought into a single
global organisation reporting to the centre.
Previously there were a large number of embedded finance
people working alongside the business in individual
geographies. Three major changes took place. First,
transaction procession was taken out of the geographies
and moved to regional shared service centres and the new
finance centre in Bangalore, India (all of which were
owned and managed by finance), this resulted in increased
independence and objectivity in terms of the numbers.
Second, all reporting lines for finance staff went through
Grigson, rather than the previous route through local
managing directors. Finally, financial support was
strengthened in critical areas – high quality people were
transferred from the geographies to the divisions and
shared service centres where they could provide support to
the wider organisation.
Once finance had been streamlined in this way, it was able
to help shape the reorganisation elsewhere, oiling the
wheels, keeping the scorecard. With a better quality and
flow of management information, Grigson developed
‘profitability insight’, an activity-based costing
methodology which allowed him “to allocate cost from the
big central buckets of activity against products in a way
that enabled people to see true profitability up and down
their product groupings”.
23Finance and Management Faculty
SPECIAL REPORT June 2008 MANAGING CHANGE
Once finance had been
streamlined, it was able to
help shape the reorganisation
elsewhere, oiling the wheels,
keeping the scorecard

Grigson is very proud of his new team in Bangalore. “They
have become exceptionally good at looking through the
other end of the telescope, identifying inefficiencies within
the organisation and designing solutions. By shining the
light in the opposite direction they are adding real input.”
This was vital as Reuters finally embarked on its quest to
drive down costs from 2.9% of total revenue to 1.5%
within three years by fundamentally changing the way it
did business.
Fast Forward would call initially for a massive reduction in
the product set from 1,500 to less than 50, a simplification
of the pricing structure, a comprehensive realignment of
reporting lines and a shrinking in the data centre network
from 256 to just nine.
Hitches
There were hitches. A ‘change team’ was established
early on, but was dismantled. “We found decisions were
just being referred up rather than being taken where
people could be held accountable,” Grigson explains.
Benchmarking progress proved a problem; Reuters’ main
competitor was a private company and its other rival,
Thomson, semi-private. In finance, Grigson used third
party benchmarking data. “We benchmarked individually –
our data systems operations against people who ran data
systems, our software product development operations
against similar businesses and our networks against other
high-speed networks.”
Grigson estimates that it “probably took two to three
years” to get ‘operations’ intellectually onside and even
longer until they were fully behind the strategy. “It was like
completely rebuilding all four engines on a jumbo jet while
in flight. You have to be really careful not to just dismantle
everything and see the thing fall out of the sky.”
By the end of 2005, Grigson and his team had taken out
£900m of costs, but they knew they had not put anything
back in. Financial markets were growing and flourishing
but Reuters had not been investing.
With the divisional structure now in place, they launched
the third phase of their programme, ‘Core Plus’, with twin
objectives of a further £150m of cost saving and taking
advantage of the new growth opportunities that were
appearing.
“For the first time ever we felt comfortable that, when we
were investing money in new products, someone,
somewhere was keeping an eye on the profitability of that
product, over its lifespan and that therefore we’d know
whether we had successes or failures on our hands.”
Market rate
Taking out £1bn-plus in costs is an achievement but could
only really be regarded as a success if Reuters met its Core
Plus growth target, set at the anticipated market rate plus
3%, by Year 3 – 2008.
“We feel very comfortable that we’ve achieved it,” Grigson
purrs. “It feels like quite a good time to sell the company,
actually.” ■
At the height of the crisis at Reuters, with the share price
collapsing, losses piling up, revenue and customers
disappearing out of the door, the new executive team had
their work cut out dealing with the company’s external
stakeholders.
With early plans to restructure the business streams
temporarily abandoned, and a public commitment to
focus on taking out £450m of cost within 12 months, Tom
Glocer and David Grigson had their hands full with
bankers, shareholders, analysts and the media.
It was to Carolyn Bresh that the task fell of driving the
strategy internally. Her challenge was to ensure that the
cost savings were delivered. “Carolyn was my number
two. She was a very solid and trusted lieutenant, whose
view was respected throughout the organisation. She was
independent of politics and had a reputation for being
able to see the bigger picture. It was Carolyn,” says
Grigson, “who kept me honest.”
“I found it very scary,” Bresh confesses, “but the public
commitment convinced everybody. They could see the
company was a burning platform. They understood that a
lot of people would have to go, or Reuters was going out
of business after 150 years. ”
Sandbagged
Bresh had already been at Reuters for more than five years
when Grigson arrived. She knew the organisation and
“where the money was being sandbagged and misspent”.
This gave her an advantage, “but I also knew I wasn’t
going to win any popularity contests.”
The pressure on her was exacerbated by the decision to
take out senior people first. “Normally, you would re-
engineer things before letting people go. What happened
How do you restructure such a large public
company as Reuters? Carolyn Bresh, formerly
group financial controller, discusses with
Mike Tate her role alongside David Grigson in
the reorganisation of Reuters and the
importance of the finance department in
leading by example to reestablish the company
on solid ground.
CASE STUDY: THE REUTERS STORY – 2
HOW FINANCE
PUT THE PLAN
INTO ACTION

was that we let the heads go before we knew how we
were going to re-engineer the processes and the work!”
Reuters, however, had no time, and quick wins were vital
to keep the City onside. It was a risky strategy and one
which owed its success to the nerve of the executive in
going public with their massively aggressive targets.
Management of internal expectations, together with
Bresh’s own internal credibility, were key, but a third
“absolutely critical” factor was the drastic action taken
within finance itself, which helped sell the message to the
rest of the organisation. “We led by example. Both David
and I let some of our own direct reports go at the start.
Once we’d done that, we felt we had earned the right to
bang the table at others!”
Finance was a microcosm of the group as a whole. Despite
being staffed with hardworking and competent people,
the accounting function was both desperately inefficient
and pretty ineffective, a result of operating out of 60
different centres, every one of which made up its own
rules, and took its own decisions.
So it was here that the axe swung first, with some 200
jobs sacrificed, which essentially enabled finance to claim
the moral high ground. “We had absolutely no issues at
all in facing down reluctant managers,” says Grigson.
For Bresh, though, it was hard, and it was traumatic. “It’s
all well and good when it’s numbers on a white board,
but when it translates into telling people in your own
team, one on one, it’s painful.”
Headcount
Keeping tabs on progress was vital and, although
customer and employees surveys were undertaken, the
key measures were provided by finance. Every week,
Bresh produced a report for the senior management
team, keeping them fully up to date on the costs and
the headcount, how many people had gone from each
function and which parts of the programme were
performing.
If people did not deliver, they became casualties
themselves, which in turn served as a warning to others.
“Some very sacred cows were sacrificed,” Bresh
remembers, “even people from the inner sanctum.” It
was a mark of the seriousness with which the
programme was being pursued.
Bresh believes the role of finance during change is that
of an enabler and gatekeeper. “Finance can never own
the targets, but it has to help the business people
Quick wins were vital to keep
the City onside
Interview: Carolyn Bresh
Carolyn Bresh is a partner/owner at Everymind, a
consultancy that helps optimise business and finance
performance. She qualified with Price Waterhouse and,
after five years in practice, moved into industry. Roles
included CFO of Blenheim Group PLC’s US operations and
operational finance director and group financial controller
for Reuters Group PLC. She has an Executive MBA from
the London Business School and is a guest lecturer on the
MBA programme at Ashridge Management School. She is
on the board of Headliners and a member of the ICAEW
Finance and Management Faculty committee.
carolyn.bresh@yahoo.co.uk
2007 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002 2001 2000 1999 1998
Revenue (£m) 2,605 2,566 2,409 2,339 3,235 3,593 3,885 3,592 3,125 3,032
Profit before tax (£m) 273 313 238 396 56 (344) 158 657 632 580
EPS (p) 17.3 22.6 16.3 25.4 3.6 (18.3) 3.3 37.1 30.9 26.7
Employees 17,900 16,900 15,300 14,465 16,744 17,414 19,429 18,082 16,546 16,938
Under IFRS Under UK GAAP
REUTERS GROUP PLC – THE 10-YEAR STORY

deliver.” Almost every unit head had a finance person
beside him or her, chivvying them and knocking back
the excuses.
At the same time, of course, finance was losing people and
resources from its own team. “There was a triple whammy,
in that we lost one in four of our people very quickly, while
driving the businesses to deliver their targets and collating
all the additional data.”
For those who stayed, however, it could be stimulating.
“When businesses are doing well, finance obviously has a
key role, but when you’re fighting for survival, it’s critical.
You feel that you’re adding value. It gave us quite a buzz
to help save the company.”
Some people were better suited to the task than others.
Finance people are used to dealing in detail, and getting
everything exact, but different skills were required here. “It
was about ballparks and estimates, and quickly. David
would say we need to save £50m by doing this, and I
need to know by tomorrow whether it’s realistic, and what
is the risk.”
Turf wars
At the beginning, of course, the programme was running
in parallel with the early abortive attempts at the
transformation of the business structure. Aware of the risk
of ‘turf wars’ developing, particularly given the fragmented
nature of the business, external consultants were
appointed.
“They came in at great expense – I have a figure of £6m in
my head – with classic models for change,” Bresh recalls.
“There were thousands of PowerPoint slides and lots of
discussion around perfect models but there was no real
impetus for change. The financial performance was still
looking strong, so we just sat around with the consultants,
debated the models, created ‘decision trees’ and stuff, and
just procrastinated.”
Adding to the confusion and general indecisiveness were
the pending departures of the previous CEO and FD, both
of whom were looking to leave on a high, followed by
handovers to Glocer and Grigson. “In all, we lost four or
five years,” says Bresh. “That’s when we got fat and lazy
and Bloomberg came in to eat our lunch.”
However fantastic the consultants’ models looked, of
course, the bottom line was about stripping power away
from the ‘geographies’, and the centre did not yet have
the artillery or the ammunition to take them on.
Consultants or DIY?
Because finance was organised along the same lines as the
organisation as a whole, the centre did not have the
financial information necessary to support the attempt.
All the data was collected by the ‘geographies’. “Sales
numbers would go to HQ, where they would have to be
re-cut by product, by which time it was a week later and
after the fact, and nobody was interested.” More
importantly, nobody wanted to stand up to the
‘geographies’.
When Glocer and Grigson were finally able to focus on
‘divisionalisation’, they opted for a do-it-yourself solution.
By then, Grigson had concluded that “for every pound you
spent on a consultant, you only really saved a pound and a
penny and that unless you could figure out how to do it
yourself you were never going to break through.” To
which Bresh adds, “we’d been left with a bit of a sour taste
in the mouth after the earlier external models had failed to
work.”
Their response was, once again, to go public, this time
with product and divisional ‘profit and loss accounts’.
“They were very flaky”, Bresh remembers, “but they drove
everybody internally. Once they were out there, they were
real. There could be no more excuses.” ■
Reuters Group PLC and Thomson Corporation announced
in May 2007 an agreement to combine the two groups.
They said that they believed there is “a natural fit and
compelling logic in creating a global leader in electronic
information services, trading systems and news.” The
merger is currently proceeding.
If people did not deliver, they
became casualties
themselves, which in turn
served as a warning to others
● You can never communicate too much during
change: people are very information hungry and
when you don't know all the answers you have to
acknowledge that and say “I don't have an answer
at the moment but I'll let you know by x.”
● Ensure that finance leads by example: at Reuters,
finance was the first to remove inefficiencies by
reducing its headcount, and this helped create
credibility with the rest of the business.
● The role of finance during change is that of an
enabler and gatekeeper: finance cannot own the
targets but it can help the rest of the business
deliver them.
● Different skills are required by finance during
periods of change: It can be more about speed and
estimates rather than detail and precision, which
some people are better suited to than others.
● You have to own and drive the change internally.
Consultants can be useful for ideas and models but
it is the team inside the company who must own
and lead any change programme. Otherwise it will
fail.
THE REUTERS STORY – THE KEY POINTS

Michael Penny has made a career out of ‘change’. He cut
his teeth co-ordinating the absorption of the Peter Dominic
off-licence chain into Threshers group in the mid 1990s
before being hired at the turn of the millennium to pull
together probably the most complex of mergers to have
taken place in the DIY industry.
After many years of solid growth, the DIY sector was
overdue for rationalisation when the relatively little-known
Focus group more than doubled in size with the purchase
of the Do-It-All chain in 1998. Two years later Focus paid
some £300m in highly-leveraged debt for the significantly
larger Wickes. By December 2000, Great Mills had also
been devoured and Focus had emerged as No 2 in the DIY
marketplace after B&Q.
Enter Penny, as corporate and operations finance director,
with a brief to integrate Great Mills into Focus. It soon
became clear, though, that the task would call for the
assimilation of, not two but three, or even four, vastly
different cultures.
“This was the single biggest challenge we faced,” he
recalls. “Focus had been in venture capitalist (VC)
ownership for many years, whereas Great Mills came out
of RMC Group, and had a ‘blue chip’ culture. Wickes, of
course, had been a plc in its own right.”
The problem was the different pace at which people
operated. “In a VC environment, you can have an idea,
send a note out and have the thing agreed within 24
hours – rather than preparing a paper and making a note
for the next board meeting in line with the processes and
procedures of a blue chip organisation.”
“Fortunately”, he adds, “at Focus Wickes, it was the VCs
who were calling the shots. If we’d been the ‘blue chip’,
and the roles reversed, it would have been much harder.
We were, in a sense, unlocking the blocks.”
Distrust
However it was still far from easy. Wickes had been very
proud of what they had achieved and there was an inbuilt
distrust of the Focus people who were seen as a bunch of
VC-backed managers on a mission to asset-strip the
business. A lot of things had been said in the heat of the
battle that had left their mark.
“Not only did day one see the departure of a number of
key personnel, but those who stayed had just come
through six months of being told how poor Focus were!”
he recalls. What helped was the decision, for sound
marketing reasons, to allow Wickes to retain its own
identity. Wickes was a good brand that was under-
performing and, under the new ownership, significant
changes in product range, space utilisation and marketing
helped transform the return on capital.
CASE STUDY: DIY MERGERS
DOING IT YOURSELF IN THE
CHANGE BUSINESS
Michael Penny discusses with Mike Tate his role in the integration of Great Mills with
the rapidly expanding Focus group, and highlights important areas that anyone
attempting to manage such a process should heed.
Michael Penny is group finance director of Pinnacle
Regeneration Group, a provider of investment and
services to the social housing market – it is a privately
owned company. He is a specialist in change
management and corporate finance activity.
He qualified as a chartered accountant and is a
Finance and Management Faculty member.
michael.penny@pinnacle-regen.com
Interview: Michael Penny
CASESTUDY
The task called for the
assimilation of three, or even
four, vastly different cultures

28
So, too, did a cull of suppliers. “We identified the cheapest
– Focus, Great Mills and Wickes each had their own – on
every individual product, and then pushed for an increased
bulk discount.”
Loyalties
This exercise was, however, to cause Penny one of his few
headaches. “There were loyalties stretching back many
years which made life very difficult during the notice
period. Some suppliers were not paid as quickly as they
should have been. While this did not impact on the final
result it did cause a lot of grief, and it affected the quality
of information we were receiving.
We found ourselves forced into a ‘good cop, bad cop’
scenario, with our buyers sympathising while blaming
everything on the finance department.
Did this impact on the credibility of finance within the
business itself? Not in Penny’s view. “We actually became
more visible within the business, and this meant other
people respected us more.” This is essential. Finance not
only creates the environment for change but it is through
the financial performance that the business assesses
whether its objectives are being met.
Penny does not underestimate the part played by
operations. They have to implement the plan. “What
helped us enormously was that all the senior management
had shares. They understood the business plan and could
see for themselves the impact it was likely to have on their
equity. Incentivisation of senior management certainly
made the life of finance a lot easier.”
All the same, finance came under considerable pressure.
“You are providing lots of additional information with not
much extra resource – and at a time when you’re learning
to operate a new finance system. In other words, there’s
less time to do the day job.”
However, mergers also have a Darwinian element, in that a
rapid self-select process takes place among the staff. “A
number of people left because they were apprehensive
about the forthcoming period of change. Those who
stayed were, by definition, more positive – as, of course,
were the new recruits.”
So the team was significantly improved, if not necessarily
in quality, certainly in attitude and enthusiasm.
Paternalistic
Penny acknowledges that he did not get everything right
on the people front. Both Focus and Wickes had been
quite paternalistic and, on occasion, people found
themselves in positions to which, following the rapid
development of the business, they were not suited. A kind
of passive ‘Peter principle’. “People we assumed to be a
safe pair of hands were found wanting. It was a problem
and is something I would watch for in future.”
For Penny, the integration process was “something of a
roller-coaster”. He explains: “There is so much
interdependence. Finance is only a small piece of the
jigsaw. The successful integration of any business is reliant
on everybody delivering what they’re supposed to. If
anyone doesn’t deliver, the whole project is going to fail.”
Fundamental to the success of an M&A change
management programme is an understanding of the
business and the key drivers behind the acquisition, says
Penny. “In any M&A there is so much to do, but only so
much you can do. It’s about prioritisation and you can only
prioritise if you really understand what the business is
trying to achieve.”
It’s important, then, that the business – operations and
finance – all have the same priorities. “We’ll have different
priorities en route but it is vital that we all agree on the
ultimate goal.”
As it turned out, those who saw Focus as short term-ist did
not have to wait long to be proved right. In December
2004 Wickes was sold, to Travis Perkins, for £900m, three
times its 2000 purchase price. Not a bad four years’ work.
And Michael Penny was to spend the next year
dismantling the structure he had put together! ■
Finance and Management Faculty
Mergers have a Darwinian
element, in that a rapid
self-select process takes place
among the staff
● Merging cultures can be very challenging;
particularly the fast pace of a VC-owned company
with the processes and procedures of a more
traditional blue chip one.
● Finance plays a critical role in creating the
environment for change as well as assessing its
financial success.
● Be prepared for the pressure on finance – there will
be additional demands for information, a new
finance system to get to grips with and all of this is
on top of the day job.
● You need to understand the business and the key
drivers behind the acquisition in order to prioritise
your demanding workload.
DIY MERGERS – THE KEY POINTS

While I was group finance director at Reed Health PLC, the
healthcare recruitment group, I led a project to make
changes that led to a saving of £500k p.a. in un-recovered
VAT.
Reed Health provided temporary staff in a number of
health and social care sectors including doctors, nurses,
social workers and other health professionals. One of the
divisions, for historical and legal reasons, was supplying its
services exempt of VAT – which meant that as a group we
were losing more than £500,000 in un-recovered VAT each
year. In an environment of significantly reducing margins
especially in that sub-market I felt it was worth exploring
the alternatives.
By selecting expert external advisers and researching tax
and related law myself it became apparent that with
significant operational, legal and financial modifications
this supply could be made VAT-able. As the clients had no
issue in recovering input VAT, I decided to recommend the
changes at board level and the plan was then approved.
The changes involved sales, operations and finance staff
and so I called together a small project team with
representatives of all three parts of the business and our
external advisers. A brainstorming session was used to look
at all the proposed changes and their impact on all parts of
the business. A communication was then drafted and used
as a briefing document throughout the company to
explain what changes were going to happen, what the
changes meant and what the benefit would be. A
tailored communication was also produced for clients.
As this was ultimately a tax project, I designated my
finance manager as the project manager and she
delivered the project on time and on budget with no
adverse operational impact. There was some internal and
external resistance to change but ultimately all parties
agreed to it.
This was no mean feat considering this change required
all relevant clients to agree to new terms of business, a
change in their billing and VAT charges and for Customs
& Excise, as it was then, to approve the changes. This
was in addition to the changes in accounting treatment,
sales tools and general understanding in the company.
Looking back, this was a successful project because it
had a clearly defined goal, each stakeholder understood
the business rationale and a cross-functional team was
put together to deliver the project. I have undertaken
many other projects over the past 10 years, not all of
them went as smoothly as this one. If you ever bump
into me at a faculty event I will happily share some of
those experiences with you too! ■
CASE STUDY: REED HEALTH
LESSONS OF A TAX PROJECT
Mark Garratt of Cordant Group PLC draws lessons from one project he undertook
when working at Reed Health PLC and outlines the approach he takes when setting
out to implement a change programme.
The project was successful
because it had a clearly
defined goal
● Situation analysis – where are we now?
● Envisioning a better way – what can we do better,
cheaper, faster?
● Researching options – what is already in the market
and what could be developed?
● Present recommendations to board – get buy-in,
and resources.
● Building a team – who grasp the vision and deliver
the project.
● Select a partner organisation (if required) – who
can best help us get there?
● Manage internal and external expectations – ‘pain
before gain’.
● Produce detailed project plan – what are the
critical steps?
● Direct project – give clear leadership.
● Review progress at key milestones – do we need to
change the plan?
● Achieve change – we got there!
● Review project – did we end up where we planned
and have we achieved objectives?
● Regularly monitor – has anything changed that
might impact this area?
CASESTUDY
Mark Garratt is CFO, recruitment
division, Cordant Group PLC
mark.garratt@cordantgroup.com
DEVELOPING A CHANGE PROGRAMME

Managing_change_original

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

Similar to Managing_change_original

Similar to Managing_change_original (20)

Managing_change_original