The Client
The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy is a department of the government of the United Kingdom. They are responsible for: business, industrial strategy, science, research and innovation, energy and clean growth, and climate change. BEIS has around 3,000 staff who work in offices in London, Aberdeen and around the UK.
The Challenge
Giles Hartwright, head of BEIS’ portfolio management office, came to us in 2019 in need of an effective way of managing the information collected under a new governance process. We were recommended to Giles after working with his colleagues in BEIS Digital’s insurance team.
The Solution
iCoTech ran an initial discovery session to see what BEIS’ requirements were and set up a review of their current processes and where they wanted to get to. This was done using the Project Online tool to manage data and see what the risks and issues were, as well as the project status and who is assigned to it.
We then created a set of dashboard in Power BI that were uniform to all users. Meaning that when presenting data to the Senior Management, everyone was looking at the same information and it was updated live.
The solution was completed in waves, enabling a flexible approach with the requirements adapting to current needs.
The Results
Giles Hartwright says: “To begin with, it was something of a slow pick up, but we incorporated the heads of function and now people are seeing the value and are beginning to engage. Joel and his team have made it a very comfortable process and have consistently responded, sometimes beyond what was realistically expected. He has made it a lot easier, especially while I have been on paternity leave recently.
“I could have gone to a larger consultancy but the small team approach has worked really well for us. Joel is clearly a specialist, not a generalist, and knows a great deal about Project Online. I would definitely recommend him – and already have – if this is specifically the tool that people want to use.”
