Transformational

After a few false starts, a project to replace legacy systems at Allianz morphed into something more ambitious. Alexander Garrett meets the team behind APM’s 2020 Transformation Project of the Year to find out how they did it.

How many projects achieve a successful outcome having progressed serenely from A to B along their expected trajectory? Probably not many. For the team behind the Allianz Motor Engineering Services (MECS) project, winner of APM’s Transformation Project of the Year award for 2020, the match report would more accurately be summed up as ‘a game of two halves’.

What began as an IT-driven project, established primarily to replace a series of legacy systems on a like-for-like basis, and to automate some manual processes, morphed into a much more ambitious proposition after a frank and searching half-time conversation. That led to the participants adopting a united vision for the future of their business, embracing the opportunities of a remote and fully mobile workforce.

The final result was a project that has been truly transformational. “It has shifted our mindset into a new way of working,” says Susan Ferry, senior project manager at Allianz and MECS project lead. “It has future-proofed our way of working, and this has since been put to the test during the pandemic, so that the teams who are using the technology were able to operate almost seamlessly in the COVID-19 world.”

Systems ‘turning toxic’

Allianz Motor Engineering Services is a business unit that responds to commercial motor insurance claims, covering repair, inspection and salvage. Its customers may be companies with fleet vehicles, individual tradespeople or brokers who specialise in this segment of the market.

In 2017, when the project was initiated, there had already been several attempts to decommission and replace the legacy systems, which had never quite got off the ground. Dan McCoach, IT project manager, says: “The systems we were using were ‘turning toxic’ in that they were running out of support externally for their underlying infrastructure. So, it became more imperative as time went on to resolve that legacy issue.”

The overall purpose of the project, says Ferry, was “to replace existing technology with state-of-the-art solutions, combined with future-proofing our ways of working and, equally importantly, capitalising on our data”.

There was a need to integrate five systems in total, which would improve the customer journey, with fewer touchpoints, faster claims processing and timely updates. A manual diary system for engineers’ appointments needed to be replaced, and third parties that provided reporting for engineers’ assessments and managing salvage of written-off cars needed to be closely involved. Allianz also wanted to generate a much richer output of management reports to help drive productivity among the workforce.

At that time, says McCoach, business change and IT “were very separate from each other” within Allianz, and the project was heavily led by IT, with minimal support from the claims business. “We got to the point where we were defining requirements, but as we were presenting what we were going to do to the project’s sponsor, it became apparent very quickly that her vision of what we were going to be achieving was very different from the IT view, which was to replace systems that were toxic.”

This was the point at which Ferry joined the project. She says: “The sponsor had a transformative vision, and it was really brave of her to say let’s stop and take a step back; let’s not lose sight of the transformation we really want to achieve.” The decision was taken to change the approach from being IT-led to being a joint IT and business project. This allowed Allianz to restructure, ensure the right people were on board, articulate a shared vision and think about how it could be achieved from both an IT and a business perspective.

A tight bond of trust

Working through that restructure together was key. “We temporarily put aside steering meetings and project boards, which we decided weren’t working for us as a team,” says Ferry. “Instead, we held twice-weekly working groups. Together with the sponsor, we said: this is what we’re thinking, this is how we think we can restructure, these are the risks and the issues we see. We combined that together to develop an approach that was really going to work. And by doing that, such a tight bond of trust was established, at all levels, that it really paved the way for innovation in the project moving forward. Once you have got that trust there, you’re not afraid to fail. And if you’re not afraid to fail, you’re not afraid to try.”

That was when the project finally found its feet. “When this development had been tried in the past, as a like-for-like replacement, it hadn’t worked, because it needed that wrapper of transformation,” says Ferry. “Tackling transformation consolidates your benefits; it enables you to capitalise on all the opportunities that the new technology brings. It also inspires people and makes it a much more viable and important offering.”

Key to being able to make this reset was the Allianz culture. McCoach explains: “Within Allianz we tend to be very good at learning from mistakes and moving forward without blame being attached. It’s in our DNA to be collaborative. In this case, the sponsor was fully on board with that. So we were able to make a reset that everyone was comfortable with.”

Going forward, the two teams managing the systems integration and the data components of the overall project worked in close collaboration with the claims business, driven equally by the business change and IT functions.

Trust means innovation

The trust that had now been secured among team members fostered a mindset of innovation, says Ferry. “Every member of the team was offering up new ways of working. They were often small things. One of our solutions architects did playback sessions with us in which he would always come up with an amazing nugget. We might have designed a process, and he’d say: ‘You’ve missed a trick. I can enhance this technology for you; I can automate this bit.’” From the business side, one of the leaders challenged the project team to find new ways of getting the best from technology and proposed new comms techniques such as podcasts and videos.

“We found those to be terrific ways of reinforcing training or enabling people to continue to feel engaged throughout the life cycle of the project,” says Ferry. “It was nuggets of innovation like that which really made the project thrive. When we factored these innovations in at the end, they made significant contributions to our benefits and the fact that we were able to surpass the forecast benefits.”

In terms of methodology, the two main teams involved adopted contrasting styles. On the systems integration side, which involved complex dependencies and collaborating with third parties, a hybrid of waterfall, iterative and agile techniques was deployed. McCoach explains: “While we approached it in a waterfall way, a lot of the work overlapped considerably where we could make a critical path work as fast as possible. And that meant we were able to break down the work into lots of small packages, which meant we could quickly move to design, build and test those packages rather than waiting for all of the requirements, all of the design and all of the build to be done. And that meant we could increase the pace of delivery. We were on top of quality, and that gave a lot more confidence to senior management when we wanted to show progress.”

On the data reporting side of the project, meanwhile, agile was chosen from the outset. Rachel Schofield, who was scrum master on this activity, explains: “We had two agile teams: one was building the platform, where all the data was going to be stored; and the other was building all the data extracts, creating reports at the front end in a new dashboard format. A lot of our team hadn’t worked in an agile way before, and we brought a number of people over from India because the agile ethos is that you should be co-located. Agile was ideal for this because the business didn’t know exactly what reporting they’d want, and if there were new reports that could be delivered. If you set requirements, they are going to change over the two-year duration of the project as you become more familiar with all the data that’s been provided.”

Working to one vision

The project was delivered in September 2019, with the strategic data reporting tools being delivered in June 2020. By the end of 2019, it had delivered organisational benefits 79 per cent higher than forecast. The biggest lesson learned, says McCoach, is “getting the insight and the understanding of the vision and then agreeing that vision as early as possible in the project. And ensuring that stakeholders and the project team are signed up for that vision. We got a fair chunk of the way through before realising that we weren’t aligned with what the sponsor was intending. So that’s been a major lesson for us.”

And Ferry adds: “To get that right, you need to understand the lens people are seeing it through. You could think that you have effectively communicated your vision, without taking into account the different perspectives that different areas will be viewing it from, and the history that they bring with them. Are you really ensuring that everyone has understood the extent of the transformation you are trying to communicate?”

Returners’ fresh approach

The success of the project, meanwhile, was immediately evident when COVID-19 struck and the Allianz claims operation was able to switch to remote working without any serious hitches. As something of a footnote, that success can be seen not just as an endorsement of the Allianz culture, but also as vindication of the career returners programme run by the insurer. Ferry had come back to work after a multi-year break just seven months before this project began, and she believes that career returners can offer a valuable perspective.

“I think I probably brought a fresh approach and I’m seeing this with all the career returners, it’s a hugely successful programme for us now, with a number of participants in project management. I think returners bring a bit of pragmatism and leadership gained in the outside world – and that helps challenge the traditional Allianz way of thinking.”

Project editor Emma De Vita spoke to Susan Ferry for APM’s Project Innovators podcast series, getting her advice on how to create a project culture based on trust and openness. Listen for free at apm.org.uk/resources/the-apm-podcast

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6 transformation tips for projects

1. Agree the vision as early as you can in the project, and then make sure that all the stakeholders and the project team members have signed up and can see the wider benefits.

2. Envisage the transformation through the eyes of others, taking into account the historical baggage that other stakeholders and departments bring to it.

3. Make sure your third parties are on the journey. Involve them early, make sure they are always aware of the timelines and objectives, and look for support at every level, from their project team up to senior management.

4. Be prepared to stop and take stock. Don’t press mindlessly ahead when it becomes clear that everyone is not aligned.

5. Don’t look back. Focus relentlessly on moving forward rather than attributing blame for what’s gone wrong.

6. Focus on what you’re not changing as well as what you are changing. You need to establish a consistent level of expertise across the entire scope of business activity.

5 transformation pitfalls to avoid

Change expert James Lea, founder of Project Science, gives his advice:

1. Don’t adopt an inward-looking stance. If the transformation cannot be articulated from customer and external stakeholder perspectives, how can progress against an objective baseline be measured and success claimed?

2. Don’t chase benefits once underway. Strong connections between transformation activities and benefits must be established at the beginning and tested throughout.

3. Don’t underestimate the work required and its impact on the organisation. Get this wrong and capacity is diverted away from serving the end users, generating frustration and impeding progress.

4. Don’t allow an ‘us-and-them’ culture to develop by not listening or responding to everyone’s voice. Diversity and inclusion makes an organisation and transformation stronger.

5. Don’t declare ‘mission accomplished’ too early. The visible change is just the beginning; embedding the change requires sustained input and attention to reach a tipping point beyond which the transformation endures.

by Alexander Garrett

THIS ARTICLE IS BROUGHT TO YOU FROM THE SPRING 2021 ISSUE OF PROJECT JOURNAL, WHICH IS FREE FOR APM MEMBERS.