Case study: Delivering a world-class Transformation Directorate at the Metropolitan Police Service
Penny Chalton, Deloitte, Senior Manager and Thomas Coleman, Deloitte, Consultant
Deloitte Approach to Benefits Management
Penny and Thomas clearly have a good pedigree in Benefits Management, having worked with clients that include; MoD, Hydrographic, Post Office, NHS, Local Government and UK Police.
Penny outlined Deloitte’s approach on a page; The picture opposite shows her ‘killer slide,’ which although a tad busy for my liking, does present a comprehensive approach, with the typical set of tools and templates, based on industry standard Managing Successful Programmes [MSP®]. So how were they able to win such an important piece of work at the Metropolitan Police Service [MPS]? [Readers, take care not to confuse the acronyms MSP and MPS!]
Penny believes Deloitte can demonstrate a clear understanding of the structural challenges that exist in organisations to implementing effective benefits management such as the need for robust data to establish base-lines. It can be a major achievement just getting hold of this vital information!
Penny believes that there are three critical ingredients for benefits success;
- Accurate management information. Penny has seen so many arguments downstream in initiatives because there wasn’t a clear baseline up front. If possible, get it set-in concrete!
- Culture. Embedding a means of measuring and monitoring benefits across the organisation
- Robust governance. SROs need to be held accountable for delivery - the rest will flow.
Transforming the Metropolitan Police
There is no doubt that the MPS is a complex super-tanker of an organisation, which consumes 25% of police budget for England and Wales. There are 43,000 officers and staff, covering 640 square miles of London with a population of more than 8 million residents.
Drivers for change include; a vision ’to make London the safest global city’, the changing nature of crime, changing and growing customer demand for digital access to services, social media and an ageing IT infrastructure.
Thomas has been at the MPS for a year now helping to establish their Transformation Directorate [TD]. The TD exists to implement the One Met Model 2020 [OMM] with the aim of;
‘establishing new ways of engaging with communities and moving more services online; while equipping officers and staff with modern technology and building capability to exploit data and be intelligence-led.’
OMM comprises twelve programmes which include; optimising response, strengthening armed capacity, improving public access and first contact and transforming the MPS estate.
MPS Transformation Directorate
The work of the TD is organised into 4 main areas to provide support to programmes. These are;
- Integrated Design and Delivery
- Portfolio Office
- Programme Delivery
- Business Change Management
Thomas works in the Portfolio Office where he is responsible for the implementation of ‘Portfolio Benefits Management.’ In his presentation, he described his initial benefits management challenges as the ‘usual suspects’ of an organisation that has low maturity in delivering change and managing benefits.
Deloitte’s response has been to pursue 3 parallel strands of work;
- Built a portfolio office benefits management function
Deloitte have developed a BM Framework to support portfolio analysis and prioritisation, upskill the organisation and gain buy-in. A ‘ton of effort’ has gone into engagement activities, such as ‘lunch and learn sessions and formal workshops, to bring finance, performance and commercial representation into the portfolio. - Support the Programmes
Deloitte have facilitated benefits mapping workshops with people from all 12 programmes to train their approach and develop an inventory of an initial sets of benefits. This has included providing guidance and templates for benefits profiling, realisation plans and tracking. This is certainly not an easy task! - Capability Building
On-going coaching and support to MPS colleagues on benefits management best practice, and recruitment of new team members. More lunch and learn sessions. Copious amounts of tea, works well with police officers as I recall from my own time in the police service.
What makes this job interesting?
Thomas has enjoyed working with senior officers, who are responsible for delivering these programmes, and helping them to define their outcomes and identify the measures they can use to demonstrate the benefits. Also, bringing in SMEs from across the business, particularly the performance management team, researchers and analysts who sit on a massive pot of data and identify what they should be looking at.
For example, Body-worn video [BWV] teams have identified an increase in early guilty pleas due to more robust evidence captured on camera. Expedited processes then ‘free-up’ investigators and prosecutors to spend more time on serious cases. BWV can also lead to reduced complaints and increased transparency in the longer term.
What has been achieved in the last year?
Thomas has seen an Increase in benefits management maturity across the OMM portfolio; a growing understanding of what benefits management is about, and the need to do it! Evidence for this includes the following;
- The portfolio benefits framework is widely recognised across the portfolio
- Benefits have been defined for all programmes and a portfolio-wide view of benefits has been created
- A narrative has been developed for all enabling programmes and how they support delivery of the transformation objectives
- Benefits are now aligned across the portfolio to the Mayor’s Police and Crime Plan, ensuring programme benefits deliver strategic and mayoral priorities for improving the effectiveness of policing and reducing crime across London
- Portfolio governance arrangement enable identified benefits to be interrogated at various levels, therefore reducing the risk of under-delivery of forecasted benefits
Thomas ‘confessed’ that the work had been very difficult at times. However, the key to success has been persistence; continuing to drive the agenda, whether through coaching, meetings or highlighting issues that are coming up. ‘When you see senior officers now coming to us saying “we need to do our benefits profiles - how can you help us do them?’ That’s incredibly gratifying!’
Penny Chalton specialises in supporting clients to establish, manage and deliver large complex programmes in both the public and private sector. She is Chartered Member of CIPD and a member of the APM. She is PRINCE2, Managing Successful Programmes (MSP), Management of Portfolios (MoP) and Management of Risk (MoR) practitioner qualified. Penny has deep expertise in benefits management and builds strong relationships with stakeholders to ensure successful delivery.
Recent roles have included a position at the Ministry of Defence where Penny led the development of a new performance management framework for the Land Equipment Operating Centre. Penny worked with subject matter experts to review the key performance questions and develop KPIs for the portfolio. This resulted in an agreed set of KPQs and KPIs and a dashboard for the LE OC portfolio enabling improved reporting, more focused decision making and reduced paperwork for the Performance Board.
Thomas Coleman is a consultant in Deloitte’s public sector consulting practice, and a member of the APM, specialising in portfolio management, benefits management and portfolio and programme governance. His industry experience has centred on home affairs, justice and infrastructure and capital programme clients. Thomas is passionate about bringing diverse sets of stakeholders together to deliver transformation in an organisation, and believes that the key to benefits realisation is strong stakeholder engagement and robust governance.
Thomas’s recent experience has involved working at a local policing client, where he defined and launched a benefits management function within the client organisation’s portfolio management office, and designed the governance framework for a transformation portfolio of approximately £500m in capital spend.
Write up by Merv Wyeth
Benefits Management SIG Secretary
Penny Chalton and Thomas Coleman: Mindmap
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