British Trade International
Scenario
British Trade International (BTI) is the UK Governments Export and Inward Investment Promotional organisation; a joint venture between the Department of Trade and Industry and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. In 2000, BTIembarked on a major business reorganisation based upon the principles of Customer Relationship Management across both of its operational divisions.
TradePartners UK (TPUK) promotes export activities to UK companies via its network of overseas and UK regional offices. TPUKs project, code-named Customer First, is split into two Phases. Phase I of this work involved the procurement of a browser based enquiry management system.Phase II is a limited international rollout of an enhanced version of Phase I, leading to a global rollout in due course.
Invest.UK promotes opportunities to foreign companies looking to invest in the UK. Invest.UKs project is code-named Client First. Client First will use the same CRM and business change principles to provide a better understanding of its clients.
Both TPUK and Invest.UK are seeking to comply with the Governments requirement to exploit digital business opportunities, and to become more joined-up in both thinking and action.
Charteris Role
Over the past two years, Charteris has worked with BTI on a major CRM Strategic Programme designed to shape the future of export aid for British companies. Our work included:
- Providing Strategic Mentoring to the BTI Customer First Board and to key members of the programme
- Developing detailed business requirements for the first two phases of work
- Providing implementation support for Phase I
- Supporting strategic decisions on application selection
- Carrying out strategic reviews of work streams
- Developing a strategy for data management across the division
CRM Mentoring
Charteris was initially engaged to provide a part-time mentor to key members of the programme and to act as an independent CRM expert on the Board. This requirement was expanded by the client into a full-time mentoring position to programme and project managers. Additionally, Charteris was asked to produce a strategic review of the various work streams within the wider programme and submit recommendations to the eProgramme Board covering the short to medium term strategy.
CRM Architecture
Charteris also analysed BTIs customer handling and enquiry management processes, as well as helping to formulate a data management strategy across the division.
As part of the programme, Charteris was also asked to provide CRM resources to UNITAS, a joint venture between Fujitsu and CMG providing a PFI contract to the DTI. In this role Charteris defined clear and comprehensive business requirements for Phase I, whilst allowing for outline functionality needed for Phase II.
CRM Vendor Selection
As part of the implementation, Charteris were asked to evaluate the application initially chosen in the context of the detailed business requirements. Subsequently, Charteris was asked by UNITAS to participate in the re-selection process after the initial application was found not to meet BTIs short to medium term business needs within the allocated budget.
Charteris provided a lead consultant and a backup, as members of the Board to fulfil the mentoring role. These consultants worked closely with key members of the project and programme to provide support for strategic vision, tactical management and skills transfer.
Jan Titcombe, Customer First Programme Manager said, throughout the process we found the independent view from an external mentor helped to keep the project going in the right direction
A strategic review was produced for BTIs eProgramme Board within a tight time schedule, utilising the combined experience of the existing Charteris team members. The report examined progress to date, lessons learned, benefits and metrics, future structure of the programme and its management, and projected indicative costs.
The Charteris team also conducted two short studies with a pragmatic approach centred around potential data flows and data standards issues in and between the two operating divisions. The final report produced a practical business specification to harmonise data interchange and facilitate the further rapid development of applications for the Customer First and Client First projects.
In its work with UNITAS, the Charteris team and the vendor spent time comparing the standard functionality of the application versus the clearly defined detailed business requirements. The joint conclusion was that significant bespoking would be necessary to meet the business needs, and at a cost of several multiples of the original estimate.
Charteris understanding of current web-based technology allowed BTI rapidly to re-select an alternative supplier to produce a customised application which fully met the requirements within the original budget, by utilising industry standard database, middleware and HTML technology.