The Folio Society
Scenario
Definition and procurement of core IT system, also end-to-end support
of complex retail operation.
Situation
The Folio Society is a UK-based publisher of high quality books and serves
an extensive customer base throughout the world, with
large markets in the US, Canada, Australia and most countries
in Europe. The vast majority of the books are sold via
direct mail campaigns; this results in a complex logistics
operation which handles over one million movements per
year to destinations on all continents.
In 1998 Lord Gavron, the Chairman of The Folio Society, asked Charteris to
assist in the procurement of a new central IT system.
The new system was to cover every aspect of the business
from purchasing, accounts, order entry and customer service
through to order fulfilment. Charteris was selected after
two previous sets of consultants had failed successfully
to procure a new system and introduce it into service.
The primary reason for failure was believed to be that
the previous procurement exercises had been conducted
in isolation from what is a unique and extremely complex
business.
Charteris Role
From the start the Charteris consultant adopted a business-oriented approach
to the procurement by launching an exercise to assess
the current business processes and how these could be
improved through the use of the various packaged solutions
on the market. It became clear that whilst some business
process innovation was possible, many of the specific
features that that made The Folio Society what it was
could not be implemented using a standard packaged solution.
Charteris therefore produced a plan by which The Folio Society could capture
those elements of their business processes that were essential
to their success, but could modify other business processes
to fit with one of the leading mail order packaged software
solutions.
The Charteris consultant then worked with the client to help specify some bespoke
to meet the specific business processes; a suitable
vendor was then selected and an appropriate contract
negotiated, with Charteris continuing to advise the
directors at each stage.
Finally, Lord Gavron invited Charteris
to work closely with the Managing Director to effect
the necessary reorganisation of the business to ensure
that the new system would deliver maximum business benefit.
Through working with the entire board of the company
Charteris agreed a change plan that was implemented
at the same time as the implementation of the new system.
Solution
The new system went live as planned, and has fully lived up to its expectations,
partly because the whole company was fully committed to
the business changes that were associated with the new
implementation.