As promised, as I start to put together some project plans for a new market joining our program, some examples of other type of roles on my project from people who are more involved in the ‘phase 2’ or ‘deployment’ part of things. This should give you an idea of the other types of activities that analysts and consultants could be involved in at Accenture.

Robin

After waiting last Friday, a hasty call from my colleague whilst he was in the airport, confirmed that the Swiss office have agreed that we will start deployment of our project there. This is of course good news, and means that for the next couple of weeks I will be working with my colleagues on ironing out the details of this, including:

• Finalizing our proposed design solutions: creating mockups of the ‘to be’ screens and annotating them with information about logic and processes. These will then be discussed with our technical team in Spain and the build effort assessed.
• Scheduling the designs for build: on a large project like ours there is a rolling build of the software. Every six months there is a new ‘release’ of the application available to existing and new countries with new functionality. Based on the designs and estimates, we will propose to schedule this in the next release that has enough available work days to make the required changes.
• Putting together resource and work plans: Switzerland has agreed to go into ‘phase two’ of the project. This means bringing on a new project team who specialize in getting the office ready for the deployment. The team will incorporate client people, Swiss Accenture resources, and central (UK) Accenture resources. They will cover a range of functions from testing the application, through to change management and training, and work closely with client subject matter experts on the processes.

After waiting last Friday, a hasty call from my colleague whilst he was in the airport, confirmed that the Swiss office have agreed that we will start deployment of our project there. This is of course good news, and means that for the next couple of weeks I will be working with my colleagues on ironing out the details of this, including:

• Finalizing our proposed design solutions: creating mockups of the ‘to be’ screens and annotating them with information about logic and processes. These will then be discussed with our technical team in Spain and the build effort assessed.

• Scheduling the designs for build: on a large project like ours there is a rolling build of the software. Every 6 months there is a new ‘release’ of the application available to existing and new countries with new functionality. Based on the designs and estimates, we will propose to schedule this in the next release that has enough available work days to make the required changes.

• Putting together resource and work plans: Switzerland has agreed to go into ‘phase 2’ of the project. This means bringing on a new project team who specialize in getting the office ready for the deployment. The team will incorporate client people, Swiss Accenture resources, and central (UK) Accenture resources. They will cover a range of functions from testing the application, through to change management and training, and work closely with client subject matter experts on the processes.

I’m sat in Accenture’s Old Bailey office nervously waiting the finale of 6 weeks of very hard work in Switzerland. It’s been the first day this week that I’ve been quiet enough to notice when someone came round and filled up the fruit basket!

At this very moment the project steering committee of the client’s Swiss office is meeting to review our analysis, and decide whether to recommend to deploy our software and processes. I’ve been working longer hours in London to bring together the final presentation and proposals, which our Accenture project manager and the client project manager are presenting just outside of Zurich.

We’ve worked to a tighter timeline than usual to prepare a tailored ‘benefits case’ for this country, as we tried to fit everything in before most of the client people break for summer over July and August. We’ve gone through a number of phases of analysis in this time:

- Interviewing senior management and company directors to find out what the office’s strategic priorities are.
- Surveying clients from the office who are involved in customer relationship management (CRM) to assess the strength of their capabilities.
- Conducting ‘as-is’ workshops to map their current CRM processes, and look at their current software.
- Comparing their ‘as-is’ to the central processes associated with our software – drawing out benefits and ‘gaps’.
- Demonstrating our software (and getting some good reactions!).
- Proposing ways to develop our software to meet the ‘gaps’ i.e. the specific needs of the country – e.g. making sure it is possible to analyse sample drops against the country’s legal limits

We think we’ve made a pretty strong case for the client’s Swiss office to take on the programme. We can really help them to start to understand their customers more thoroughly, and will address some of their broader strategic concerns into the bargain. It now rests on the decision makers to say ‘yes’ and tell us when; and that will be based largely on whether the solutions to the gaps that I have been developing give them what their business needs. I for one am hoping so!

Back on the road this week, as we start analysis in a new country. This time we’re watching the heavy rain at the foot of the Swiss Alps whilst conducting now familiar process workshops.

Every country brings new ideas and challenges. Our job this week is to capture the current or "as-is" processes of the client, in order to identify where these processes should change to incorporate best practices we have amalgamated from other countries and where this country’s ideas should be incorporated into an evolved central process.

Back on the road this week, as we start analysis in a new country. This time we’re watching the heavy rain at the foot of the Swiss Alps whilst conducting now familiar process workshops.

Every country brings new ideas and challenges, our job this week is to capture the current or ‘as-is’ processes of the client, in order to identify where these processes should change to incorporate best practices we have amalgamated from other countries, and where this country’s ideas should be incorporated into an evolved central process.

This is set to carry on until the start of July, when we make a recommendation to the market whether they should adopt the standard, and what would need to happen in terms of deployment and training to make that happen.

With the Euro 2008 tournament about to start here, it’s proving quite challenging to keep our project well within budget as the hotel and flight prices rocket – so we will be conducting the write up of this week’s packed workshop schedule from London next week. Hopefully the weather will be better!

Sadly not much to share this week, as we still wait for confirmations about the next phase of the project, and continue internal planning for the next countries we will engage in the project. The week ended with our quarterly Accenture team meeting – a chance to get updates from all workstreams of the project, and have a good night out with all of our project colleagues. A rarity as most are spread around Europe. This meeting was held in one of the conference rooms at the Chelsea Stadium, Stamford Bridge – so I thought I would share some photos with you!

The system build has ended for the release I have been demonstrating and validating with the client for the past weeks. This means I now have an opportunity to tie up loose ends, and start to make some exciting plans for the next phase of the project – more of which over the next couple of weeks as things are confirmed.

This week my travels took me through the new Heathrow Terminal 5, a chance to see what we have been reading about (and flown over) so many times recently.

As a snowsports fanatic, the first part of the year is always hectic for me – fitting in those all important weeks of mountain air around project responsibilities. Forward planning has meant I have squeezed in a record three weeks of snow this year, and of course, a lot of project milestones in the weeks between – but these have also been a bit snowy!

Snow has been a factor this week as I close the latest chapter in my involvement with the project. From being involved in the initial analysis and design phases I was well placed to ensure that as the system build progresses, that the client is satisfied with the way in which their requirements have been met. We use a system of ‘Conference Room Pilot’ (CRPs) to demonstrate the system in progress, before it moves into the test phase.