Background
Part of a large defence group, the business designs and builds specialised military and non-military electronic equipment for land, sea and air applications. Because of tighter government defence spending rules and a move to internal competition for capital, the business unit needed to create detailed annual strategic plans with full justification for departmental budgets and discretionary research and development (R&D) spend. The classic cost-plus make-up of the business units’ processes and existing largely non-commercial attitudes towards costs and risk made it necessary to rethink how to do business.
Task
In light of the upcoming budget rounds, T.A. Cook was asked to undertake a review of the existing strategy, spend prioritisation and presentational format to ensure that the business would be well placed to take maximum advantage of capital alllocation.
Approach
Given that some work had already been undertaken by internal groups T.A. Cook started by interviewing senior staff to understand their perspective and review progress to-date. Topics covered included:
• Determination of core competences
• Determination of critical timescales
• Assessment of key market “receptiveness” to (foreign) defence technology
• Determination of key decision-making processes
• Determination of time spent on and prioritisation of major non-technical activities
• Assessment of current projects progress plan v actual
• Determination of effectiveness of key project control measures
• Engagement of people
In addition to the qualitative findings of the interview process, the T.A. Cook Engineering and R&D Pyramid audit tools also allowed for some objective benchmarking against good practice such that a comprehensive understanding of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats could be built-up and presented clearly and succinctly.
Main findings
The strategic documentation as it existed did not present a coherent picture of the true market situation nor did it reflect the true risks associated with chosen research. Main reasons for the variable quality of the documentation created were:
• General acceptance of individual prioritisation including some nice-to-have tasks
• Insufficient levels of co-operation and interaction between units and departments
• Staff skills not well-linked to requirements of bid management
• Little proactive supervision of bid management
• Insufficient departmental key performance indicators (KPIs) for bid management
• Poor understanding of critical factors
• Insufficient risk analysis leading to unrealistic expectations of success and hence inappropriate allocation of scarce funds
Immediate implementation
In order to improve the documentation and ensure its completion on time, the T.A. Cook team worked with departmental heads to establish a common view of the progress to-date, highlight key messages and prepare quality documentation for presentation.
Given the need to establish a clear and common methodology for strategic definition, it was decided to create a template for structure and internal assessment of strategic direction. A simple dashboard covering key requirements and considerations was also developed.
Longer term recommendations
Having achieved the basic aim of accelerating the creation of strategic plans and making short-term changes, a number of longer-term changes were also suggested to improve the client’s overall competitive position.
• Introduction of annualised costs and project NPV measures
• Staff commercial training
For more information contact:
Rupert Clark
Marketing Manager
Direct: +44 (0) 1183 260 229
Mobile: +44 (0) 7792 926 696
r.clark@tacook.com |
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