Instilling a culture of leadership at all levels cuts reporting time by 65% and saves £150,000 pa.

Success highlights

Cutting reporting times
Reduced performance reporting cycle from 5 weeks to 4 days.
Build senior management confidence
Rebuild board directors trust in the reporting function in 3 months after a long period of no-confidence.
Better decisions
Improved decision making released £300m capital previously tied up.
Cost savings
Collaborative processes save £150,000 per annum in management time.

A large capital projects firm with £1.2bn annual capital spend had lost confidence in its internal performance measuring and reporting function.

Lack of agreement at board level on the accuracy of data delayed critical decision making in the boardroom.
Cost of internal reporting had risen by >50% in 12 months without resolving the issue.
The lack of a “single source of truth” for performance data unnecessarily tied up £300m of capital.
This resulted in insufficient capital being available for other projects and further delays with associated cost increases.

Developing an integrated strategy:
Helped the senior team creating an outline strategy for a more effective approach to performance assessment and reporting. This enabled us to lay the foundation for trust among board representatives from different functional areas.
Cross-functional implementation teams:
Recruited a team of volunteers to undertake continuous improvements to the reporting process. It built buy-in and added holistic information to the performance assessments, focusing on outcomes and avoiding boardroom arguments.

Continuous collaboration:
Integrating performance assessment and reporting into the business-as-usual processes cut down on report sizes and preparation time. Resulting data was more up-to-date and comprehensive. This allowed action to be taken whenever issues occurred instead of waiting for weeks for board reports.
Overcoming change fatigue:
Using an approach based on agile development and using visual tools, we co-created a program of small step initiatives to address objections and build internal support for the change.

Within three months of the program, the reporting team had established a “single source of truth”, meaning new process and approach to performance assessment allowed all board members to be confident in the accuracy of the performance reported.
This shifted the focus of discussions from past performance to future actions and improved decision-making for strategic initiatives.
Over the course of the financial year, the improvements in reporting and decision making allowed the release of £300m of capital previously tied up.
Introducing continuous performance reporting cut the management time required for production by 65%, saving an estimated £150,000 pa.
The improvements also enabled faster action to be taken to address emerging issues and greater delegation of problem-solving.