When our expert Strategy and Advisory practice undertake an assessment of your organisation, we look at the big picture – what the impact of digital transformation will be across your teams and processes and what the value of transformation is going to be for your business as a whole.
But why is it important to start your digital transformation journey with this big picture of business value? We sat down with Inciper founder, Mark Roberts, Strategy and Advisory Practice Lead, Malcolm Cathcart, and Strategy and Advisory Principal Consultant, Garie Walsh, to talk about Inciper’s vision, how it has influenced their growth and why we’ve always been an organisation that starts with business value.
What was the original mission statement for Inciper?
[MR] Our first tagline was ‘begin with your vision’. When Dave [Sanderson] and I first set up the business, one of the opportunities we saw was to focus on helping clients to understand their vision and how the Microsoft ecosystem could assist in supporting their long-term business goals.
We wanted to create a company which could achieve a few things in the marketplace: working in an agile way, being highly collaborative with our clients and also being a trusted business partner, not just a technology implementation team.
How did the pivot to business partnering happen?
[MC] As Mark said, business partnering has always been in our company DNA . What we saw as we worked with more clients was that the larger partners would draw the line at helping with business change management, target operating models or training – they wanted to be technologists at heart.
We didn’t take that approach, as we wanted to be able to assist our clients in all things related to a project. I often say to our new starters that although we run technology led change projects all the time, to many clients this will be the only time they do this, possibly in their entire career. It is therefore important that we give them the benefit of our experience on how to make a project successful on the whole.
So, we had most of the components in place already – a desire for business partnering and a drive to help clients to succeed by looking beyond the traditional project borders. What we needed was a prompt to take it to the next level.
How did you get involved with Microsoft Catalyst?
[MC] As soon as the first trailer came out for the new programme, I knew it was right for us! The themes that they talked about, looking at business value, working on business benefits, just chimed perfectly with our long-term ambitions for business partnering.
[GW] I had joined at about the same time that the Catalyst programme was launched and straight away I saw how it tied into my career to date, which was all about facilitating transformation programmes for clients through focussing on how to unlock the value business.
We got on the first training courses and almost straight away landed our first client for a finance led transformation discussion, which convinced us about the value of the programme as a way of creating a business-centric roadmap of change.
Does the Strategy and Advisory practice focus purely on Microsoft Catalyst opportunities?
[MR] Not at all. What Malcolm realised was that there were several engagements that we had been carrying out with clients that all fitted to a wider theme of business value focus that wasn’t necessarily technology led. Bringing these together under one roof enables us to concentrate our strategy expertise whilst still bringing in support from our wider technology delivery practices.
In fact, we describe our business transformation pillar as being ‘powered by’ Microsoft Catalyst – it is just one tool in the kit. We also offer Business Change Management, Business Applications Service Excellence and Quality Assurance – all services that we have been supplying to clients since our inception.
What experience do you bring to the Strategy and Advisory practice?
[MC] My career in technology has spanned development, business analysis and project management. Throughout this, I’ve been focussed on ensuring that the project delivers value to the client in line with their strategic aims. I’ve seen too often that projects that focus on technology for its own sake don’t deliver anything like the expected value. I also started to work closely with business change experts and realised that the human impact was too often neglected for the shiny new tech. This solidified my view that projects which didn’t start with human centred business value would never have the impact that was hoped.
[GW] I came to consulting later in my career, having worked as an accountant in industry for a number of years, from clerk to controller you might say. I had always worked with the principle that technology enables people to design and implement the most efficient and effective business processes. With that in mind I switched to consulting to advise businesses on how they can ensure that people remain at the heart of change and therefore picking the right technology to make their lives easier and enable them to focus on sustainable value creation. Whether projects are transformative or just to simply provide better ways of working, it is essential that people shape change rather than have change "done” to them.
Final question: why do you start with business value?
[GW] Whichever pillar of our Strategy and Advisory practice you engage with, we believe that the key to successful delivery is looking at what the business as a whole is trying to achieve and using that as the yardstick by which a change initiative is measured.
This means that wherever you are on your journey or whatever factors impact your digital business transformation journey, there is an opportunity to check in and assess whether you are going to unlock the value that is expected by leadership and the project team.
When you talk to us at Strategy and Advisory, it is the following questions that we come back to through various lenses – What are your plans for growth? How you see the market developing? What are your competitors doing? What impact does it have on your people? We take the time to look at your current set up and your ambitions. But it always begins with your vision and expected business value.
