Programme management for ET&S finance transformation

Our customer is a manufacturer of complex power systems for air, land, and sea, and in 2024, one of their, primary ambitions was to continue building a simpler, more efficient and more capable organisation, with the performance culture needed to deliver the strategic priorities as One. Central to this effort was the implementation of the Finance Organisational Transformation Programme across Engineering, which involved improving Management Information reporting, providing improved actionable insights, Master Data changes and improvements to the intercompany process.

They implemented an engineering re-organisation in summer 2024, slicing the ~14,000 engineers across the Group into 10 separate capabilities.  The master data and financial planning & reporting processes needed to catchup, so that the 10 new leaders had the right Management information and insights to make the right decisions for their new teams.

Additionally, there were a number of very inefficient processes e.g. intercompany which were causing engineering delays.

The master data within SAP, and Oracle products such as HFM (Hyperion Financial Management) and VBM (Value-Based Management), also required changes in order to support slicing the company by the 10 new engineering capabilities.

The new central Engineering Technology and Safety (ET&S) function of 20 people was also inefficient and was top heavy in terms of resource – too many managers and not enough ‘doers’.  Restructuring this team was an additional aim of the transformation programme.

Project One split the Transformation programme into 7 separate workstreams:

• Planning & forecasting simplicity
• Intercompany
• Master Data changes
• Op cost & Headcount reporting
• Key Performance Indicators & MI reporting
• Automation of Gross Engineering
• Activity Assessment & Org Design.

A unique aspect of the transformation programme was that, aside from Project One, most of the team came from business-as-usual (BAU) roles and hadn’t previously worked within formal project environments. As a result, some of the project practices we typically rely on day-to-day weren’t part of the established ways of working, for example:

• Developing a shared understanding of RAG statuses
• Strengthening disciplined tracking against an agreed plan
• Embedding a consistent and fit-for-purpose project methodology
• Enhancing status reporting, risk and issue management practices
• Establishing clear and effective change control processes
• Supporting timely reviews, sign-offs and confident decision-making.

These differences in working practices created an opportunity for Project One to provide hands-on support, helping to reinforce consistent ways of working, maintain momentum against milestones, and enable more effective decision-making within governance forums such as Steering Committees.

Project One delivered a number of important outcomes through the Engineering Finance Transformation Programme.

• Significantly improved monthly Financial Management Information Reporting and Insights across the ~14k engineers for the 10 new leaders within Engineering (backed up by suitable master data across executive systems e.g. SAP, HFM & VBM)
• Automation through SAP byway of previously manual work to report the components of Gross Engineering Spend monthly: Op costs, Hardware, Managed Service Providers, Other.
• Faster and more efficient intercompany process for cross charging engineers’ time across international borders.
• Faster and more efficient financial planning and forecasting process, with fewer iterations. Fully documented process and repository of templates/assets for use in future years.
• Provision of a proposed new org design for the central ET&S finance team of ~20 people following detailed activity analysis of the existing team.

Project One value Add

The value we brought was:

• Good project management structure, discipline and rigour in terms of tracking to a plan, managing risks and issues, status reporting etc.
• Documentation rigour – extracting information out of ‘experts’ heads.
• ‘Good practice’ examples from Finance Transformation programmes at other clients.