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Adaptra Associate Dean Voukelatos has successfully delivered several phases of a large, high profile program within one of Adaptra’s international Funds Management clients. Dean continues to remain on the program as a trusted and respected consultant.
Project EDGe is a multi phased 3 year project designed to replace 90% of the print systems at a large Australian Funds Manager with new technology, called Thunderhead. This technology will be the primary document generation system used across the organisation to generate in excess of 5 million customer documents each year.
I was initially engaged on the project as the Implementation Manager in Project EDGe. As the project progressed, the key development stream of the programme required leadership support, and I was asked to take on the Development Manager role.
This has been an extremely challenging role, and a significant change from the role of Implementation Manager, which by comparison was quite tame.
From day one the priorities were 1.Daily team meetings 2.Determine what had been delivered 3.Determine what was still required to be delivered 4.Build a good relationship with the vendors (Thunderhead/SEMA).
Determining what we were required to deliver was a challenge, and required me to invest a lot of additional time reviewing the Business Requirements with the business, line by line and re-confirming the scope. Although these were really very high level, this made a significant difference as we now had scope and subsequently, a project schedule we could track. One of my major challenges was trying to take a team of BAU conditioned resources and hardening them to the rigours and processes required for project based work. Setting goals each day and ensuring staff met these goals gradually did the trick with the team delivering on time and to a quality solution.
Release 1 in August delivered new look annual statements, which were generated using the new technology to more than 1.6 million clients. Feedback from customers, planners and employees has been overwhelmingly positive. In addition, there were no quality issues reported, and expected call volumes in the customer service centre were well below expectations, which means all our stakeholder expectations were exceeded.
External consultants are critical to the success of large projects like EDGe - the skills, competencies and determination to deliver against the odds, in addition to a very strong desire to create a positive impression on behalf of ourselves and the consultancy we represent, drives us as Associates in a manner that is rarely seen in permanent employees.
What did I learn out of all of this?...It sounds simple, but no matter how insurmountable the task ahead seems, it can be done!
As Consultants we are required to drive strong leadership, apply the ability to challenge in a constructive way, encourage teamwork and collaboration, demonstrate lots of determination and, importantly, maintain the ability to promote a positive outlook.
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