Case Study: Vanguard Group x Systems Strategy
Vanguard Group x Systems Strategy
About The Vanguard Group
Vanguard provide engineered safety solutions and expert advice that cover workplace safety, road safety, civil works, building and construction, and public spaces. For 30-plus years Vanguard has kept people and organisations moving safely - with New Zealands best known companies trusting Vanguard to remove chance and guesswork from safety.
Vanguard has proactively grown over time and have an inspiring vision for the future. With an increase in size, comes an increase in complexity and the need to be diligently systematised to be able to achieve world class client delivery and internal metrics. While being well established with many great systems and processes, it has been identified there is room for improvement with their signature 7 step delivery process.
Through a series of conversations, Vanguard engaged Heidi to facilitate a Systems Strategy - with specific focus on the Scope to Delivery steps. This consisted of pulling key team member together across sales, estimation, operations, project management and finance for a day together at the head office. Starting with building a tangible and shared understanding of what a “world class” process looks like, then mapping out the ideal process flow. Live building a swim lane diagram to define roles and responsibilities, lots of “why”questions and facilitating the cross section of different divisions - the ideal improvement pieces were identified, as well as drawing out some of the immediate concrete initiatives that would make a huge difference.
The golden insights from the team, paired with an external consultant formed the basis of a Systems Strategy Recommendations report, accompanied with a fully documented “world class” swimlane process map that will be become a valuable resource for measuring success.
The recommendations of this report will implemented in a phased, logical approach in 2024
Working with Heidi on the “World Class” Vanguard Process
“Making contact with Heidi was simple with an initial call to discuss what we were looking for. This was followed up with a couple of emails sharing what we had in place already to work from. We set up a full day workshop starting with the goal of having a “‘World Class” Vanguard process for exceeding our clients expectations when we install barrier systems. Heidi’s ability to firstly extract current process and then work from that benchmark, identifying the gaps, redundant steps, and additional steps was achieved using skilled questions, patients and then prodding on those responses of the team.
Upon receiving the swim lane diagram and accompanying report with recommendations, initial thoughts were ‘Well Done Heidi” . The delivered information was spot on! Implementation is our next task on this project so not in a position just yet to comment on the main difference, although early opinion is it gives a crystal clear understanding of where responsibility sits within our new process.
Heidi's style was open and enlightening; she worked her audience well, ensuring all participants were engaged and contributed to the outcome. The format of a workshop providing other benefits also bringing different personalties from across the business together for a common goal. The workshop was a success and having Heidi facilitate it made it a success!!!”
The Vanguard Group achieved the following with Systems Strategy Roadmap:
A sense of clarity across CURRENT state systems across people, process and software - built collaboratively across multiple roles and division by putting “everything on the table”
A collaborative insight of discovering ideal FUTURE state systems - including key initiatives that will make possible the “world class” vision, as well as being robust enough to scale and grow the business
A detailed swimlane process map that makes it visually crystal clear the who (responsible), when (which order) and what (platform and process). Having this laid out ensures constraints can be easily identified and bottlenecks dealt to
An associated top level documentation as well as concrete recommendations that accompany each step in the end-to-end process map. These can be reviewed, ranked and prioritised and implemented in a logical phased approach to bridge the gap between current and future state
Facilitation, discussion and hands-on problem solving with an Operations Consultant that supported all team members being able to contribute to possible solutions and have a shared understanding of their crucial part in the process
Confidence in knowing the areas of systems that are working well, and do not need to be reinvented
Read more about The Vangaurd Group on their website: www.vanguardgroup.co.nz