Chief Operating Officer Calls for Productivity Increase

The Client

A United States multinational computer technology corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of software products for computing devices. The company has approximately 80,000 employees in over 100 countries and global annual revenue of over 50B USD in 2007.

The Challenge

Maximizing revenue and gaining a competitive edge depends on a rapid cascade of strategy to everyone in the field, around 40,000 individuals! From a business perspective, essential annual activities - performance reviews, quota acknowledgement, personal goal setting, training - should be completed early so that the field is ready to support customers and generate revenue.

• Maximize preparedness to increase productivity - Historically, hundreds of business units handled this challenge differently and with different time priorities
• Essential management data in multiple places - No shared processes or tools were in place to fully measure, communicate, and manage progress

The Pcubed Solution

Pcubed responded to the COO's challenges and partnered with internal staff to create an integrated business change program. Pcubed collaborated with stakeholder groups such as finance managers, HR, training, and country managers to define and agree on the program and its component projects. Pcubed provided program leadership and established a communications network and lightweight project management approach, working alongside stakeholders to manage cross-project dependencies, manage issues, and implement aggressive timelines. Pcubed also managed a technical systems integration project to connect internal tools and create a dynamic reporting solution that supports teams in measuring, communicating, and managing progress.

The Results

This programmatic approach propelled the global sales, marketing and services teams into the new financial year and allowed them to more quickly align with corporate goals. In year 1, the new change program exceeded all expectations. Required activities met the COO target dates. For the first time, targets and progress were measurable and actionable. In year 2, with a baseline measure from year 1 to compare against, all company goals exceeded the target of 95% on-time completion across the World. Some areas improved their year on year achievement by as much as 250%.