Customer Science

Solution

Management Consulting

Plans are easy to write and hard to land. We work across four practice areas - strategy and policy, governance and performance, transformation and change, and board and CEO solutions - so the direction you set is the one the organisation actually reaches.

Book a discovery callSee the four practice areas ↗
A consultant points to a plan on the table while colleagues smile, with a transformation roadmap on the screen behind them.
A leadership team working through its strategy.

What we do

Four practice areas, one accountable team

We provide management consulting across Australia in four areas: strategy and policy, governance and performance, transformation and change, and board and CEO solutions.

Each is its own discipline, and clients most often need more than one of them at once - a strategy that needs governance to stick, or a transformation that needs a board decision behind it.

Practice areas

Strategy, governance, transformation and the board

Strategy and policy

Strategy and policy set an organisation's direction: the how, what, when and why of the business. We take clients from an idea through policy development, feasibility and business cases, to benefit realisation, risk mitigation and reporting.

We work the full policy development cycle - identifying options, selecting and designing the policy, and setting the criteria to evaluate its impact - with the public sector experience to consult properly with the groups a policy change affects. That includes assessing the feasibility of options, costing risk and impact, setting performance indicators, benchmarking for a baseline, building evaluation frameworks, and auditing data so the right information is there to evaluate against.

  • Policy Development - subject-matter policy design, with research and co-design across stakeholder groups
  • Corporate Planning
  • Strategic Planning
  • Program Development - programs of work that put a strategy and business case into delivery, built on a team, tools and methodology already proven across government and corporate Australia
  • Business Case Development - over $10 billion of business case funding delivered for government over the past decade, with the templates and tools to co-create a case that gets funded
  • Digital Advisory

Governance and performance

Good strategy only pays off with strong governance and measurable performance behind it. We help establish the governance frameworks that policies, programs and projects need, confirm the regulatory and reporting context, and set out structure, roles and responsibilities so risk falls and quality and service improve.

Performance scorecards and benefits frameworks, linked to what the organisation actually needs to know, keep plans honest as business focus and drivers shift, and keep them current against industry standards, benchmarks and customer expectations.

  • Governance Development - co-designed against your organisation's needs, using a set of proven practices and tools you can adopt or adapt
  • Benefits Realisation
  • Policy Evaluation - evaluating how well a policy is working, and co-designing a realistic roadmap to get more from it
  • Performance Measurement & Review - tested models for reviewing performance frameworks, SLAs and KPIs, with benchmarking to support your objectives
  • Operational Review - reviews of government and agency operations against performance targets and benchmarks, with a clear plan to act on the findings
  • Risk & Compliance - risk modelling and management frameworks so risk and compliance are applied effectively
  • Audits - government audit services supporting internal audit teams, across contact centres, projects and programs, funding, planning and policy
  • Continuous Improvement - reviewing and optimising your continuous improvement model and structure so ongoing projects keep delivering benefit and return

Transformation and change

Change that skips proper investment in requirements, analysis and design costs more later: applications that don't meet business requirements are costly to fix, rarely deliver the promised benefit, and can damage the business's reputation. We help you avoid that, and help recover projects that have already gone off the rails.

We take clients from business analysis and requirements through system specification, tender documentation and evaluation, project management, and pre- and post-implementation reviews.

  • Business Analysis & Modelling
  • Requirements & Guidelines - business and technical requirements and guidelines, built with your stakeholders
  • Processes & Procedures - process review and analysis to optimise and sustainably embed them, including recovery, co-design or optimisation, backed by frameworks and technology
  • Solution Evaluation & Procurement - independent evaluation and procurement support for effective, probity-compliant procurement
  • Program, Project & Change Management - programs and projects delivered across corporate and government, and change and enablement work so the change delivers the benefit it promised
  • Gateway & Implementation Reviews

Board and CEO solutions

Board and CEO leadership is critical to an organisation's success. We support leaders and board structures directly, so the leadership team has its best chance of getting it right.

  • Board Design and Implementation
  • Board Governance & Oversight
  • Board Coaching & Advisory
  • CEO Coaching & Advisory
  • Interim Board Member & CEO

Solution benefits

What management consulting changes

Improved customer value

Human-centred thinking links our work to customer benefit, so projects stay grounded in creating lasting value.

Business objective impact

The work stays pointed at your business objectives and brand, so it moves the organisation's vision and targets.

Return

A rapid return on your investment in our services. We lower costs, target spend and release staffing capacity to deliver more value to your customers or business.

Sustainable improvements

Templates, tools, implementation services, people and coaching, handed over so the benefit stays after we go.

Business case planning and development

A repeatable process, built on government standards

Business cases force robust analysis for informed decisions and agreed prioritisation of expenditure. They bring business and project teams together, set a pragmatic approach to the objective, prioritise resources and mitigate risk - and they are a clear way to communicate intent, scope, accountability and benefit.

Our approach

Our approach to business case development is based on proven government standards, with detailed guides, templates and tailored financial analysis tools.

Value add

Ongoing involvement in this space means we bring clients current thinking on:

  • Capital versus recurrent spending expectations
  • Government and Treasury preferences and priorities
  • Business case lifecycle requirements and related obligations
  • Integration with business strategy and business-as-usual
  • Building to the Gateway Review and ICT Assurance Frameworks
  • Types and approaches to corporate savings benefits
  • Innovation and initiative lifecycles, and stakeholder engagement

Resourcing

Our business case developers work across every sector of government, understand the machinery of government, and have run successful projects from concept to implementation. We build the cost, benefit and benefit-realisation models that give decision-makers what they need to commit to a new project with confidence.

Outcome

We have completed hundreds of business cases, with program values ranging up to now billions of dollars, and benefits that transform entire businesses. Our record for winning funding and then delivering the benefit in practice speaks for itself.

The business case process, from problem definition to approved case

Benefit realisation

Realising benefits well after the project team has gone

Organisations invest in projects to change their organisational capability, on the expectation that the benefits will show up on the bottom line and justify the cost. Benefits realisation is a critical success factor in every international standard for project delivery.

Benefits should follow every change to organisational capability, but that's not guaranteed - a benefits management plan has to run through the whole project. We treat benefits realisation as its own discipline, structured as a stream separate from the project (often managing several projects at once), so that when project goals change, as they always do, the impact on benefits is part of the decision and benefits stay aligned to the business.

Benefits realisation continues well after the project, and the project team, that delivered the change has gone. Managing that ongoing realisation, into a business environment that keeps moving, is the point of the framework.

We adapt the approach for each client, but it always works across four categories of benefit:

  • Financial benefits - measurable in financial terms
  • Quantifiable benefits - measurable in non-financial terms
  • Recognisable benefits - measurable via indirect measures only
  • Intangible benefits - non-measurable improvements

Benefits governance has to reach the highest level, with senior executive buy-in and ownership. Regular reporting on how benefits are progressing gives management a view of the actual project outcome, not just whether it landed on time and on budget.

Benefits realisation: understand, plan, realise, evolution

How we review

Gateway, project, operational and performance reviews

We run reviews, assessments, health checks, analyses and evaluations for clients across a range of business reasons. Every review reports the facts against what was documented, and recommends what to do about them.

Types of review

  • Status reviews - current position or direction of the client, e.g. status review, needs assessment, risk assessment, literature scan, impact analysis
  • Operational reviews - capability and efficiency of the organisation, to find gaps and opportunities for change, e.g. process review, maturity assessment, benchmark, compliance check, IT audit
  • Implementation reviews - how well a change to the organisation might work or has worked, e.g. pre- or post-implementation review, software evaluation, health check, options analysis
  • Performance reviews - effectiveness in achieving goals or objectives, e.g. performance report, benefits realisation

Review subjects

The focus of the review - its subject - depends on what the client needs, and can cut across several of these at once. Most commonly, our reviews address:

  • Environment - a physical, social or other context of the client, e.g. competitors, government policy
  • Organisation - all or part of the organisational structure of the client, e.g. a department, division
  • Function - something the organisation does, e.g. caring for patients, building roads
  • System/architecture - a software application, e.g. records management, billing
  • Concept - any problem, issue or concern requiring review, e.g. business benefits, new technology
  • Privacy - personal and health information, e.g. legislative impacts, public perception issues and consumer impacts
  • Customer experience - we factor customer experience into a review, so the solution delivers the value intended

Methodology

Each review's methodology reflects its type and subject, and is built around what the client needs. At heart, our reviews compare the intended against the actual, whether or not the intended was explicitly stated beforehand. Before any review starts, we agree with the client on:

  • Review nature - what is requested by the client
  • Review type - what kind of review, based on the purpose
  • Subject - what is being reviewed
  • Target - what the review is being measured against

From there, we build the methodology to match what the client actually needs.

The work

Case studies

All Management Consulting case studies ↗

Insights

Related insights

All Management Consulting insights ↗

Your team

Your solution leaders

Meet the whole team ↗

Tell us which practice area is under the most pressure right now, and we'll tell you what to fix first.

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