John Coward
Retail insurance MBO - managing the Opus IT programme to exit successfully from CE Heath parent
October 1998 – July 2000
Opus was formed from Heath UK by management buyout together with private equity finance, and is a national broker in corporate, small commercial and personal lines insurance, and financial services.
My role: I had been responsible for Heath UK IT within the Heath IT divisionfor over two years. When Heath decided to offer a management buyout to its UK branch network of twenty offices, I decided that it was an opportunity to rebuild the IT for the new organisation. I joined Opus and, reporting to the FD, was asked to take responsibilty for all Opus IT operational systems, facilities management and development. Most importantly, I had to create and implement an IT strategy to meet the tight Heath exit timetable for Opus and its 450 staff.
The crucial objective was to achieve operational independence from Heath by October 1999, 12 months after the new Opus company had been formed. At the same time, I had to support the Opus branch office reorganisation complete a major reorganisation programme for both the general insurance and financial services business streams. This period coincided with the inevitable systems preparatory work to ensure Y2K readiness.
The main objectives I achieved successfully were:
- developed service level agreement with Rebus to provide operational and FM services
- managed service delivery to Opus using up to 20 staff in dedicated and virtual Rebus teams
- selected all other third party products and services for Opus and negotiated with suppliers
- designed and implemented a new UK wide area network, with web connection
- designed disaster recovery service for two major centres in Bolton and Maidstone
- managed installation of two new AS/400s and 12 NT servers
- selected and managed implementation of new Lotus domino email system
- selected and managed implementation of general ledger and IBA ledger systems
- managed IBA ledger conversion and integration of the in-house admin system
- selected and managed implementation of UK networked document image processing system in both central Maidstone and local branch offices
- managed integration of DIP with the in-house administration system
- designed and implemented the IT changes to support separation of Personal Lines and Business Care business streams from the large commercial broking operation
- completed programme of branch database merges, together with enhancements
- completed program of Y2000 rectification, testing and implementation
- developed and presented internet trading strategy to Opus Board
- initiated intranet application development using Lotus Domino technology
- provided general advice and support on IT matters to the Opus Finance Director
In order to complete this major programme, I had to deal with several third party suppliers. Besides
Rebus Insurance Services , who were the main IT provider of facilities management and application development services, I had to negotiate contracts with Energis, Catalyst (who were business recovery specialists), GTOS (who supplied specialised document image processing software), IBM and Dell. I had a total IT budget of approximately £2M pa during 1998/99, and indirect control of up to 15 staff within Rebus.
The lessons learnt in this successful period of programme management were:
- faced with immovable deadlines, limited resources and almost complete IT supplier dependence, all project management decisions have to minimise risk
- excellent communications are essential when dealing with a complex and geographically spread organisation like Opus
- there is a constant tradeoff betwen the interests of customer and supplier which has to be managed to both party's advantage
