FGA Capital (Fiat Financial Services)
An object lesson in how to meet the ‘On time. On budget’ mantra
Jeffri Shapiro, of White Clarke Group, writes that when UK captive finance company FGA Capital, previously Fiat Financial Services, insisted their POS system had to be delivered “On time, on budget, on spec”, the edict was nuclear. It was also met in full - a five month sprint to install a strategic point of sale system.
In 2008 FGA Capital entered into a long term agreement with JLR (Jaguar Land Rover) to act as their outsourcer for point of sale, underwriting, activation and payout functions.
JLR was adamant, verbally and contractually, that the point of sale system, the integral element of ‘front end’, had to be implemented on a given date, to a fixed budget and to an exacting set of requirements. They chose FGA Capital based on their “unwavering confidence and internal track record” in meeting deadlines. FGA, in turn, selected White Clarke Group as their IT partner.
The challenge was considerable - build, test and implement a strategic point of sale system in five months. No passive HTML screens with furious keying of spreadsheets behind the scenes. ‘Live’ had to mean real-time point of sale data capture and a fully working interface to a live underwriting system.
The challenge was met in full and the approach to project management serves as an object lesson for other time critical, mission critical projects:
- Techno colour clear requirements; take the time up front to gain complete clarity on the business as well as the IT Team’s requirements. Avoiding the temptation of “we’ll pick it up in testing” or “we could pick it up as a Change Request if we don’t understand”. Clarify, re-clarify and re-clarify; sign off and move forward.
- Leverage existing system / product functionality; come to terms with the fact that, faced with a five month immovable deadline, it is simply not possible to start from a ‘blank sheet of paper’. If you have a viable system or access to a product with out-of-the-box functionality, that, coupled with your techno colour clear requirements, should be the starting point for systems design. The first step in ‘design’ then becomes a gap analysis of current system / product functionality v functionality required to meet the requirements. The key here is to ensure that implementation is time bound and driven to a signed off conclusion.
- Focus on closing the gap; striking a balance between best practices and practical design and build is imperative. An element of compromise may be necessary here – achieving the planned live date while recognising that best practice may be implemented beyond Day one.
- Rigorous testing plan and sign off criteria; take the time to develop an auditable approach with clear test criteria and ways and means to sign off test results.
- Develop a countdown plan; within the overall project plan, there should be a list of must-do activities that drive the implementation from the test environment to the production environment.
- Develop the big 10 go-live success criteria - the ones that will make or break day-one implementation. Take stock of these each day until there has to be a collective decision on ‘go live’ (in this instance, FGA Capital’s go-live date was mandatory).
- Celebrate success; having finished the 15 minute celebration on going live, ensure your Day Two to Day Ninety implementation plan is updated to reflect any lessons learned along the way.
Brian Williams, FGA Capital commercial director says: “It is a huge step forward and our people are very happy with it. It is completely web-based and we have real control. It’s a significant advantage as we are able to make changes to it ourselves. Being able to configure the system internally gives us that all-important speed to market.”
