Mastering Business Development Case Study

Embracing Benefits Realization Management

You are a senior program manager for Symcor, one of the largest
financial institutions in Canada. Haresh Desai, Symcor’s vice
president, Enterprise Project Office, has called you into his office to
ask you to lead a program that implements a focused approach to
benefits realization management. In doing so, you will need to
establish a culture that recognizes the value of project
management as a strategic core competency, which includes the
Symcor underwent a business
alignment of projects to the strategic objectives of the organization
and cultural shift toward greater
and ensure that the projects maintain traceability to the benefits
transparency, accountability,
that they purport to provide. Part of you challenge is to prioritize a
predictability, positive project
portfolio of projects that are currently on the table that are
targeted to resolve the needs of the many stakeholders in Symcor. execution and strong benefits
measurement capabilities that
Symcor Information has generated newfound value
Business Information for the company and its business
Symcor, a joint venture of Canada’s three largest financial stakeholders.
institutions—The Toronto Dominion Bank, Royal Bank of Canada
and Bank of Montreal—is one of Canada’s leading financial
processing service providers, employing more than 2,500 people
and providing services to more than 100 organizations in the financial services, retail and
telecommunications sectors across Canada.

Following a period of disappointing project execution and delivery, low customer satisfaction
and the accumulation of certain inefficiencies within its business and project management
processes, Symcor’s board of directors has decreased confidence in the company’s ability to
execute projects, which is inhibiting growth and investment into new products and services.
Thirty-five on-going projects have been cancelled and the major stakeholders are up in arms.

Financial Information:
Future project funding must address a broader scope of issues rather than a simpler approach
of building a statement of work, identifying resources and planning cost and schedule. Prior to
project start, the sponsor must identify the project’s potential benefits and estimate high-level
costs in a document called an idea charter (sounds like a “program charter”). Once the benefits
are identified, a statement of work (SOW) is prepared, which provides a more comprehensive
analysis of a project’s requirements and estimates, including notional timelines.

“We recognize that we couldn’t just evaluate project success in terms of budget, scope and
schedule without looking at the bigger picture of aligning our projects to the company’s
strategic objectives. This is the missing piece of the puzzle toward accountability and achieving
truly successful business outcomes,” stated Mr. Desai.
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The resulting SOW must be approved by a senior management group before any project is
initiated. Once approved and initiated, the project team receives “seed” money, which is used
to refine and manage requirements. This analysis is then captured in a document called a
business case analysis (BCA), which includes the project’s full profit-and-loss (P&L) statements,
as well as project benefits. This enables the company to make a fully informed decision whether
to proceed.

“Through our benefits identification process, we will be able to ensure, in an educated and
disciplined manner, that Symcor is investing in initiatives that add to the business’s bottom line
and equally important, ensures that our projects are aligned with the company’s strategic
business objectives,” said Symcor’s CEO, Chameli Naraine. “This important process now
provides us with the accountability and line-of-sight that was missing,” added Naraine.

The BCA is monitored throughout the project and is reviewed and revised as scope, schedule
and costs change. Once the project is completed, monitoring continues to track the benefits
and ensure alignment with the business case. Project reports are provided to Symcor’s
Operating Committee on a monthly basis throughout the life of the BCA.

Technical Information
Prior to 2011, the business market opportunities for Symcor were quite positive. Symcor had
expanded into the United States and the company was establishing a reputation as a utility for
business process outsourcing for banking services. However, a lack of discipline and
accountability relating to the management of projects resulted in a build-up of inefficiencies.

“We did have an approach and process in managing projects, but it was neither
standardized nor integrated across the company. We utilized project managers, most of
whom were outsourced, but we did not look at project management strategically, and our
projects were not always aligned to the business objectives of the organization,” stated
Symcor CEO, Chameli Naraine.

Ms. Naraine began to realize that the company’s lack of discipline and standardized processes
were hindering Symcor’s ability to execute and deliver projects successfully.

“We went through a period where customer satisfaction was low. Our business units were not
properly integrated, so projects were being managed in silos,” stated Naraine. “Our lack of
standardized project management processes and our inability to effectively prioritize the
projects we were initiating led to a culture that disrespected capital. As a company, we didn’t
have a common understanding or definition of what a project was, and we didn’t always

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appreciate the importance of viewing projects strategically, so we had few processes that
aligned projects to the strategic objectives of the business,” added Naraine.

It has become clear that a significant change is required—company-wide—in order to shift the
company’s culture and improve its project execution capabilities. Naraine realized that as a
survey of over 500 senior executives from a wide range of industries and functions found, there
are four key ways in which the C-suite should lead:

 Aim for cultural, not process change, and be prepared to live with the consequences;
 Embed benefits realization management in strategy making and portfolio management
from the start;
 Communicate, communicate, communicate;
 Experiment and persevere.

Additional constraints that have been applied to your program require the following:

 Benefits must be transitioned over to and approved by stakeholders;

 Realized benefits must be measured with appropriate key performance indicators (KPIs);
 Benefits must be delivered within the timeframe of the project plan;
 Lessons learned, both positive and negative, were being captured and communicated to
allow for improvement on future projects.

People Information:
You have been provided with some information regarding the impetus behind the program that
you are about to undertake. This top-level information may assist you in developing a program
management plan and more importantly a stakeholder management plan.

Chameli Naraine, CEO has made her position known:

 “We need to go from a culture of not knowing how many projects we have on the go,
low customer satisfaction and little to no recognition of what the actual benefits of our
projects are, to establishing standardized project management practices that give us
the predictability to drive successful business outcomes for the company and our client
stakeholders,”
 “We need to develop a culture embedded in discipline, accountability and
predictability, the changes we make must provide us with a newfound respect for
capital and give us a license to grow.

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 “From both an accountability and culture shifting perspective, we strongly believe that
project/business success needs to be a shared responsibility of the entire organization
and not simply a particular project team, manager or sponsor,”

Haresh Desai, Symcor’s vice president, Enterprise Project Office, has been tasked with
establishing Symcor’s Enterprise Project Office. He has stated that,

 “It needs to lead us to think about projects and their prioritization in a more strategic
manner. This shift in thinking has led us to prioritize projects based on key criteria
dictated by our corporate objectives for revenue, cost reductions, efficiencies and
growth. These must be captured at the onset of a project and tracked throughout.”
 “We knew that there are projects being initiated that where we are not realizing their
intended benefits, but continued to completion nonetheless,” “We recognize that we
needed to remove the stigma of project cancellations in our organization. Instead of
being a failure, we need to create a culture where canceling a project that is no longer
aligned to our objectives is seen positively, and a reflection that our benefits
management process was working.”

Craig Menzies, Symcor’s senior vice president, Client Services and Operations, has recognized
that changing the company’s culture will be extremely difficult.

 “We have a situation where we have no consistent measurement of what project

completion means and no consistent measurement of our identified benefits.”
 “We are hearing from our clients and stakeholders that we were not adequately
delivering our projects and that is a difficult thing for our C-suite to hear.”
 “There is very little integration and we aren’t always certain how many projects we
have on the go at any one time because our projects aren’t aligned to our corporate
objectives.”
 “The business unit that has the loudest voice gets its project initiated,”

The Challenge:
Now that you have accepted the problem in hand. What do you know? What don’t you know?
What is fact or fiction? How can you collect the necessary validated intelligence to meet the
challenge, but also excite leadership to keep them in the cheering section?

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Case Study Credit:

This case study was developed based on the published PMI case study, “Embracing Benefits
Realization Management – An Essential Element in Achieving Project Management and
Business Success”, February 2017. This study is a hypothetical representation of the assumed
before state at Symcor. The published study provides a view of the after state, after you have
successfully executed the program. Congratulations!

About PMI
Project Management Institute is the world’s leading not-for-profit professional membership association for
the project, program, and portfolio management profession. Founded in 1969, PMI delivers value for more
than 2.9 million professionals working in nearly every country in the world through global advocacy,
collaboration, education, and research. PMI advances careers, improves organizational success, and further
matures the profession of project management through its globally recognized standards, certifications,
resources, tools, academic research, publications, professional development courses, and networking
opportunities.

As part of the PMI family, ProjectManagement.com and ProjectsAtWork.com create online global
communities that deliver more resources, better tools, larger networks, and broader perspectives.

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