Case Study - UK Government

We were asked to develop an integrated control, process, data storage and automated reporting system for a Government Department monitoring large- scale benefit programmes totalling more than £2.5 billions of net value. Below is a brief outline of the major 'Before' and 'After' positions of this Lucidus intervention.

Before... Existing arrangements

• Three separate reporting groups receiving non-automated Excel inputs from over 50 projects
• Reporting templates not able to be locked- down, resulting in projects routinely "customising" their monthly returns
• No automated checks to indicate actual or potential problems with either data accuracy or project performance
• No automated data collation or data linking processes
• No audit trail
• No automated process control checklists for reviewing officers
• No ability to see the financial effect of a critical milestone delivery delay on other projects
• Considerable manual effort needed to compile routinely used cross-project data
• Considerable manual effort needed to respond to ad-hoc cross-project data requests
• A series of fixed Excel report outputs needing to be manually compiled on a monthly and a quarterly basis

After... Lucidus Integrated System

• Easy to use and fully integrated system with each project reviewer & system administrator provided with automated, and inter-active, electronic process control checklists
• Project data inputs locked and a password protected audit trail available for system administrator's use
• Project personnel made instantly aware of areas where inaccurate data has been entered - so that it can be corrected prior to issue
• Audit trailed benefit model created for each project's reviewing officer to clearly show the state of current performance and indicate areas of potential future problems - via visual traffic light warnings
• Automated transfer of validated data into locked data repositories with full audit trails
• Summary level models provide data compilations for all of the commonly used data requirements
• Ad-hoc reporting allows the user to specify any combination of data on which to report
• Single or multiple "What If" calculations can be performed on any data item or milestone to provide project, cross-project or programme impacts (essential for advanced planning & control scenarios)
• Existing report outputs automated
• Staff trained to create any future reporting outputs
• Effect of key milestone movements on project (& cross-project) benefit values provided
• Key users are able to drill down from any calculated benefit or cost values to the project's original data input