THE CLIENT
HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) act as the UK’s tax, payments and customs authority. Their overarching responsibility is to collect the money that pays for the UK’s public services and help families and individuals with targeted financial support.
THE CHALLENGE
We were engaged by HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) to establish the Programme Management Office (PgMO) and business case development for the £11.2 billion Aspire Replacement Programme (ARP). The existing outsourced contract, which managed the critical systems that collect the UK’s annual tax receipts of £515 billion, needed significant reform. HMRC also needed our help to take control of its tax collection IT services and operations, and effectively transfer the Aspire staff to them and save hundreds of millions in operational costs.
OUR APPROACH
We began working at the most senior levels of HMRC and ARP to gain control of the programme and understand the staffing needs. We focused initially on building the outline of the business case and financial model, delivering it on time and budget. Our tailored best practice approach ensured knowledge transfer processes were put in place and tools to support continuous learning for HMRC Staff were made available. As part of our approach, we:
- implemented risk and issues management processes to ensure the programme aligned with corporate RAID requirements and best practice;
- took direct responsibility for the total lifecycle of programme deliverables within ARP;
- established and implemented policy and structures through to the successful culmination of ARP These included: Resource management, programme governance, quality control and assurance, reporting, stakeholder management, communications and project management;
- engaged and briefed diverse stakeholders and organisations (Senior Management at HMRC, Supply Chain, wider Government, Treasury and Media); and
- implemented a regime of collaborative working, to ensure HMRC could undertake any subsequent transformations.
THE OUTCOME
Our efforts directly shaped the decisions and outcomes to achieve the significant financial savings required. As well as our broad-based contribution to the program outputs and the day-to-day development and operations, we delivered:
- a rigorous operational PgMO that provided all client-side delivery programme function;
- a complete, approved programme business case and financial model which detailed the benefits and costs of transformation, ultimately informing the decision to insource staff;
- Project Management of individual projects to deliver critical elements of the Programme; and
- successfully managed risks, issues, governance and resource management processes that affected hundreds of staff members.