Our Case Studies
Discover our previous work and see the results…
Liverpool City Region Combined Authority
Liverpool City Region Combined Authority have ambitious plans for growth and innovation across the region. To support those ambitions, the organisation recognised that its Digital function needed to be reshaped, strengthened and more closely aligned to its long-term strategic goals.
The Situation:
The Digital service was under pressure to modernise and scale at pace. Legacy systems and existing structures were slowing delivery, while the organisation lacked a clear target operating model and roadmap for change. Governance and decision-making also needed strengthening, and there were gaps in leadership capacity while recruitment for permanent roles was underway.
Liverpool City Region Combined Authority needed an independent view of its Digital service, together with practical leadership support to maintain momentum during a period of transition.
What We Did:
CoStratify was brought in to provide both an independent review of the Digital service and interim leadership support to keep transformation activity moving.
The first phase focused on a comprehensive Digital Service Review. This included an assessment of risks, issues, and current capabilities, alongside a deep dive into 20 core applications within a wider portfolio of more than 250 applications. CoStratify also carried out cloud and security assessments, developed a new Data Architecture Strategy, and produced future-state recommendations with a practical roadmap for change.
All findings were captured in CoPerceptuo, creating a live, updatable evidence base for Liverpool City Region Combined Authority. This gave the organisation a clearer basis for decision-making and helped avoid repeated discovery activity in the future. The second phase provided interim leadership capacity through CTO-as-a-Service and Programme-as-a-Service. This provided the organisation with senior digital leadership, governance, and programme delivery support while permanent recruitment was completed.
The Outcome:
The work gave Liverpool City Region Combined Authority a clear, evidence-based view of its current and future Digital service. It created a practical roadmap aligned to strategic priorities, strengthened governance and programme delivery, and provided leadership continuity during a critical period of transition. The review also identified opportunities for application rationalisation, savings and improved use of resources. Cloud, security, data architecture and enterprise architecture considerations were built into the roadmap, helping the organisation prepare for longer-term digital transformation. By combining strategic review with hands-on delivery support, CoStratify helped the organisation maintain pace, improve decision-making and build a stronger foundation for future digital change.
“The support we received was invaluable. The review gave us a clear picture of where we were and where we needed to go, while the interim leadership ensured we didn’t lose momentum. Having a live evidence base has already made a big difference to the speed and quality of our decision-making. This work has given us the confidence and capability to deliver digital transformation at pace.”
One Manchester
One Manchester is a provider of housing and community services. Formed in April 2015 from a historic merger between two of Manchester’s largest housing associations – City South and Eastlands Homes, we currently own and manage more than 12,000 homes in central, south, and east Manchester.
Situation:
One Manchester had recruited a new Chief Executive and were about to embark on a widespread transformation change programme. One Manchester wanted assurance that the technology and the IT change programme was taking them in the right direction to facilitate their future aims and objectives. They wanted to know that the programme would be a success and understand what journey to embark on to make sure they were ready with the right technology to support the wider business transformation.
To discover more about our client and their work, take a look at One Manchester.
What We Did:
CoStratify delivered a readiness assessment of the programme and performed a full discovery of the IT estate. Understanding the way IT was used by the business and the business value it generated. CoStratify used their Roadmap service to deliver a ‘current state’ and ‘future state’ understanding, a set of initiatives linked to risk and issues, a current state cost assessment, and a future state business case in line with a new vision and direction from the Chief Executive. CoStratify also enabled technology transformation through providing technical and programme governance expertise, enabling One Manchester to get started and be the client side advisor to One Manchester.
Benefit:
Our work in One Manchester has now enabled the organisation to see the evidence for technology change and the benefits that will be enabled by IT. Building a compelling IT business case that will drive the organisation forward to support the new aims and objectives of One Manchester with modern IT that delivers real value to the business for the future.
Delivery from February 2020 – November 2021.
With ongoing Technology Advisory Support until May 2022.
National Lottery Heritage Fund ('The Fund')
The National Lottery Heritage Fund (NLHF) is the largest dedicated funder of heritage in the UK. Since 1994, the National Lottery has raised more than £40bn for good causes the NLHF has distributed over £8bn of that to more than 44,000 heritage projects across the UK.
The Challenge:
There was a strong appetite to digitise and professionalise the provision of IT services within The Fund, enabling The Fund to more ably distribute grants, work with communities to facilitate change, and provide greater value for money. The IT platform was very traditional in both delivery and operation and was in need of modernisation to underpin the ambitions of The Fund’s new corporate strategy. The Fund were also planning a rebrand and movement to new offices that created a compelling event for change.
To discover more about our client and their work, take a look at the National Lottery Heritage Fund.
What We Did:
We performed an ICT review across IT systems and services, performing a full cost analysis and a detailed breakdown of costs that enabled The Fund to compare alternative IT service options in the market. We also mapped the business functions and capabilities to the applications and infrastructure in use to provide a common and accurate understanding of the existing estate. These uncovered a number of challenges that we formed recommendations for, helping The Fund to form an IT strategy and a roadmap that underpinned the vision of the senior leadership team. In addition, to assist in the creation of the case we also performed a workstyle assessment to align business user workstyles with how they wanted to use IT and a network review to ensure new services could be supported by the LAN and WAN. The business case for change and the high-level roadmap was approved and we helped provide services to start to alleviate the immediate problems and challenges they were having including migrating 350 users to Office 365.
The Outcome:
Our work in supporting The Fund through this level of change has enabled NLHF to move to new premises with very little on premise legacy infrastructure. It has also enabled a richer way of working for end users, a greater end user experience, reduced complexity in the IT environment and created greater working agility. On the back of the work provided by CoStratify, NLHF have adopted additional support to professionalise their IT service and realise the benefits we helped to outline in the business and roadmap work we were involved in.
Torus 62 Ltd
Torus 62 Ltd are now one of the largest housing associations in the north west of England, after bringing together Liverpool Mutual Homes and Torus. They operate across Liverpool, Warrington and St Helens, providing property services to over 40,000 homes and nearly 75,000 customers. Torus build and develop homes as well as providing property services, with a drive to build thousands of new affordable homes throughout the region by 2024. In addition Torus also has a charity; The Torus Foundation. Its aim is to make a social difference through enabling greater employment, helping drive the digital agenda, improving health and wellbeing and supporting customers with financial advice and debt management.
The Challenge:
With the two parties having just merged, it was critical to quickly put in place an IT strategy that brought the two separate IT services together to deliver one common roadmap of activity. The challenge was to put together a strategy that brought together two IT services, implementing service improvement and enabling Torus with the flexibility to meet the future needs of the business organisation.
To discover more about our client and their work, take a look at Torus Housing here
What We Did:
We delivered a Roadmap Service over the course of approximately 10 weeks, meeting with around 35 different business stakeholders and 12 different IT stakeholders. Our current state assessment was carried out across both organisations separately. After which, we brought together findings and used as the basis for our recommended future state and initiatives roadmap providing a costed plan of change. Our approach helped bring together the understanding of each organisation from a business, IT and service delivery perspective, identifying change based on real feedback from the business and real analysis and statistics based on a mixture of feedback and tooling deployed across the IT estate. Our roadmap highlighted around 30 initiatives that aims to drive efficiency and flexibility that will provide the foundation for cost savings, internal service improvement and enhanced services for it’s customers as part of it’s digital agenda.
The Benefits:
Because of our detailed, evidential approach, it provided Torus with a clear set of justification for change. Our work in understanding costs across each organisation and how we articulated the relationship between business and IT has provided all members of IT with a common understanding of what application are used where, for what purpose and the IT stack that supports that application. As part of the engagement we also identified a number of areas on which Torus could drive cost efficiencies through reducing data centres, simplifying network topologies and consolidating applications. Our work also identified workstyles in which end users prefer to work, which will increase the satisfaction of end users and increase efficiency and performance across the business. In total we identified £3m+ of savings over a 5 year period, which also will provide Torus with a more flexible operating model for future significant business change projects.
We exceeded expectations in delivery to ensure Torus had the information they needed to quickly move forward with a new strategy for change.
Aspire Housing
Aspire Housing is a leading housing provider and property developer across North Staffordshire and South and East Cheshire, with over 8,500 homes under management. However, as part of we are aspire, Aspire Housing offers more than housing association services; it makes a strong commitment to and plays a significant role in its community through its group businesses:
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PM Training – a social enterprise, are the largest provider of apprenticeships for 16-18 year olds in Staffordshire
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The Realise charity – helping people to progress their education and gain employment, improving neighbourhoods and disadvantaged communities
The Challenge:
Aspire very quickly needed to understand a roadmap of change that could address their challenges and position them to better support the needs of the business within the group. They wanted to get an independent view of their service issues and the underlying causes; creating a roadmap of change that addressed tactical issues whilst positioning them for longer term transformation. With resources stretched and a new head of service it was difficult for Aspire to prioritise change and move their strategy forward.
To discover more about our client and their work, take a look at Aspire Housing here
What We Did:
Through workshops and meetings with the business we quickly developed a strong understanding of how IT was engaged, adopted and used by Aspire. By working with IT we also understood the constraints and challenges faced in delivering IT services and the technical scope of the service. As part of our process we also created a number of architecture landscapes that helped to convey an understanding of technical complexity, dependency and business value. The diagrams were key to the collaborative approach and highlighted the key applications, dependencies and services that are critical to the organisation. When coupled with the business strategy and service challenges this information enabled us to form a clear roadmap of activity and next steps that both provided tactical and strategic change. In addition we also modelled the cost of the current service and provided comparisons to alternative cloud based services, providing an indication of the cost of the current environment against that of the market. This was a 6 week project culminating in an Executive presentation, which was very well received by Aspire.
The Benefits:
The cost model, recommendations and roadmap of initiatives enabled Aspire to align budget for the coming year, pull together a realistic resource plan and focus resources on the correct change activity. Key to this approach was the alignment of business and IT services that drove an understanding of IT’s value to the organisation as well as the complexity of the service. This is now enabling the customer to de risk service, refocus resources and form a better working relationship with their business users. This greater business engagement is starting to enable the organisation to take advantage of technology to offer business benefits such as greater safety for engineers and community workers, more understanding of their tenants needs and enabling finance teams to manage and model investment in assets over longer periods of time.
