Background
Yodel was formed when the owners of Home Delivery Network (the Barclay Brothers) acquired the UK parcel arm of DHL. Following the purchase of DHL UK, Yodel commenced a two-phase change programme which was aimed at delivering (pardon the pun) millions of pounds of annual savings.
The two brands (HDN and DHL UK) had independently built an infrastructure of Hubs (the vast operational warehouses where parcels are sorted and sent to the local service centres) and a network of service centres (the local depots where the couriers collect the parcels and complete the last mile delivery service). After the two businesses came under the same ownership, the decision was taken to merge the two infrastructures in a 2 phase programme.
This case study covers Phase 1 of the Change Programme.
The Brief
Yodel appointed a Programme Director who owned Phase 1 of the Change Programme. The Programme was divided into 15 sub-programmes. The sub-programmes (called Projects) were owned by Operational Managers who were seconded onto the Programme from the ‘Business as Usual’ Teams. An Interim Finance Business Partner (FBP) was appointed who reported jointly to the Programme Director and the Finance Director (Change).
The brief for the Interim FBP was as follows:
- Work alongside the 15 Project owners and create a paper outlining the deliverables and timescales for each project together with a budget for each of the 15 projects.
- Prepare a consolidated paper which showed the inter-dependencies and the total costs (operational and capital), the timescales and the total savings to be achieved in Phase 1
- Achieve Board sign off for Phase 1
- Work alongside the Project owners in the delivery of their projects. Act as the financial conscience of the business and support / challenge the project owners
- Monitor projects costs and keep the projects on track. If one project was behind budge (in time or cost) find a solution to eliminate the deficit
- Report to the Finance Director on a monthly basis so the Management Accounts reflected latest true costs and latest estimates of the savings that would be achieved
- Support the Programme Director in presenting the current position of the Programme to the Group Board monthly
- Finally, to hand over all reporting requirements to the BAU (business as usual) Finance Team at the completion of the Phase 1 programme
