Primark Ltd: Helping A Multi-National Retailer Unite And Effectively Manage Its Technology Operations

Primark Stores Ltd operates 373 retail stores across 12 countries. IT is served and managed from two sites with a base team of 95 full time employees, 55 directly employed contractors and over 350 dedicated third-party vendor (TPV) resources. Primark had organisational objectives to:

• Unite all elements of technology under one leadership/management team.
• Create a culture of partnership and deep service engagement between the business and IT.
• Bring its enterprise resource planning tool implementation into IT, and more effectively and efficiently manage all large technology programmes.

The Project

Green Park was engaged to support Primark in achieving these objectives through the design of a Target Operating and Engagement Model (TO&EM). This involved: 

• Digital, technology, cyber and business consulting: Providing key strategic advice to guide the IT leadership team through a series of workshops to iterate a technology vision and mission that was aligned to the business vision.
• Business process reengineering: Evaluating the maturity and capabilities of the current IT function and operating and application landscapes against the vision. As well as creation of business case to overhaul IT as not fit for purpose.
• Organisational review: Design of the optimal organisational structure and engagement model and developing strategies to manage the ensuing change.

Through working in collaboration with the architect and key business process and technology owners across the enterprise estate, we developed a 'digital strategy' for Primark that reflected and demonstrated the connection between IT and business stakeholders.

Delivery 

Working from this operating model template, Green Park systematically designed the operating framework, leadership structure, service management and organisational structures. Through the operating framework, we addressed the implementation of Oracle Financials & Retail, and how it represented a fundamental step-change in Primark’s business structure and processes.

Our concurrent appraisal of the Primark Application Landscape comprised approximately 180 applications managed, run, and supported by IT and its partners. Some of these applications are being replaced by Oracle and further applications added for new business functionality. In our opinion the landscape had an unnecessary level of complexity to it and we offered recommendations on where simplifications to business processes could be made.

Organisational Review

We developed a business case that identified the optimal organisational structure for the technology department, considering current employees, contractors and dedicated TPV support. We addressed each reporting line by providing detailed context and rationale for the changes, including in-source vs. outsource services, ways of proposed working, benefits, and risks. This helped us determine what services and applications sat within each area and the optimal headcount needed to manage and run them successfully. We provided organograms, role descriptions and RACIs for each area.

Change Management

To facilitate engagement with the new IT infrastructure, we measured bilateral customer engagement between technology and the business that used indisputable facts harvested through direct engagement surveys to first demonstrate and measure behaviours and then drive changes through remediation forums. 

To manage the ‘ripple impact’ to other integrated applications we designed a generic release management process and governance framework to ensure each release is evaluated end-to-end to avoid scope conflicts and architectural constraints. 

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