After the deal, or instead of one
Value creation, and the operating model underneath it
Most value creation plans are a list of ambitions with no organisation behind them and no money attached. The ones that work name what the company will stop doing, put a number and an owner on every line, and get reported the same way every month.
What belongs in a technology value creation plan?
Three things in the first hundred days, and no more: close the findings that block the year-one plan, agree the numbers the board will be governed by — cost, delivery capacity, one date that does not move — and start the one structural change with the longest lead time. Everything else is a year-one item. Plans fail because they carry ten priorities into a window that supports three.
Mandates
Where the work usually sits
- 01
The hundred-day plan
Sequenced, costed, owned by someone inside the business rather than by the fund. An operating partner can sponsor a plan; they cannot execute one.
- 02
Why this company does not deliver
Four to six weeks and a named list of limiting factors with evidence behind each. Prioritisation, end-to-end ownership, late definition, consensus without an arbiter, and incentives that reward not committing.
- 03
Cost that stays down
Rebuilding the run rate from the bottom instead of applying a percentage. Licences, cloud, vendors, contractors. Cuts that survive the following year rather than reappearing in another line.
- 04
Contracts and procurement
Usually the fastest uncommitted money in the building. Four programmes covering over €2.5B of technology contracts sit behind this, plus renegotiating bank facilities and vendor terms as a chief executive.
- 05
Operating model and organisation
How the function is structured, what it builds versus buys, how it is funded, and how the board can tell whether it is working. I have redesigned this at international operators and banks.
- 06
Core systems and ERP
Whether to replace at all and, if so, how to avoid the eighteen-month overrun that is the base case for these programmes rather than the bad case.
A plan that has stalled, or one you have not written yet
Either is a reasonable place to start. Tell me what the board has been told so far and when it has to be true by.