Capgemini pursues self-improvement to offer better support for a manufacturer

Client: Global manufacturing company

Region: Sweden

Industry: Manufacturing & Industrial Products

Client Challenges: A global manufacturing company wanted greater agility and time-to-market from its application management and encouraged Capgemini to identify opportunities to improve the delivery of its services

Solution: Working with the manufacturer, Capgemini underwent a transformation project that minimised overhead and re-focused the delivery teams on transparency, lean principles, and communication.

Benefits:

• Clarified ownership and leadership
• Greater emphasis on transparency
• Multiskilled team structure
• Improved application management and development services
• Improved quality and time-to-market for new improvements

Adapting to a changing partnership

Modern industry and manufacturing require new technology and more innovation than ever before in order to provide goods essential to public transportation, construction, and even the food industry. As part of its ongoing efforts to supply top quality products and services as a key manufacturer, a world-leading manufacturing company has maintained an ongoing partnership with Capgemini to gain support for application management and development of its global website.

However, even effective partnerships require innovation and careful management. When the existing approach to application management began struggling to keep pace with expectations, the organisation and Capgemini jointly reviewed the relevant teams, services, and methodology to find transformation opportunities that would enable superior results. Based on this round of self-examination, Capgemini concluded that its support teams had lost their focus and become too fragmented. This had resulted in higher turnaround times, a lack of cohesive planning to ensure that the proper expertise was applied to each project, and a lack of alignment between the teams’ deliveries and the manufacturer’s business needs.

Reformed teams improve application management and development

Together, the partners developed a transformation roadmap that emphasised four key themes: agility, continuous delivery, competence, and product maintainability. With support and buy-in from its client, Capgemini then began the process of executing upon this plan by assigning a change leadership team to coordinate the transformation. The team performed a DevOps maturity assessment that, building upon the original review, created a vision of what the team needed to achieve in 2020.

The primary focus of this transformation was the organisation of self-organising teams that could work together with a client product owner from beginning to end when designing new features. These teams were assembled in such a way as to ensure that all members had multiple critical skills to ensure that there were no knowledge or skill gaps regardless of disruptions of any kind. By creating leaner processes, Capgemini greatly reduced the amount of time required for the creation of estimates.

Now, the teams accomplish this through an ongoing dialogue managed by a product owner and including both developers and other business stakeholders. During sprint planning, an entire team is engaged to discuss what the work requires and how to address any challenges. Once this preparation has concluded, the team commits to a two-week timeline and works with the product owner on a daily basis to manage testing. Finally, at the end of the sprint, all stakeholders were invited to learn about the development. By doing so, the manufacturer and Capgemini have greatly improved the transparency of the application management services and grown the trust between the two organisations.

Delivering well-rounded application management

In addition to the development of new applications and services, the Capgemini teams expanded their responsibility for website maintenance. This now includes daily monitoring, which triggers a response if needed and better enables the appropriate experts to take action in the event of urgent incidents. While the DevOps journey largely focused on cultural and process transformation, it also required technological improvements to make sure that the teams were properly equipped to deliver optimised services. The manufacturer and Capgemini reviewed all of the tools involved with application management processes and integrated the best available solutions that better supported team operations, with the long-term goal of launching an automation journey.

The final key theme of the transformation was the simplification of tools and processes by reducing customisation. Over time, the manufacturer and Capgemini had introduced unique elements to application management and development. While this addressed specific challenges, it also led to differentiating processes from team to team and overly complex ways of working. By removing these alterations, the partners created a product that is now running in a cloud environment suited for future upgrades.

A partnership solidified

With a new way or working, the manufacturer and Capgemini ensured that the application management team was able to decrease the lead time and improve the quality of its services while also developing a pathway to pursue further innovation in the future. Upon establishing greater trust from its client as well as clarifying leadership and operational structures, Capgemini took end-to-end ownership of application management and began to operate with greater agility to provide highly competent, continuous service that once again lived up to the manufacturer’s substantial expectations. By the end of this transformative project, both organisations once again committed to an ongoing partnership based upon greater transparency and a more collaborative approach to ensure the continual delivery and ongoing development of high-quality services.

By taking steps to guarantee transparency throughout the transformation process and working to offer enhanced support for its client, Capgemini inspired greater confidence in the services it provided as well as its change management capabilities. Looking towards the future, the partners now have more conviction in the collaborative ability of the relationship built upon transparency, clearly defined ownership, and an agreed upon roadmap for future innovation. In sticking together, the manufacturer and Capgemini have reaffirmed their commitment to the pursuit of modern application solutions to increasingly complex challenges, continuing on the automation and self-improvements journey now part of the DNA in the delivery.