Although we were working primarily with LEAF’s executive leadership, they made it clear that the board needed to understand a clearly- articulated business case. We worked with exec to put together and communicate the plan for replacing the systems that outlined the risks, the costs, the likely financial savings and the opportunities it unlocked.

This process helped the exec as much as the board. They gained an understanding of how to approach a digital transformation project with good governance, how to manage risk and how to think about and take advantage of new opportunities from digital.

Having been previously focussed only on single-vendor risk and license costs, they now recognised the operational improvements that were going to come from the project. Our early research in particular highlighted that LEAF’s teams don't trust the data in their existing systems and waste considerable time cross-referencing against multiple databases rather than letting the systems guide their processes.

Our early work with the executive, the board and the various teams involved built engagement and a shared understanding right across the organisation. Staff on the frontline said they felt confident that Suru gave them the right support to proactively guide them through the process.

Approaching this as a single, large project would have exposed LEAF to a lot of risk and operational disruption, so Suru developed a programme to split up the existing suite of technology such that smaller pieces could be independently upgraded without affecting other areas. It also set out how LEAF’s platforms would be modernised and made more flexible, giving them a foundation on which future development can be conducted at a greater pace, a key strategic goal as LEAF respond to the increasing rate of change of market they operate in.

Underpinning this programme was a system architecture which would give LEAF a suite of systems that's decoupled — quite unlike the systems they had before — meaning each piece can be independently maintained, upgraded or swapped out, mitigating the risk of another period of technology stagnation in years to come.