HR Project Advisory & Resource Augmentation
At Ewan Partners most of our client engagements can best be described broadly as ‘Resource Augmentation’, meaning that we assess the specific needs of the client and provide appropriate tactical expertise. When we do this, we can see Ewan Partners consultants as providing support in the following key project enablement areas:
development & high level design
In addition to our standard project enablement resource augmentation, we often get requests for specific HR transformation and change project situational skills. These true experts not only have the ability and experience in all, or most, of the above standard project delivery areas but also have specialised experience in one or more of the following areas:
Project Crisis Recovery
When a project gets into trouble it can be for a variety of reasons and is quite often not just one method error that has caused the failure.
When this happens we find that clients will benefit from a fresh pair of eyes and a new voice on the project to help steer it back to success.
These situations usually require a broad view of which correct project management practices might have been missed or down-valued. The consultant has the ability to quickly establish a set of recovery steps, which are often not easy for senior stakeholders to hear or accept.
We have rarely found a project in crisis that can’t be returned to a stable operating rhythm. To do this however, it does require a special breed of HR project expert for a successful transition from failing to back on-track.
HR Digitalisation & TOM Optimisation
Recently a lot of the HR transformation programmes we have seen have focussed on the delivery of HR process digitalisation as the primary outcome.
Whether a full HRIS change (i.e. SuccessFactors, Workday, Oracle, etc.) or smaller technological interventions (bots, portals, etc.), we have seldom seen these programmes to be truly ‘transformative’.
With this in mind, we often recommend tying the desired digital enhancement with a full Target Operating Model (TOM) led approach to transformation.
A specialist HR TOM consultant should seek to help an HR client deliver transformation across: technology; process; organisation design; service delivery; reporting & governance.
Project Vendor & Budget Management
While quite a specialist capability area, the ability to manage both the key vendor relationships and budget processes, is seen as a key skill in delivering a benefit-oriented project result.
Often seen in large technology implementations the vendor management requirement is often the primary differentiator between a failed or successful project.
Being able to: select; establish; manage; and track a vendor through a project is a skill often overlooked as less than essential.
While not always the case but often connected to the use of a key delivery vendor, the ability to accurately budget for (business case) and manage a Project Cost Model (PCM) throughout a project is often not managed properly within HR transformation and change projects.