Integration Project Management

Sunday Business Post - September 06

Integrating new and existing IT systems and platforms within an organisation can prove problematic if organisations do not accurately define objectives and metrics in advance. This is most famously seen in the reported €150 million PPARS and €40 million Pulse controversies which have hit the Irish Health Service and Garda Síochana respectively, in recent years. These costly and embarrassing debacles show what can happen when an integration project is not conceived and managed correctly.

“Clearly some high profile government projects in the last twelve to eighteen months have got bad press because they have evolved over a period of time,” said Gary Cobain, Head of Major Deals at BT Ireland. “They didn’t clearly define at the outset what it was that they wanted to achieve. The issues there have been definition at the outset and agreement across key stakeholders about what it is they are trying to deliver.”

Cobain maintains that in order to manage an integration project successfully, everyone involved in the project must come together initially and agree on objectives and aims, which can then be returned to periodically to ensure the project is on-track.

“You must design properly at the outset what the key deliverables are and then build a timeframe and a budget around that. As the project evolves we have milestones that we can look at, and at the end then we can test and sign off with the customer that we have actually delivered on those key business objectives,” said Cobain.

This project management ethos holds true whatever you are trying to achieve in an integration project, whether it is lowering costs, raising productivity, improving business practices within an organisation, increasing customer satisfaction or any other performance metric.

A successful integration project will reverberate at all levels within an organisation. Declan Sheehan, Commercial Director with Oracle Consulting, argues that all stakeholders within an organisation should have input into the planning of a successful integration project.

“The whole thing about integration is that there are many factors involved,” said Sheehan. “You may find you have to link systems and work across numerous functions within an organisation. So when you integrate the systems you have to set up the right governance structure in the organisation so that everyone involved – people from finance, HR, payroll etc – has a say in how the project is run, because at the end of the day everybody is impacted by this integration project.”

Sheehan suggests that a formal structure is put in place to oversee the progress of the integration project.

“We recommend that some kind of steering committee is set up with all the stakeholders sitting on it. We agree how we actually run the project at that level, how we track changes in scope, time, cost and make sure we don’t have significant increases within the project to ensure all stakeholders are happy with the outcome,” he said.

“This committee would generally be chaired by an overall sponsor of the project, a person who actually has governing say as to how things are conducted, in a sense a veto. That sponsor generally holds the purse-strings on the project,” said Sheehan.

Paul Allen, IT Projects Lead at BearingPoint Ireland, says that the requirements for successful integration projects must come from business, rather than IT, imperatives.

“Typically for a project you put together a business case. Essentially the benefits should outweigh the costs. We work not only very closely with the IT department, but also with their business as well. Integration projects are business driven, not IT driven. The business has a need, and IT is an enabler or facilitator of delivering on that,” said Allen.

Allen holds that as technologies and business processes are evolving so rapidly, and as Irish businesses look to become more flexible and adapt quickly to changes in their markets, effectively integrating platforms and systems within an organisation holds the key to business success.

“Companies need to move away from fragmented systems, they need to become much more agile in terms of what they offer and how they operate so that technological agility and operational agility don’t become an inhibitor of an organisations ability to deliver new services to the market in a timely fashion and in a flexible way,” said Allen.

One outstanding trend within the integration market is that solutions are becoming increasingly designed with non-IT professionals in mind as users. The popularity and importance of GUI (Graphical User Interface) Web-services bears this out. One example is BPEL – Business Process Execution Language - which co-ordinates the flow of data between applications according to easy-to-define business processes.

“We are moving towards easier to use tools, which are more business focused and process focused which allow you to define the integration more quickly,” said Sheehan. “The interface is also being operated now by more business people and less technical people.”

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Ocuco Success Story

Sunday Business Post - August 2006

Irish company Ocuco is now the largest optical software firm outside of the US, after the announcement of its acquisition of leading UK competitor Relcon Software.

The deal, which is valued at over £3m sterling, is the biggest in the history of the European optical software industry.

Ocuco founder Leo McCanna, who had the initial idea for the business while on holiday in Galway in 1993, now oversees a company boasting a suite of products covering both optical retail and laboratory systems, pharmacy and ophthalmology; with a combined revenue of over €6m in 2005, a staff of 55 and an installed base of over 1000 sites spread across the UK, Ireland and Europe.

“This deal gives us effectively a dominant market share in the UK,” said McCanna. “We already have about 30% of the retail side of the UK optical market and on the wholesale labs side Relcon software would have maybe 80% market share. Relcon also bring to the table some very nice technology. It puts us in a very good strategic position to grow our business over the next five years.”

The deal will see the retention of Ocuco’s flagship Acuitas product – a software package which allows opticians practices to manage their customer base – as well as Relcon’s F.O.C.U.S. practice software brands.

The acquisition follows on from a recently concluded Management Buy-Out (MBO) which valued Ocuco at €5m.

“That MBO is now complete and between myself and Ocuco staff we own 98.5% of the company,” said McCanna.

Ocuco is one of the foremost success stories in the Irish retail software market. The initial impulse for the company came when McCanna and a friend had the idea for a ‘Smart Card’ which would hold a patient’s optical prescription and could be easily read in any opticians practice. McCanna, who has a degree in Electrical Engineering from DIT and an MBA from UCD, was ahead of his time.

“Back in 1993 most Irish opticians didn’t have computer systems, so it was like inventing cars before there were roads.”

However the idea evolved into the development of a software package to help opticians administer their practice more effectively. The company built slowly at first, without external funding, but made steady progress, and in 1997 McCanna secured finance to develop a package – Acuitas - that could meet the requirements of large chains, small independent practices and hospitals.

“Between 1997 and 2000 we grew our turnover from approx £100,000 to about €1.2m and during that period we raised approximately €750,000 in equity finance from investment firms, BES investors and family and friends,“ said McCanna.

The company’s development was then slowed by the external conditions pertaining in 2001 and 2002, but made its first profit of €200,000 in 2002, and has been profitable every year since.

A huge boost was the sealing of a deal with UK giant Vision Express in 2003, where Ocuco were given the contract to supply software to its network of more than 200 stores. This meant McCanna and colleagues had to ratchet up their operations considerably.

“We rolled out our software to over 200 stores Vision Express stores in 2005. There are about 3,000 users and we installed about ten shops a week, plus training the users. It was the largest retail software rollout in Europe last year and certainly the largest ever in the world optical retail market,” said McCanna.

Ocuco have also diversified into the pharmacy and ophthalmology markets, and their Prometheus software product, which is used in pharmacy practices, enjoys a 10% market share in Ireland. A current priority is securing a deal with a large UK pharmacy chain.

“We have pharmacy sales of about €500,000 a year in Ireland. Over the next two years we plan to invest in localising Prometheus for the UK market and other markets abroad,” said McCanna.

McCanna maintains that Ocuco are operating in very competitive markets.

“There are about 15 suppliers of software to opticians in the UK and Ireland. It is very difficult to achieve a sustainable position in the market. It takes about ten years to get your product sufficiently developed so it is commercially suitable for a large range of practices,” he said.

To achieve this success requires a strong focus on research and development.

“We spent €500,000 to €1m a year on software development, even through the bad times, and our R & D budget going forward is about €2m a year,” said McCanna.

The Relcon deal is part of an aggressive business development strategy on the part of Ocuco.

“More acquisitions are planned, including a company in the US right now, and we will be looking to acquire into the pharmacy and ophthalmology sectors in Ireland, the UK and Europe, while a Japanese presence should be set up before the end of 2006,” said McCanna.

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Polish Workers Filling Gaps in Irish Economy

Sunday Business Post - July 2006

While there are significant numbers of Polish nationals now working in the Irish economy, these are filling vacancies in sectors where demand is strong, rather than displacing Irish workers.

EU10 nationals have accounted for approximately half of all jobs created in Ireland since May 1st 2004. Over 50% of these work in manufacturing and construction, with catering, retail/wholesale and financial sectors coming next. The majority of the EU10 migrants who came to Ireland in 2005 were Polish.

Heidi Lougheed, Social Policy Executive with IBEC, says that Polish people are working in these sectors of the economy as that is where people are required.

“It’s not that Polish candidates are useful for particular sectors, it is that certain sectors have job vacancies in large numbers which have been filled by people who have presented themselves,” she said.

Most companies haven’t needed to change their traditional recruitment practices.

“Companies have gone about trying to recruit people in the same way that they normally have, using recruitment companies, websites, advertisements in newspapers, recommendations from colleagues and walk-ins,” said Lougheed. “People aren’t deliberately looking for Polish nationals; the Polish nationals are coming forward to them.

Other companies have been more pro-active. A number of Irish recruitment companies have built up links with the Polish market. There are also a large number of Polish based recruiters who send staff to Ireland – the website of the Polish embassy in Ireland lists twenty seven such companies. Finally Eures offers a free recruitment service to Irish companies (see panels).

The two main issues which employers encounter when taking on Polish staff are language and qualifications. English is taught as a second language in Polish schools and many people arrive here with a good knowledge of the language, but not everyone is fluent.

“The language issue continues to be a problem. While many people are highly educated with degrees and masters, quite often when they come and work here they are working at lesser skills levels than they are capable of, purely because of the language issue,” said Patricia Callan, Director of the Small Firms Association (SFA).

Even for jobs where staff are not customer facing, English language skills are vital – for example in ensuring that staff understand contracts and health and safety requirements.

There have also been difficulties around the issue of qualifications, when employers need to be sure that candidates can do the job required. Degree certificates in Polish, for example, can present a problem to employers.

“The problem is often not so much problems with the actual qualifications, but working out what the qualification actually means,” says Lougheed.

The National Qualifications Authority of Ireland (NQAI) offer a translation and equivalence service which employers can use to determine how a Polish qualification compares with Irish standards.

There can also be some extra training costs involved with hiring Polish workers, although this are not seen as a significant factor.

“Individuals coming forward can be very skilled and they are very good at what they do, but the way of doing whatever the process happens to be is slightly different in Poland than here. Someone needs to show them how it is done in Ireland, or in that company. However that could just easily happen between two Irish nationals who have worked for two different companies who had different ways of doing the same thing,” said Lougheed.

There has been a perception that Irish companies were using Polish and other EU 10 workers to keep salaries down within certain sectors. However EU and Irish government equality legislation is very strict.

“If someone is doing the same job, for the same amount of time, and someone is paying them less money, then that is discriminatory and that is illegal,” says Callan.

Factors such as experience and qualifications also impact on salary levels, but that occurs in the case of all candidates, regardless of nationality. Evidence suggests that employers who did attempt to pay lower salaries have suffered.

“In the past employers generally speaking were not paying the going rate for the job, perhaps just paying above the minimum wage,” said Tony Watson, Eures Co-ordinator with FAS. “This was a rather short sighted policy because once they came here they could see that they could get better money with another employer and they left. I think the challenge to employers is induction, integration and retention in the sense of training.”

The significant numbers of Polish people within the Irish labour market suggest that a permanent link between the two countries is forming. Given the projected continuing excess demand within the Irish labour market this connection looks likely to strengthen going forward, with recruitment more focused within particular areas of the economy.

“Considering how stretched our labour market is at the moment, if the economy continues to remain on its current path it is very likely that we will continue to need strong numbers of non-Irish nationals coming in,” said Lougheed. “What we may see is that some sectors need more people than others. That is already the case but I think it will become slightly more obvious.”

EURES Insert

Employers in Ireland can recruit from Poland, and all other European Economic Area member states (EU plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway), by using the European Commission’s Eures network. Eures links the Public Employment Services (PES) of the EEA countries. In Ireland Eures is based in FÁS.

Eures offers two distinct services – a self service system and a tailored recruitment service. Both services are free to employers.

To use the self-service system employers give details of the jobs to FÁS by phoning the FÁS Contact Centre (1800 611116) or directly on-line at www.fas.ie. These details go immediately into the databases of 28 EEA Member States, and also appear on their websites. Interested applicants then apply directly to the company. At any one time there are over 900,000 jobs in the system, of which 11,000 plus are from Ireland.

The second opportunity for employers is to avail of specially designed European recruitment projects. FÁS Eures Advisers will work with individual employers and find out their requirements. The positions are then advertised in another country, applications are sent to the employer who chooses which candidates they wish to interview. The interview arrangements and facilities are provided by the PES in the host country.

The employer then travels to the other country to carry out the interviews. Candidates also attend presentations on living and working conditions in Ireland, and on the contracts of employment.

“We feel this is of great benefit to the applicants who receive full information so they can make an informed decision as to whether they should accept the contracts or come to Ireland and it is obviously good for employers as well, because the last thing the employer wants is jobseekers to come here and have false expectations and after a week or month decide to go back,” said Tony Watson, Eures Co-ordinator with FAS.

Since the accession of Poland to the EU FÁS-Eures has organised many successful recruitment events in Poland. A major construction recruitment event will be held in Warsaw on the 17th and 18th August.

Financial Services Insert

While survey data shows that the majority of Polish workers in the Irish economy work in lower skilled sectors, an increasing amount of Polish highly skilled workers and graduates are taking up opportunities within the higher-value sectors of the Irish economy.

One employment market in which there is a high demand for qualified candidates from abroad is in financial services.

“There continues to be a shortage of people in the Irish market, particularly in the funds area, and we have turned our attention towards Poland to tap into a rich vein of young finance professionals,” said David Wilkes, Director of Irish financial recruitment specialists Cox, Fitzsimons & Wilkes, who have been recruiting in Poland for the past two years.

“We recently completed a very successful recruitment project on behalf of one of our clients, a large US Bank in Dublin. We used multiple sourcing channels which produced in excess of 90 candidates and interviewed almost 50, producing a shortlist of 20. Our client then came to Warsaw, met and offered 19 jobs and we have a 100% acceptance rate. We hope to repeat this process and will endeavour to replicate the results. The time frame of execution was 4 weeks,” said Wilkes.

Wilkes stresses that Poland is not a source of cheap labour and candidates are offered the exact same salaries, terms and conditions, but the Polish market is an additional resource which is useful as the Irish sector is particularly tight at present.

“The education system there produces highly qualified young graduates who speak English and another language, usually German, have with interim experience and a very strong work ethic,” said Wilkes.

Wilkes argues that recruiting from the Polish market requires a little extra work from Irish companies, but is well worth the effort.

“Our Polish venture has been particularly interesting for us and was a huge learning experience, one where we needed to fine-tune our screening to accommodate cross-cultural differences,” he said.

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Teffle This, and Teffle That

Previously appeared on www.nightcourses.com
June 2006

Teaching English as a Foreign Language is a very popular course choice for many people in Ireland. Here's the nightcourses.com TEFL lowdown…

A few years ago not that many people knew what TEFL was, or how to pronounce it properly. But these days, everywhere you go it is all teffle this and teffle that. Teaching English as a Foreign Language courses have become a very popular choice for students wanting to travel after graduation, and also for those looking to take a career break, improve their own English language skills or establish themselves in another country.

There are no official statistics available for Irish global TEFL teacher numbers, but it is fair to assume that there are now many thousands of Irish people teaching English as a foreign language all over the world. There are an estimated 3,000 Irish English language teachers in South Korea alone, and many, many others throughout Europe, Asia and South America. Where Irish people used to inevitably find themselves working behind a bar no matter whichever far flung corner of the globe they turned up in, now they are just as likely to be sat in front of a class demonstrating the difference between “their” and “there” and explaining why “sat in front of a class” is bad grammar.

As English is the language of global commerce, and now spoken in most countries on all continents, there are billions of potential students throughout the world. Business types want to improve their English language skills for career reasons. Other people wish to learn English to travel, while parents in many countries decide to boost their children’s future prospects by encouraging them to learn English. All of which is great news for Irish people who run out of money half way through their round the world trip.

It is a good idea to do a TEFL course before you set out. Running TEFL courses is now a booming business in Ireland, and there are a large number of schools and institutions offering TEFL courses at locations all around the country. Interested students should, however, make sure they choose a reputable institution. The Advisory Council for English Language Schools (ACELS) is an organisation set up by the Irish Department of Education & Science to control standards in Irish TEFL schools and organisations through an inspection/recognition scheme. ACELS standards require students to already have completed a primary degree and stipulate that courses be of at least 115 hours of study duration, including 25 hours of trainer-directed study. You can check if the school you are considering is listed with ACELS by visiting their website at www.acels.ie.

Even if you find an ACELS approved school near you, it is a good idea to check to see which body certifies their courses. Some certifications are more widely recognised than others. As a guide, those offered by Recognised English Language Schools Association (RELSA) and the Association of Teacher Training (ATT) are widely recognised, as are those from the Royal Society for Arts (RSA)/Cambridge and Trinity College London.

All these regulations seem a bit restrictive to some, who point out they have already been speaking and writing English for at least twenty years. However it is surprising how much (or little) most of us know about the mechanics of the language – it’s a little like the difference between driving and fixing a car. For example, not everyone knows their predicates from their past participles. One of the more embarrassing things about being a TEFL teacher is not being able to answer an eleven year old Brazilian boy’s question about grammar. “It just sounds right” is not a good enough reply. Good TEFL courses also give practical teaching skills, and allow time for valuable teaching practice to give you the confidence to stand up in front of a class.

Subjects taught on a typical TEFL course include Language Awareness, Classroom Management, Lesson Planning, Career Information, Language Skills, Testing, Error Correction, Materials Evaluation, Methodology and Presentation/Practice Techniques. There is generally significant homework assigned, and assessment can be through a mix of classroom practice, project work and a final exam.

Many TEFL qualified people find employment without leaving Ireland. With lots of people coming here to a) take advantage of our newfound economic wealth and b) take up the jobs we Irish don’t want to do any more, there are plenty of people around looking to improve their English language skills. Over 100,000 students enrol in English language programmes in Ireland every year, leading to a huge demand for qualified teachers.

TEFL courses are popular with many other people besides recently graduated twentysomethings. A TEFL qualification is useful for much more than teaching a few classes to fund a holiday. People looking to relocate to another country often use a TEFL job to establish themselves while they secure a permanent job in their chosen career. Obviously anyone looking to teach in an Irish primary or secondary school can benefit from the TEFL experience. Potential employers in numerous other industries and sectors will be impressed by an extra qualification on your CV. The teaching practice can be useful for anyone who wants to gain confidence speaking in front of a group or giving presentations. Some people go on to instruct new TEFL teachers themselves. Knowing how to speak and write proper is an advantage for pretty much every job available.

So it is no wonder that TEFL qualifications are among the most popular course options in Ireland at the moment. The mix of travel opportunities, potential money making and valuable language skills mean that more and more Irish people enrol in a TEFL programme each year. If it sounds like the kind of thing you could be interested in search the National Education Database to find a suitable TEFL course near you.

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HP in €20m Outsourcing Deal with Education Firm

Sunday Business Post - June 2006

An Chéim – the IT systems provider for Ireland’s Institutes of Education – are very happy with the progress of their seven year, €20m outsourcing arrangement with HP.

The contracts came into effect last May and An Chéim and HP have been working together for the last six months to move each Institute’s server hardware and associated software to a central HP managed location.

“We have taken each of the banner applications for each institute and transitioned them into the HP Data Centre in Citywest. So they are now being served out to the sector from that location. We will have full implementation by the end of July,” says Derek Feeney – manager of An Chéim Computer Services Limited.

An Chéim is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Dublin Institute of Technology. Its function is to provide IT services to all institutes of higher education in Ireland, including both hardware and software services. It employs seventeen people at its HQ in Tallaght.

The systems implemented by An Chéim for each of the 13 Institutes of Technology and Tipperary Institute include a financial management system, a student record system, a suite of fully integrated HR applications and a library system. HP are now responsible for the maintenance and upkeep of all of these and the deal ensures that the initial investment of €45m is protected, while the benefits associated with a common design are realised.

“HP are providing help-desk support, so they are the first point of contact for the Institutes for the support of their systems. They are providing technical services as well including UNIX support, Windows and NT support, database administration. They are also providing some analyst support and some applications development support,” says Feeney.

Each Institute will also benefit from significant savings due to the fact that no individual Institute will have to invest in the technology or the staff to manage each application. Furthermore, each Institute will gain from the added efficiency of their IT staff being freed up to deal with other issues and benefit from reduced energy costs associated with running the hardware.

This outsourcing arrangement allows An Chéim to focus on planning and strategy decisions, leaving the day to day management and running of the systems to HP.

“We are trying to use a common sense approach and use everybody’s strengths. They are the strengths of HP – technical services, database management, 24/7 operations – our strengths are in working with the business to address the changing needs of Irish higher education,” says Feeney. “Scarce An Chéim resources are now released to focus on the business analysis and business process consulting in the higher education field on behalf of the institutes.”

The deal came about after a dedicated period of preparation and thought. IBM Consulting Services were asked to carry out an independent report on the Institutes’ IT requirements and determine which aspects were suitable for outsourcing. There was then an EU procurement process and HP won the tender.

Obviously, the IT services area is developing rapidly, and Feeney is aware that over the course of a seven year arrangement – which has an option to extend to eleven years – new technologies and circumstances will arise. However he is confident that the deal agreed caters for all eventualities.

“Over the seven years the piece will change. You are never going to remain static. We have a comprehensive contract but you can never legislate for everything and that is where building the relationship with the supplier is key. If things change we can negotiate with HP for a new statement of work, but we are not limited to HP – there is flexibility built into the contract and we would be quite prepared to negotiate with HP or anybody else who can provide the extra services,” says Feeney.

Feeney and An Chéim have spent the last year concentrating on finalising the deal and implementing the outsourcing arrangement, but he is now turning his attention to the future.

“What we need to do now is go forward with the Institute of Technology sector and determine what their requirements are and there are certainly changing requirements in the business – the whole move towards modularisation and improving access to education is a big driver,” says Feeney.

Feeney is very happy with the savings which this outsourcing arrangement will make for An Chéim, and while he doesn’t use specific examples, he feels that this deal is a good example of the benefits of partnership between business and the public sector.

“There are always challenges in relation to ICT projects and I think this is an example where it has worked. IT takes a lot of effort and a lot of vigilant management to make it work and build a relationship, but we set out to achieve certain things and we have done that,” he says.

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