Athina Douzina, Author at CACI

How Richmond and Wandsworth Borough Councils better understand communities’ need for services and communication

Posted on: 29 June 2021

The challenge

The councils’ Insight and Analytics team was keen to serve its diverse population better by understanding more about different households and how council services and initiatives could best support them. Like all councils, Richmond and Wandsworth’s remit spans many public services, campaigns and activities. Insight and Analytics Manager Salman Klar and Intelligence Analyst Emily Heades saw the vast potential in CACI’s Acorn dataset to better inform decision-making and communicating in the boroughs. Emily says:

We had a free trial access to the data over the summer, which CACI was offering to help councils with Covid-related challenges. We started using Acorn, Household Acorn and Wellbeing Acorn.

The approach

Salman, Emily and the team were immediately able to make use of the data. Salman explains: “We first used if for our digital exclusion work in May. Because of the pandemic, all our council services and messaging needed to go digital. So it was really important for us to know who would have digital access, laptops and connectivity – for remote schooling and access to essential services and information.

We serve over half a million residents: to communicate with them all effectively, we needed to know who would respond to an email and who could only be reached by a letter or leaflet through the door.”

This use case demonstrated the value of the data to Richmond and Wandsworth Councils. The team confirmed an annual subscription to the datasets and the Acorn Profiler analysis tool. CACI ran virtual training sessions for council users to build awareness about the scope and potential uses of the data as well as to transfer specific skills for using the Profiler tool.

The results

The report compiled by Emily in the spring about Digital Exclusion used CACI Household Acorn data to reveal groups of residents who were potentially disadvantaged, because they couldn’t connect to online services, information and support.. Immediately, the councils were able to share these insights with organisations via the community engagement team, who used it as evidence in funding bids for officers to help residents connect digitally.

Emily and the team have also used Acorn postcode data to help identify homes in the boroughs that might be eligible for the Government’s Green Homes Grant, based on income indicators. They were able to estimate how many homes might qualify. The methodology and evidence helped secure over £500K of central government funding for each borough. This is being distributed to the least energy-efficient households through a local grant scheme covering up to £10,000 of carbon emission reduction works per home.

The councils used Acorn data to understand characteristics that influence residents’ propensity to generate food waste. Emily says: “A survey was commissioned into what households in the borough are throwing away. The specialist firm that provided it had broken the findings down by Acorn type. Now that we have the dataset too, we’ve been able to explore more deeply to help us build a communications strategy to reduce food waste, targeting households that generate the most with relevant and useful guidance and encouragement.”

The benefits

The objective, trusted evidence that Acorn insights provide gives the councils better insights into the needs of residents. Salman adds,

We have had so many requests for the data to help our teams adapt their communications and services during the pandemic. We’re continually finding more ways to use it to serve residents better by understanding their needs and lifestyles.

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Pintarget delivers effective local marketing strategies with InSite

Posted on: 25 June 2021

Company background

Pintarget creates and delivers precise, targeted local campaigns for brands and businesses across multiple media channels. The firm achieves exceptional results for clients using three principles: access to the best data, using technology to create efficiency and applying insight to understand how to reach local consumers.

Pintarget clients include big name brands like SodaStream, Coca-Cola, The Southern Co-op, McCarthy & Stone and Greene King. The company partners with leading technology, customer marketing and data providers to power its unique service. Recently acquired by The Specialistworks, Pintarget’s highly awarded team has decades of experience in the media industry, working at the cutting edge of regional and digital media.

Why they chose us

Pintarget’s unique proposition depends on excellent demographic and geographic data that’s easy to model and analyse. The team identified that CACI’s InSite software coupled with Acorn data could give the most granular and detailed view of the areas and consumers they wanted to target for clients.
Lead location and data analyst Rob Fogg explains:

InSite is integral to our approach and modelling: we use it to investigate where existing customers come from, to identify similar customer bases elsewhere and to detect missed opportunities where our clients could achieve better market share and impact. Our results come from a strong and sophisticated methodology.

What they use it for

Pintarget uses InSite in several ways to drive sales performance and increase market share for online, bricks and mortar and hybrid clients.
Pintarget needed to find an audience of households with children aged 5-11 whose behaviours and characteristics made them a good fit for the brand’s services. Using InSite, the team mapped this audience around the centres, to find areas with potential for growth.
Using existing customer data provided by clients, Pintarget uses InSite to classify customers by Acorn type. With this data, Pintarget can identify the most prevalent Acorn types amongst existing customers.

Benefits

Using geo-demographic targeting at a granular level, there’s less wastage in marketing communications, which means that Pintarget’s clients get more for their money.
The team can build campaigns that use a range of channels to reach individual households, so the brand and message resonates and has good frequency.
That puts relevant brands and offers firmly in the front of consumers’ minds, so they’re primed to purchase when the opportunity arises, either in a local physical outlet or online.

The product fits our needs, the people are friendly and helpful. Since the start, CACI’s InSite team have shared valuable knowledge and been keen to help us in a flexible way.

Rob Fogg, Lead location and data analyst
Pintarget

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Please view the full customer story here. If you want to learn more or have any questions please get in touch with us.

How Isle of Wight Council supported local housing needs

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Company background

The Isle of Wight Council is a unitary authority located on the Isle of Wight near the south coast of England. It is made up of 40 councillors from 39 wards. The Council is responsible for all local government activities on the Island.

The Isle of Wight is a beautiful, interesting and relaxing place to be. While the pace of life may be slower on the Island, the Isle of Wight Council is an innovative, forward thinking and dynamic organisation. The Council has an ambitious corporate plan with a vision for the Isle of Wight to be an inspiring place in which to grow up, work, live and visit.

Why the chose us

Danika Barber, Public Health and Strategic Analytics Lead explains:

We looked at what other councils had done to quantify affordability and knew that we needed to understand incomes across the Island in order to put house prices and rent costs in context of the local, permanent population.

Danika and her team recognised that they needed to account for the typically more expensive second homes and holiday rentals on the Island, as well as a ‘hidden homeless’ population such as extended and overcrowded households, those in unstable tenancies and those key workers in less well paid roles who are vital to the Island economy.

What they use it for

The work was commissioned by the Island Housing Conversation, a Regeneration Department project designed to inform and work with local councillors, housing providers and developers. The goal is to support stakeholders in building new homes of the right types and sizes in the right places to meet our local population’s needs.
Danika and her team used land registry square footage data to show how affordable the different sized properties are. It’s true that on the Island, unlike some other areas of the UK, more residents can afford to buy or rent a flat. But most can’t afford to buy a three-bedroom home to accommodate a family.
Looking at the overall UK picture, house prices appear cheaper on the Island. But salaries and incomes are much lower. Connecting house prices with real earnings at a granular level showed true affordability in each ward.

Benefits

The interactive tool is really powerful, making the information and data meaningful and impactful.
People understood the implications immediately. When we showed the interactive map for lower quartile income affordability, it raised a gasp from the audience. Residents in this group cannot afford to buy or rent anywhere. It’s vital that we address this, for the well-being of our population and the health of the local economy.
The data insight was very well received at the meeting and afterwards. It was successful because of the combination of relevant, granular data and the visual presentation in PowerBI.
Other departments asked Danika what PowerBI could do for them – they wanted to be able to visualise data in a similar way and understand local differences and needs in the Island population.
Danika’s team has also been using PowerBI to present Covid-19 data and work is underway to develop a range of other similar dashboards for other business areas.

Developers have already asked us a lot of questions. We’re happy to be able to share insights that will help them propose the right mix of housing in their developments. It’s a win-win because they are more likely to get planning approval for schemes that meet clearly defined needs and bring the housing that local people need to the right parts of the Island.

Danika Barber, Public Health and Strategic Analytics Lead
Isle of Wight Council

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How Business Isle of Man developed a trusted demographic model and profile with CACI’s data

Posted on: 24 June 2021

Company background

Business Isle of Man is an Executive Agency of the Isle of Man Government’s Department for Enterprise, acting as a key decision making and advisory body supporting the Government’s ambition for long term economic prosperity. Its purpose is to help create an environment for key sectors to achieve sustainable growth whilst establishing the Island as an internationally well-regarded home for export business.

The Department has a key role to play in the achievement of the Programme for Government’s stated intention to be an Island of Enterprise and Opportunity. Supporting economic development is of strategic importance for the Island’s future growth and prosperity.

Why they chose us

Business Isle of Man was approached by a property developer keen to attract larger UK multiples. These businesses were asking for a demographic report, so they could assess the commercial viability case for their brands. None of them understood the Isle of Man’s demographic.
Jonathan Platten, Economist for the Department for Enterprise takes up the story:

We commissioned CACI to develop a trusted demographic database and map that showed detailed profiles of our population across the Island. CACI impressed us with their expertise and reputation in the field of socio-demographics.

What they use it for

Business Development Manager, Rachel Hopkinson expresses the benefits clearly:

We have never before seen such a detailed analysis of our population across the island, including Douglas (the Island capital). Although our Island population is under 100,000, there is a big opportunity for retail and leisure businesses. Isle of Man retailers perform exceptionally well compared to the UK because we have a wealthy population and a captive audience. Now, we have the demographic data to show why this is the case.

As well as commissioning CACI to produce the dataset and report, Business Isle of Man has entered into a collaborative ongoing relationship with CACI to help provide further, specific analysis for Island businesses and investors.

Benefits

Now, the Isle of Man can be considered alongside the UK as part of CACI’s trusted dataset and modelling, with the same granular, visual demographic detail. For the ﬁrst time, investors, retailers and businesses can build reliable modelling into their business cases at postcode level.
Rachel Hopkinson adds:

The report and dataset also ties in strongly with our ‘Locate Isle of Man’ strategy– which is about presenting the Island as an attractive destination where people choose to live and work and where businesses and entrepreneurs choose to locate and invest. We have so much to offer in quality of life for professionals and families.

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Please view the full customer story here. If you want to learn more or have any questions please get in touch with us.

How CACI support British Red Cross identify those in need of support

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Company background

The British Red Cross was founded in 1870. The charity’s most important value is kindness. It helps anyone, anywhere in the UK and around the world, to get the support they need if crisis strikes.

The British Red Cross has seen very high demand for its services in the UK during the coronavirus outbreak. Since the pandemic started, the Red Cross has undertaken a huge response to help the most vulnerable individuals and communities in the UK, reaching over 1.5 million people with food, medicine, cash, emotional support and other help and advice. Thousands of extra volunteers have joined the charity, helping it to support those who are suffering all kinds of hardship and distress because of the situation.

Why they chose us

The British Red Cross needed to concentrate its resources on different people and make sure that its services were directed to meet the greatest needs.
CACI’s Vulnerability Indicators had the potential to help the charity identify specific local areas where there was likely to be a need for charity help and support in the pandemic.

What they use it for

CACI offered The British Red Cross a three-month trial of its Vulnerability Indicators. After validating the potential of the data during the trial period, the charity took out a subscription.
The British Red Cross used CACI’s Vulnerability Indicators to index UK households in every neighbourhood (or MSOA – Middle Layer Super Output Area). Their modelling revealed locations where people were most likely to be in need of support, based on either their clinical, financial, socioeconomic and digital vulnerability as well as wider health and wellbeing.
Information that showed the prevalence of single-person households in an area combined with the Vulnerability Indicators was used to augment food vulnerability mapping. The British Red Cross identified households with limited access to third party and community support, creating a priority need for volunteer engagement.

Benefits

Vulnerability modelling now enables the British Red Cross to deploy volunteers in the right places, meet emerging needs and advocate for targeted financial and practical support for the most vulnerable people at this time.
By defining areas where financial vulnerability is greatest, The British Red Cross can apply local knowledge about available support or facilities. Volunteers can help individuals and families access these. If they’re insufficient, vulnerability model insight can help community organisations and charities make a strong case for grant or lottery funding to help improve, using granular data evidence that relates to a specific area.
Where digital vulnerability is a key issue, such as for people living alone without technology skills or facilities, the British Red Cross can reach out to householders using leaflet drops or doorstep visits to offer assistance and information.
The British Red Cross has also made its vulnerability and resilience modelling and analysis freely available via public web portals.

The impact is going to continue for a long time. There will be people in financial hardship for the first time next year, because they have lost their jobs or their savings have run out. There are three million people who are not entitled to any of the current government support packages. Some of them will certainly be in desperate need of advice and both financial and emotional support. We will be doing more qualitative scenario planning and focusing on anticipatory work, to meet emerging future needs.

Dr Matt Thomas, Head of Strategic Insight and Foresight,
The British Red Cross

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How to compile the data-based SRS evidence you need for funding applications

Posted on: 2 June 2021

Complete, consistent and detailed data across 48+ metrics is becoming the norm for Housing Association funding applications

Bromford and Clarion Housing Group both recently made headlines with their ground-breaking, large-scale funding wins supported by their evidence of meeting Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) standards in social housing.

Bromford’s £75m deal with SMBC Bank International links the sustainable loan to a governance metric: by reducing its gender pay gap, Bromford will benefit from a lower interest rate. Clarion has raised £300m in a heavily subscribed sustainable bond issue, ascribing its popularity to the housing association’s commitment to ESG principles.

The Sustainability Reporting Standard for Social Housing (SRS) was launched in November 2020 by the ESG Social Housing Working Group – a collaboration of banks and investors, housing associations, service providers and impact investing organisations.

The SRS is a voluntary reporting framework, setting out 48 ESG criteria such as zero carbon targets, affordability and safety standards. It enables housing providers to report on their ESG performance in a consistent and comparable way, so lenders and investors can assess performance, identify risks and pursue opportunities to create positive social and environmental outcomes.

With more and more major funding organisations using the SRS to guide their investment strategy, UK housing associations are considering how they can evidence their performance against the framework. Gathering and retaining accurate and accessible data across the organisation to inform the 48 SRS metrics is key.

For housing associations whose data is distributed around the organisation or is not recorded frequently or regularly, pulling together an evidence-based SRS report on ESG criteria to support a major funding application is a huge headache. Managers and administrators have to find, validate and manually collate the information. It places massive demands on resources, taking staff away from essential day to day activities supporting residents. In some cases, the data may not be available. It’s a real issue, because without this evidence, Housing Associations may lose the chance to compete for transformative funding.

The 48 metrics in the SRS are just the start. For individual funds and grants, further criteria may apply and additional, specific evidence may also be required. Housing Associations that can pull together data efficiently and reliably have a clear advantage in bidding for these very substantial funds.

If their data strategy and practices are not well established, housing associations will need to assemble data reactively for every application. It’s possible, if the data exists somewhere within the organisation. But this reactive approach is not just time-consuming; it also fails to support SRS monitoring and improvement.

If you have reporting and data collection set up to run continuously, you will be able to look at the metrics at any time and view trends and improvement opportunities. This benefits housing association employees and communities by improving the sustainability and inclusivity of service delivery across the organisation.

SRS reporting isn’t just a box-ticking exercise – the standards have been carefully designed to help Housing Associations achieve positive growth and work in environmentally and socially responsible ways. As this is very much a part of housing association operating culture, the standards are in principle welcomed by responsible social housing providers.

Keeping SRS and related metrics under constant review and using them to identify areas for improvement is a double win. Housing organisations gain better insight into current strengths and weaknesses and potential to develop, so they can prioritise improvement initiatives. This strengthens their ESG performance for the benefit of their communities and catchment. At the same time, they’ll be better positioned to compete for funding against the SRS criteria with clear and trusted data to present and trend information that shows how the organisation is evolving.

It’s not an easy task for most housing associations to marshal and monitor this SRS data. They need a data strategy that helps them identify the data they need to collect, where it exists already, how to obtain and sustain it where it doesn’t. The data strategy will provide a roadmap to the comprehensive and constructive data approach that the housing association needs to meet today’s ESG criteria for grants and funding as well as tracking its performance against organisational goals.

The data strategy doesn’t need to involve a major IT investment. It can audit and draw together existing resources. Once the housing association knows what data is has and what it needs to measure, it can develop efficient processes to track progress and to create reports that achieve the best funding outcomes for the community.

If you’d like to know more about developing a data strategy that reveals your Housing Association’s ESG performance metrics and supports SRS-related funding applications, download our free white paper “Insight for building flourishing communities”.

The Challenges of Same Day Delivery Routing

Posted on: 26 May 2021

JUST LIKE NEXT DAY SERVICE WITH THE PROCESS SPEEDED UP? THINK AGAIN!

The demand for fast response in urban deliveries has never been higher. Under the restrictions of Covid-19 lockdown, consumers have had to find new ways to access products they need fast.

Retailers are keen to meet this latent demand – to maintain sales, show their agility and to retain and acquire customers and advocates. But there are significant barriers to entry for retailers and distributors keen to seize the immediate and longer-term market opportunities.

Amazon’s consumer and business shoppers may have the impression that same day doorstep delivery is old hat – it has been available on selected Amazon products in densely populated UK areas since 2015.

CAN ANYONE KEEP UP WITH AMAZON?

With Amazon’s vast network of distribution centres, blanket national coverage and sheer number of delivery journeys, coupled with a huge volume of data and processing power, the firm is uniquely equipped for same day fulfilment.

Most retailers and distributors – even major multiples – have nothing approaching these resources or scale.

Courier and haulage firms can provide same day delivery because they have flexible capacity to make vehicles or bikes available. They can meet demand profitably by charging a premium rate. Other UK retailers have recognised growing customer demand for same day delivery and launched limited services. For example, Ocado, Sainsbury’s and Tesco can deliver same-day within certain urban catchments.

THE PROBLEM OF COST AND ROI FOR SAME-DAY DELIVERY

If national same day delivery was easy to provide profitably, many more retailers would be offering it to consumers. But a big investment in technology, warehousing and stockholding is needed to operate a same day delivery process economically. This currently makes the cost prohibitive in most cases, particularly with a relatively high risk inherent in launching a complex process with many unpredictable variables.

Here’s why. Let’s say a company has a warehouse and drivers and vehicles ready, and a website to take orders. They receive a steady flow of online orders throughout the day. The service manager need to make a judgement about when to send the order to be picked – do they collate them every half hour? Or send each one immediately? They must maintain the warehouse picking team’s efficiency to keep costs down and prevent adverse impact on the fulfilment of other less urgent orders.

Having picked a number of orders, at what point does the company collate and load them onto a delivery vehicles? If most of the orders can be delivered using a relatively efficient route, how long can the service manager hold back an outlying order that would require a long detour, in anticipation of other local orders coming in that would create a viable delivery route?

IT’S HARD TO BE EFFICIENT WHEN YOU’RE MAKING COMPLEX DECISIONS AGAINST THE CLOCK. NEXT DAY DELIVERY IS FAR EASIER TO OPTIMISE

It’s hard to assess with any degree of certainty when you have met the economic criteria, working in real-time. You don’t know the route beforehand – you are creating routes on the fly. You have to decide how full each vehicle should be before it sets out. The clock is ticking from the moment the order was received: you may have to break protocols to meet a one, two or four hour window. It’s an extremely dynamic and sensitive process.

This is completely different from operating a next day delivery service, where you can cut off orders at a certain time then work with a complete picture of the day’s orders to allocate orders and plan efficient delivery routes throughout the following day. When you are planning to meet a four hour (or less) delivery window, all you ever have to work with is a rolling snapshot of orders. You can only optimise within this, so there’s far less scope for efficiency.

IS THE INVESTMENT IN SAME-DAY DELIVERY EVER WORTH IT?

For some retailers, same day delivery may be a competitive differentiator that makes it worth running at a loss or compromising efficiency. But how much can you afford to compromise? How do you measure the overall business gain? Efficiency may be less important than meeting customer requirements in some cases, but companies need to have enough orders coming in to make the operation worthwhile.

Based on experience to date, it’s our view that to make same-day delivery economically viable, firms need high and consistent volumes of daily orders in the catchment of their distribution hub. This could mean hundreds or thousands – there are many variables in terms of the type of goods, the value of orders and the ease of delivery.

THERE IS HOPE: NEW TECHNOLOGIES AND APPROACHES ARE ON THEIR WAY

The type of delivery vehicles available will also influence the efficiency and viability of same day deliveries. Cargobikes and short range electric vehicles could improve efficiency and lower costs. Local hub consolidation could also help, using a last mile delivery service to optimise efficiency. But for most retailers, all these are untried or experimental approaches: few have the confidence to invest heavily without better evidence of value and profitability.

There’s no getting away from the fact that customer expectations continue to mount in the area of same day deliveries. At the moment, to meet the need and desire for rapid fulfilment, many consumers and businesses turn to Amazon. Other retailers and distributors are hungry for solutions that will enable them to reclaim market share profitably.

The good news is that solutions are beginning to emerge. We are currently evaluating a promising same day delivery scheduling and routing tool that could be a game-changer for retailers seeking a competitive edge. Watch this space for more news.

If you’d like to be notified when we have more information about viable same-day routing technologies, please get in touch with one of our logistics consultants.

How we helped complete a fast, efficient and secure migration to new IT infrastructure

Posted on: 24 May 2021

When the insurance business of a company splits off from it’s parent, it marks the beginning of a new era.

But before the company could begin operating independently, it had a major technical hurdle to overcome – establishing its own IT estate. This meant migrating critical data & services from the infrastructure it previously shared with it’s parent company.

“A migration of this scope represents some serious risks.”

To make matters even more complex, the company was tasked with doing this all against the clock. Following the separation, the business was given a finite time to migrate from the shared infrastructure – after which point, it would be charged significantly for its use.

AGAINST THE CLOCK: MIGRATING QUICKLY, SECURELY AND COST-EFFECTIVELY

Major network migrations are rarely simple. But when you’re a financial services company with primarily digital operations, a migration of this scope represents some serious risks.

Firstly, the migration had to be executed in an extremely secure way, so that data and services remained as secure as possible in transit. Secondly, there had to be a secure new environment waiting for the company’s data and services. Finally, the whole process had to be completed with minimal disruption, as each minute of downtime could potentially cost hundreds of thousands of pounds in lost revenue.

“This was the beginning of a new era for the company, so the technology had to be right”

On top of those challenges, the migration also had to lay the foundation for future success. From start to finish, the process had to be cost-effective and fast – but a simple quick fix wasn’t an option. This was the beginning of a new era for DLG and the technology foundation it established would play a huge role in determining how successful that era was going to be.

TOTAL NETWORK SUPPORT

To help meet the immediate need, the CACI Network Services team built a team of 8 highly skilled Network Engineers, Consultants and Service Delivery Managers to help the company complete its ambitious migration strategy.

The underlying technologies would be Routing and Switching, Security and Load Balancing across Cisco, Fortinet and F5.

“Seamless migration of users & services to the new environment”

After the new infrastructure was implemented, the CACI team supported the seamless migration of users and services into the new environment. Our service team then remained within the company to resolve any potential issues with the network infrastructure and provide all the specialist network skills needed to succeed.

THE OUTCOME: A FAST, SECURE MIGRATION – AND A LASTING RELATIONSHIP

The result was total success. The migration was carried out in the desired time frame and the new infrastructure and migration process met the company’s demands. Most importantly, downtime was kept to an absolute minimum.

“Against the clock (and the odds) the entire project was a resounding success.”

It laid the foundation for a faster, smarter future. It also started a valuable ongoing relationship between the company and CACI. Our experts remain inside the company providing direct support and helping to manage the organisation’s infrastructure.

What’s more, we have engaged with other business units within it, delivering exciting new projects and helping the insurance provider do and achieve more.

NEED HELP MIGRATING OR MANAGING YOUR NETWORK?

Networking isn’t just about innovative transformation projects using the latest technology – sometimes you just need to lay the foundations for reliable, secure, and predictable digital operations. At CACI, we have all the skills you need to execute any networking project – from major cloud initiatives, to routine migrations and the management of core networking technology.

Find out how we could support your next project and become a trusted, reliable extension of your core IT team.

5 practical tips to get the best value from your campaign migration project

Posted on: 13 May 2021

Minimise risks and maximise ROI with our best practice round-up

Campaign delivery is critical to your organisation’s competitiveness and growth. In challenging and volatile market conditions, being able to monitor and adapt campaigns in real time to meet changing customer wants and needs is a core skill for successful marketing.

It’s no surprise that many businesses are looking to invest in improved campaign management platforms. Technology has evolved rapidly in the past few years: exploiting new and sophisticated multi-channel, high volume solutions for customer retention, development and acquisition is a priority for marketing and customer experience leaders.

Choosing a campaigning platform with the features and headroom your organisation needs is just the start. The ROI and competitive advantage you stand to gain will only be as good as the migration process.

Many organisations find campaign migration more challenging than they expect. Our expert team has five top tips to help you avoid common pitfalls and tackle your platform migration project with the same rigour as your platform selection business case:

Include the migration project in your business case to ensure that you can afford to deploy effectively and rapidly. A great campaign platform can make all the difference to customer experience, engagement and ultimately the sales bottom line. It’s a big investment and you’ll have looked carefully to find the best fit for your needs and to calculate ROI. But migrating to a new platform is not just as simple as turning off campaigns in one platform and turning them on in the new one.
You’ll need strong methodology and project management to define the order of campaigns that need to be migrated and prioritise those that are business critical before moving on to the others. You’re dealing with high volumes of campaigns and data, and you need to build in IP warming and parallel running of old and new platforms during this phase. Planning ahead is crucial.
Review existing campaigns being sent out and evaluate whether they could be improved and optimised. It clearly makes sense to do this as part of the migration, rather than doing a direct lift and shift. Many organisations struggle to do it in practice because of resource constraints. Your team needs to maintain business as usual during the migration. If you can access additional resources or third-party support, your team can provide focused input to campaign improvement work through workshops, while the migration project team manages and delivers the actions.
Training is key to ensure a smooth transition and quick adoption of a new platform. Your team may need to adopt new processes and learn new skills. It’s important that they are confident using all the features and capabilities of the new solution if you’re to achieve maximum impact and hit your ROI goals. Build user confidence and avoid stress by providing formal training and making responsive, expert support available to answer questions and resolve issues once the platform is live.
Access specialist and dedicated resource to make it happen as quickly as possible and without interruption. In most organisations, everyone’s working to capacity, so finding extra time and resource to manage a major migration project is difficult. It’s not realistic to expect your team to handle it on top of business as usual. Exploit the experience of platform migration specialists: their proven methodology and expertise is worth paying for to avoid the risk of delays or campaign interruptions undermining the value and impact of your campaign platform investment.

If you’d like to keep your campaigns flowing and hit the ground running with your new campaign platform, get your free copy of The CACI three-step guide to successful campaign migration. In it, our specialist Campaign Operations team shares insights from our proven process, to help you plan an effective transition.

With long experience supporting leading organisations through efficient and low-risk campaign migration projects, we can shoulder the burden of planning and managing an optimised transition to your new platform, to achieve rapid value from your investment. Talk to us if you’d like to find out how we can help.

The five hallmarks of a great Life Cycle Management (LCM) strategy in Financial Services

Posted on: 10 May 2021

As more organisations take advantage of AI, machine learning, and the internet of things (IoT) technology, ensuring network devices and infrastructure are supported, maintained, secured and up to date will be critical. Not least in financial services, where in 2019, US regulators fined Capital One $80 million for a breach of its data.

A well-structured and achievable life cycle management strategy is essential for all organisations so choosing the right LCM partner can make a huge difference to your operations and free your IT teams to focus on more impactful and innovative activities.

Based on our experience of running multiple large scale LCM programmes within enterprise clients, we have put together 5 core competencies which you should look for when choosing your LCM partner.

Hallmark #1 – They’re quick to react and can deliver at scale

Large infrastructure refresh projects are, by their very nature, time consuming. But while it’s important to do a good job, this shouldn’t come at the expense of project schedules or budgets.

That’s why it’s important to look for an LCM partner that doesn’t just have the right skills, but can also effectively communicate at any level and demonstrate sound planning with outcome-based objectives. In addition, they should also show a proven track record of successful project delivery – at scale, and in a way that adapts to changing requirements.

With the right resources and management, it’s possible to deliver both speed and scale.

Hallmark #2 – They take complete process ownership

Fast-paced, dynamic environments need strong leadership and experienced people to take control. Without them, projects can quickly run over time and budget, and even create more problems than they set out to address.

Your supplier should have the confidence to liaise with not just you, but other suppliers along the chain. They should always be looking at things from a holistic perspective and looking towards creative, collaborative, progressive solutions rather than playing the blame game if there are delays.

An LCM vendor that’s willing to take complete control of your process is usually easy to spot, as they’ll have a track record of going above and beyond their basic requirements. It’s something any trustworthy vendor will be keen to demonstrate from the off.

Hallmark #3 – They work in partnership to achieve a shared goal

Rather than a transactional customer-supplier relationship, the best LCM vendors take a collaborative approach that considers the entire project lifecycle. This way, your vendor can better spot time and cost-saving opportunities, and identify and mitigate risks before they impact your operations.

By treating an environment as an end-to-end ecosystem – including working effectively with all your relevant suppliers – your LCM vendor can decide on the best way to replace your infrastructure, while causing the least disruption.

It’s an approach that’s paid dividends for one of our Investment Banking clients. By providing a bridge between the bank’s IT engineers and its physical infrastructure suppliers, we were able to save them £100,000 just by swapping out a single component type.

Hallmark #4 – They focus on communication (but know when to take the initiative)

The biggest roadblock to effective project management is poor vendor communication with you and your suppliers, which can lead to longer project cycles and wasted resources.

It’s a simple concept, but one that far too many LCM vendors get wrong – especially in the Enterprise arena.

By choosing an LCM partner that focuses on multi-stakeholder communication, you can be safe in the knowledge that critical project decisions are being made based on accurate data and facts – supported by previous experience – and communicated to you in a way that keeps you in complete control.

On the flip side, your time is precious, and you don’t always want to be consulted at every stage. So, it’s also important that you trust that your partner has the skills, experience and confidence to make decisions on your behalf where appropriate, and only come to you when necessary.

Hallmark #5 – They have significant, demonstrable experience

The key attributes of a great LCM partner are nothing without the right experience. An experienced vendor will be familiar with your goals and able to see your project from a different perspective – offering valuable advice based on their past client successes.

Simply, experience is the driver that can save you time and money, and even help give your devices and infrastructure the longevity to stay reliable and secure well into the future.

LCM should be a partnership, not just a vendor relationship

Technical failure in financial services organisations is simply out of the question. So for many, it can be all too tempting to throw money and resources at a solution.

But the truth is, LCM requires a more nuanced approach, supported by open communication, end-to-end project management, and skilled IT engineers capable of making the right decisions – no matter the size or scope of the project.

At CACI, we pride ourselves on having the agility to help our clients react quickly, supported by the scale to reliably complete projects on time and within budget.

What’s more, our skilled project managers and engineers have decades of experience delivering LCM for some of the world’s biggest financial institutions, so you can be safe in the knowledge your needs are being taken care of.

To find out more about our collaborative approach to life cycle management, take a look at our network services capabilities.