From acquisition to optimisation: establishing an RMO for a cloud computing and tech company

Overview / The client 

Over the last several years, smart/tasking has developed a robust partnership with a global infrastructure technology leader with more than 60 years of innovation, collaboration and engineering excellence. Following its acquisition, the Shared Service function for Resource Management was disbanded, requiring each Business Unit to manage its own resources. This transition presented a significant challenge for a business unit, which lacked an existing Resource Management Office (RMO) - a central hub for hundreds of resourcing processes and decisions running within the organisation - and needed to establish this function quickly.    

The problem 

The primary challenge was the urgent need to create an RMO from scratch. smart/tasking was tasked with conducting a comprehensive discovery of SDE's existing processes while navigating the complexities of system transitions and ensuring business continued as usual during a 6-week manual operation period. The goal was to establish a centralised RMO team that would effectively serve the client across EMEA, APJ, and America.  

The solution 

To address these challenges, smart/tasking initiated a thorough discovery phase, collaborating closely with senior leadership to identify key pain points and strategic objectives. The immediate focus was on categorising needs into essentials, nice-to-haves, and removable processes. To facilitate this, a lite version of smart/sync, smart/tasking’s data consolidation tool, was deployed to create dashboards and Google Sheet-powered portals, providing a knowledge library to support the business unit during this transitional phase.  

What did smart/tasking do? 

smart/tasking implemented several strategies to ensure the project's success:    

• Discovery phase: as above, conducted a deep dive into existing processes and engaged with leadership to understand resource management challenges.  

• Team establishment: formed an RMO team, including a Resourcing Lead and support staff, to centralise resource management functions.  

• Adaptation to challenges: implemented "drop-in" sessions for geos outside of EMEA to ensure they received support, addressing the issue of the RMO team being UK-based.  

• Absorption of PMO responsibilities: managed PMO requirements temporarily after the resignation of the PMO Manager, which led to the development of a robust PMO for SDE.  

• Implementation process: followed a structured implementation plan, achieving operational status within the first week and receiving the first service renewal within two months.  

• Success measurement: evaluated success through metrics such as time to service operation, Service Level Agreement (SLA) compliance, and resource request closure times, leading to a dedicated RMO that significantly improved resource management efficiency.  

Impact 

The establishment of the RMO has significantly increased efficiency for the organisation, allowing Project Managers to devote more time to customer delivery and business growth. Notably, the time to fully operational service was achieved by the beginning of week 3, and over 80% of resource requests were closed in less than one week. The RMO has enhanced support for geographies outside of EMEA, making the environment a more collaborative one, and has become integral to operations. 

The service is now in its third renewal, which we continue to operate and run whilst supporting the growth of SDE and exploring the potential to automate processes with supporting products like smart/sync.