Kier Group (Simon Finney)
As Group Performance Director, I had a programme of over 20 improvement projects to deliver circa £22m of benefits across the organisation, but I identified that we didn’t have a robust benefits management capability in place to ensure that these benefits would be delivered into the P&L. I brought Judge Mathura in to support my team in establishing our benefits management capability. Judge quickly learnt about the organisation, how it worked and what our requirements were. He provided me with early recommendations for the establishment of a benefits management capability which he then developed and established, all within a three month period. This included a benefit management strategy, process and governance and all the tools and templates to support its operation including automated tracking and reports.
Having developed the capability, Judge then supported its implementation helping us to manage the benefits across the 20 projects. He worked with all of the project teams and developed detailed benefit profile and realisation schedules with summary reports and dashboards automatically being generated for monthly board presentation. The insight he developed enabled me to identify the health of each project and challenge those projects whose benefits did not justify the costs.
I would not hesitate to recommend Judge. He is extremely proficient in all aspects of benefits management and made a very positive impact on the programme and wider organisation.
Jaguar Land Rover (Dave Osmond)
Judge joined my Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) SAP transformation programme during a time of transition and instability for benefits management following the loss of multiple people in the role and he very quickly got control of and estabilised the circa £40m of benefits. He went on to define and establish a formal benefits realisation capability taking a practical and pragmatic approach based on his experience and understanding of the business. This resulted in an approach that was endorsed by the business and used throughout the programme. He was very skilled at the modelling of and determining of the valuation of benefits which was key to maintaining the business case financial hurdles. When the business case did come under pressure Judge challenged assumptions and identified approaches which were key to maintain the financial hurdle rates and to keep the business support for the programme.
Judge had an uncanny ability to sniff out data from the myriad of systems which could be used for benefits valuation and tracking. He used this to transition a high level benchmark based view of the £40m benefits to detailed bottom up valuations supported by data and endorsed by key stakeholders.
Judge established an approach which formalised benefit realisation to a high level. This was crucial during challenging times for the programme when Judge was able to demonstrate benefits realised to senior management ensuring their ongoing support.
I would not hesitate to recommend to Judge. He was a great asset on my programme, worked very well with the programme team and business establishing strong working relationships.
Transport For London (Tanya Durlen)
Judge worked in my portfolio benefits realisation team at Transport for London for over two years, making a very significant contribution to the success we have made in developing the portfolio benefits capability, enabling the organisation to make informed decisions about investing into improving transport in London, health of Londoners and contributing to London’s economic growth. We would not have developed the capability as fully and as quickly without Judge’s involvement.
What made Judge’s contribution particularly valuable was that he was able to apply and adapt, in a pragmatic way, his benefits management knowledge and expertise to the needs of our organisation. Judge has a very practical approach, reflecting both his personality and many years of experience. He is easy to work with – ‘just gets on and does it’ (as my team would say!). This enabled us to develop the capability in a modular way – developing an aspect, demonstrating the difference this makes to the organisation, getting a buy in and a mandate for the next step. Using his knowledge and a wealth of practical experience Judge helped us develop our portfolio benefits management approach and framework. He was also instrumental in effective implementation and embedding of the approach throughout the organisation As well as being good at concepts, he is also highly analytical and able to provide insight, helping to develop approaches which had not previously been considered. It is thanks to Judge that we are now considering how external factors - like demographics - could impact our objectives and developing approaches to quantify the scale of benefits for some of our more challenging projects. Judge is also a pro in Excel and Powerpoint! He developed our benefits data management system to automate the collation of benefit profile and schedule data and the generation of reports from this data for key stakeholders. This is crucial as not only are we able to roll this out across our organisation for immediate impact, it also informs our requirements for the purchase of a custom benefits management tool.