Diagnostics

C.Co’s tailored Healthcheck tools enable organisations to periodically review their services, celebrate success where positive action is being achieved, but also take corrective action where it is needed.
We take a multi-faceted review of services, looking at:
• Company boards
• Executive teams, workforce and operational delivery
• Strategic and annual business plans
• Financial planning and performance
• Market positioning and value for money
• Delivery against Key Performance Indicators and outcomes
• Contracts
• Governance

We explore these from different perspectives, including:
• Client
• Board of directors
• Shareholder
• Commissioner
• Contract Manager
A good commercial and governance framework is a critical success factor for the creation and successful operation of a service when delivered at arm’s length from the day to day operations of the council. Continually reviewing commercial management and governance reflects good practice and high performing organisations (in the public and private sector) keep the continuous improvement of the company and governance as a corporate priority.

Rapid Reviews

Ensuring your organisation is fit to succeed in light of future challenges – structured to meet its core objectives, with the right accountability and responsibility at every level

Why is the right structure important?

Organisations are getting better at undertaking transformational programmes of work. But sometimes, when you react to urgent and iterative change, the overall strategy can get lost. If you don’t have a blueprint to work towards, work can become disjointed and confused, conflict can arise amongst competing priorities, organisational culture can suffer and you won’t achieve the most value for residents. Further to this, without the right corporate governance processes in place, an organisation could be heading towards catastrophic failure. You need to be clear that accountabilities and responsibilities are taken seriously and properly acted upon. This ranges from financial and contractual processes to decision making.

What does organisational design involve?

We work with people across the whole organisation, from strategic leaders to front line deliverers, to help design and develop or refresh your structure from Target Operating Model design to practical delivery. We can help you to explore and articulate what you’re trying to achieve, assess how you’re currently performing against your ambition and identify what you need to change to maximise your delivery impact. We can help you to create a clear, outcome focused framework that ensures your form follows your function.

What are the benefits?

Having roles and structures that show clarity of purpose to deliver the outcomes, values and vision for your organisation will have a direct impact on the culture, processes and people within it. It will positively influence core enabling business as it informs service delivery, technology, finance and customers and ensures clear and logical lines of accountability.

Folio

Developed by our partners i-three analytics, Folio gives you the confidence that your transformation programme is delivering the right things, at the right time, within the available resources to deliver maximum impact

C.Co and i-three analytics are working in partnership, giving you the confidence that your transformation programme is delivering the right things, at the right time, within the available resources to deliver maximum impact.

Introducing Folio

Folio has been designed to answer the question: which projects should we do and what order should we to do them in? This ensures the greatest possible benefits and outcomes, whilst consuming the minimal resources and time. We are confident that Folio can outperform traditional programme management approaches, typically providing at least 20% greater benefits with reduced time and cost, and the assurance to know that the programme is deliverable

What are the issues faced in prioritising Transformation Programmes?

Achieving positive outcomes from projects in the public sector is critical for sustained change, transformation and value for money. Balancing conflicting priorities with resources being pulled in different directions is a key challenge – managing any more than a handful of small projects simultaneously is challenging, even for the most experienced teams. Given the exponential number of permutations for sequencing multiple projects, it is almost impossible to identify and deliver the optimal programme using traditional methods of project and programme management.

Sub-optimal portfolios can be identified whenever there are:

  • Projects lagging behind
  • Underachievement of objectives and benefits
  • Greater overall costs and/ or less saving
  • Projects being selected based on ‘who shouts loudest’
  • Poor reporting procedures and supporting data
  • Impacts on customer confidence or reputational damage
  • Poor value for money

Faced with a long ‘wish list’ of things that need doing and insufficient resources to do them all, the obvious first question is: ‘Which things should be progressed?’ followed closely by ‘What order should we do them in?’.

Presented with this common dilemma; how can you be sure you’ve chosen the right list to progress, and importantly how can you evidence and objectively justify your selection?

How can C.Co and the Folio tool help?

Folio’s proven technology together with complex and clever algorithms and C.Co’s hands on experience shaping public sector transformation and analytical capability, means we can do all the heavy lifting of prioritising and sequencing multiple pieces of work. Folio is capable of analysing up to 2000 projects in moments and turning this into the optimal sequence together with other key programme outcomes in a matter of seconds. To put this into context, for a programme of 30 projects there are over one billion different permutations of the sequence to deliver them.

It can be applied to a wide variety of project scenarios, including but not restricted to corporate development work, pre-planned maintenance, or even a list of cases that need to be organised and worked through. If there are limited resources and an outcome being sought from each piece of work, it effortlessly provides the definitive selection and the best possible sequence for the programme to be successful.

It’s hard to overstate just how powerful this algorithm is, but with speed like this, programme planning suddenly becomes far easier, rational, cost effective and strategic, rather than subjective, vague, political and time consuming. Not only that, the consistency and quality of the wider project information being used improves through the process allowing direct comparison between one and the next based upon an objective evidence base.

Click here to view the C.Co Folio Brochure – this will open in a new tab

Options Appraisals

Helping you to identify opportunities, assess options and ensure your decisions stand up to scrutiny

What are the risks of not having a robust options appraisal process?

Tough decisions face challenge, which can be magnified if the options have not been fully explored. Implementation can fail if plans are not robust and well thought through and even the best ideas can face failure if people are not involved throughout the journey.

How might you mitigate these risks?

Developing an evidence base to inform decision making is imperative, while collaborating with key stakeholders will give a richer and more realistic picture. The process can include; baselining information, benchmarking, talking to people, engaging with staff and users, asking fundamental questions, and understanding the future vision for the service and the organisation. We can then help you to explore options, test concepts, and model and present options. All of this is underpinned by maintaining a strategic alignment and making sure that the benefits, dis-benefits, costs, savings and deliverability are all understood.

What are the benefits/ value of a different approach?

Fully exploring your options will give you a clearer picture of what’s possible. It will provide evidence to help with discussion and decision making. It will develop greater understanding of the issues that you’re trying to solve, allowing space for input, which will in turn develop ownership and support of change. We can work with you to identify and explore the opportunities available to your organisation and build an evidence-based business case to assist your decision making process.

Strategy Development

Providing a collaborative, transparent and robust approach to decision-making, allowing stakeholders to identify ‘what’s in it for them’ and giving you the assurance needed when considering some of your biggest challenges.

What’s the challenge?

Never before has the need to scrutinise spend whilst maximising value been greater, and nothing makes for good decisions better than a sound evidence base.

At C.Co, we understand that building robust business cases is a time intensive process that can become complicated quickly. But in a world where public resource is already stretched, we also know how important it is to make the right decisions at pace.

On a more practical level, so often we find that the figures in a business case are the centre of discussion due to their factual and tangible nature, but outcomes or even the risk of not doing something are pushed down the priorities list. This makes for an unsustainable future for public services, which must be addressed through a more holistic approach to change.

How we can help

Our approach to developing business cases is more than just the final financial proposal, instead we take a hands-on approach to identifying the purpose, objectives, benefits and options alongside stakeholders, in order to build trust, develop ownership and instill commitment from the outset.

This approach not only ensures the creation of a fully evidenced and robust business case, it eases approval pressures and provides a solid foundation for successful future delivery of the project.

Not only that, but our team of CIPFA certified analysts make the perfect partners for building or critiquing that all important financial model that can so often be the undoing of any business case.

Diagnostics

Our solutions meet genuine need and impact. Our diagnostic tools enable us to baseline, understand and work with the current scenario to identify risks and maximise opportunities.

Development

We work collaboratively. Our solutions have integrity and credibility, are evidenced based, easy to use and work. We are fleet of foot, flexible and all our services contribute to improving outcomes for residents and service users.

Delivery

We are intelligence driven. Our solutions are responsive to needs, quickly mobilised and resourced by affordable teams. We deliver solutions in a pragmatic, impactful and client centred way.