iTrain is a specialist provider of services to corporate and public sector companies. We differentiate ourselves from our competitors in the depth of expertise and experience that we maintain within our staff team and the flexibility of the services that we provide. We differentiate ourselves by maintaining a complete open book standard for all of our costings that guarantees value for money.
iTrain operates a strict policy of only using in-house full-time employees to deliver our services. This will allow us to guarantee continuity of service throughout the lifetime of our customer partnership with you and the level of quality of all of the services we shall provide. We will not therefore be outsourcing any of the proposed services detailed in this document.
Our commitment to using full-time employees is also matched through the depth of skills within our team and the ability to offer excellent commercially competitive packages to you that emphasise both quality and value for money.
iTrain will provide a fully qualified management and consulting team to support your statement of requirements. The team will be pleased to adopt and sustain in-house programme standards, partnering and liaising with your team.
iTrain uses the full Prince2 project management methodology supported by our formal Quality Management System to deliver required project controls and reporting. A key element of iTrain’s Prince2 approach is to establish and maintain appropriate levels and methods of communication, emphasising support for formal control and the essential nature of informal communication and partnership that is the backbone of a successful project. Typically this would include weekly highlight reports associated with meetings between project team members, summary of progress during last reporting week; list of products started/completed during reporting period; Staffing used, unplanned absences and impact on target; Problems/issues identified and suggested remedial actions for discussion/agreement; forward look for next reporting period. In addition, more formal project meetings can coincide with key milestones sign-off. We will be pleased to support required reports. Project governance can be provided through the use of Prince2 and methods, including but not limited to:
- Formal identification of project deliverables
- Auditable Quality Assurance of all project deliverables
- The development and maintenance of a Project Initiation Document (PID)
- Full risk assessment, regular highlights reports and maintenance of risks and issue logs
- Formal and informal communications, including regular project team meetings
- Development and maintenance of Microsoft Project-based project plans
- On-site management of iTrain resources
Accessibility: iTrain does not anticipate any significant accessibility issues arising from this work. Work will be carried out during normal office hours at the specified CE Electric site in Shiremoor, UK, and elsewhere and iTrain personnel shall comply with all security requirements specified by you. Our team will be available onsite at the convenience of your team.
Staffing: iTrain comprises only permanent staff who receive induction into the company, practices and areas of work for all new projects. We have proposed a fully operative team for the duration of your project with deep experience of programme management and delivery for public shared service projects.
Our proposal guarantees continuity of personnel during and beyond the completion of the contract. Furthermore, our team has many years experience working together on similar projects and will therefore “hit the ground running” in readiness for your project start point. We can warranty the availability of the team.
Sub-Contracting Arrangements: To warranty the quality and continuity of service to our customers, it is iTrain’s policy not to employ sub-contractors for training and consultancy services.
Recruitment, staff development and training policies: iTrain maintains formal policies and procedures for staff performance and delivery reviews, from which development needs and associated training plans are developed and managed. If your team determines that the work of any of our team is not of a sufficiently high standard, we would be pleased to escalate these issues through the Enterprise Director and, if required, provide alternative arrangements, without any additional cost.
iTrain Quality Programme (abbreviated)
The iTrain Senior Management Team, led by the iTrain Board of Directors, have developed and maintain a formal Quality Management System (QMS) that has been externally assessed as compliant with ISO 9001:2008. The QMS espouses two key principles:
- everything starts and ends with the customer
- continuous improvement is key to our success
iTrain employs a staged solution delivery process that is adaptable to customer requirements and methodologies, comprising: Define, Design, Develop and Deploy. Close customer contact is regarded as essential at every stage of this process and within the formal structures of Prince2 methodology, formal review and customer sign off of key deliverables is mandated by every project plan. We will therefore fully support your quality assurance and other required methodologies. All solutions are managed throughout the delivery lifecycle by a Prince2 trained project manager who at the start of every project is required to develop and subsequently maintain an internal project initiation document. The PID is a living document throughout delivery and includes understanding the customer’s team, with whom the project manager liaises throughout and especially in the verification and validation of key product deliverables. The PID also includes the definition of all project governance measures to assure quality, including customer communications, formal meeting structures and responsibilities for sign-off of milestones and deliverables. iTrain is fully committed to the provision of quality assurance controls throughout your project and we will incorporate QA measures within any proposed draft project plan.
Customer Satisfaction Assessment
As part of the project delivery process, our procedure mandates that customer satisfaction assessment is carried out and the outputs are assessed by the iTrain senior management team, chaired by the Managing Director each quarter. iTrain fully appreciates that “customer” does not mean one person or one group and that true continuous improvement relies on capturing views and suggestions from as many involved parties as possible. To reflect this, iTrain maintains two types of satisfaction assessment for Learning & Development: one to capture and assess feedback from those directly receiving the service, and the other aimed at managers responsible for acquiring the service. These surveys are fully adaptable to meet customer needs as required.
iTrain Education Equal Opportunity Policy (abbreviated)
iTrain is committed to providing equal opportunity employment to all employees and applicants, and to providing and maintaining an environment where all staff, whatever their working pattern, no matter what their age, sex, sexual orientation or marital status, race, religious beliefs, nationality, ethnic or national origin, disability, part-time working, responsibility for dependants, political beliefs, trade union membership or trade union activity have the right to be treated on the same basis in fair competition. If employees have any concerns about discrimination in the work place they can talk directly to the HR Manager. We will make sure that employees are free to raise concerns without any fear of reprisal. Anyone found to be engaging in unlawful discrimination will be disciplined, and risks being dismissed. iTrain will not accept instructions from clients that indicate an intention to discriminate unlawfully. The iTrain Equal Opportunities Policy is reviewed on a regular basis ensuring its objectives are met and that it abides by all statutory obligations.
iTrain Education Health and Safety Policy (abbreviated)
“You are reminded that it is a condition of your assignment that you take all reasonable steps to safeguard your own safety and that of others who may be affected by your actions at work. When reporting for work at client sites some clients will give you a short health, safety and welfare briefing covering local policies and requirements. If this is not the case you should ask your line manager or project manager what arrangements are in place for health, safety and welfare.”
Knowledge Transfer and Education Support
A core and long standing ability of iTrain is the delivery of effective knowledge transfer; our services and approach are proven and recognised and iTrain are the leading independent provider of Oracle knowledge transfer and education services. Many public sector companies have utilised our training professionals and our education and consultancy services are integrated and supplied to Public and Private Sector bodies and System Integrators alike covering the breadth of Oracle and Siebel Application and Technical services. Our approach for you will be to integrate the knowledge transfer required into the transition programme as depicted in our integration and development methodology, to ensure the Councils personnel are fully equipped for the support and day to day running of its applications. We will all so provide free access to our standard applications and technology training courses to ensure there is no costs restriction on the development of these personnel
Our knowledge of Oracle applications has led us to work with some of the largest organisations directly and also with their partners, for example DWP, Home Office, Accenture, Steria, NHS, Fujitsu, Logica, ITV, Bovis, MHRA, eMap, Greater Manchester and South Yorkshire Police Forces, and Scottish Power. Our primary customer sector is the Public Sector and Local Government, where iTrain have delivered a range of consultancy and education projects. These include many Oracle Application projects with customers including Cheshire, Northumberland and Leicestershire County Councils, Newport and Norwich City Councils and London Boroughs such as Greenwich and Barking and Dagenham.
Regarding project management and escalation, iTrain provide 4 core functions to be involved in day-to-day management of project faults/ risk/ issues. The following person(s) will in the first instance be contacted within the timelines detailed below, for a response and a resolution plan:
Consultant – Reports to the Lead Consultant and will be involved with the Functional and/or Technical set-up.
Lead Consultant – Responsible for the Functional and/or Technical set-up of the solution.
Project Manager – overall project control and responsible for project audit and ongoing quality assessment. Minimum response within next working day
Programme Director – responsible for the commercial arrangements and ongoing commercial requirements. Minimum response within the next working day
Roles & Responsibilities
Our approach to roles and responsibilities is to clearly identify these and to document them within the project initiation document (PID). This will identify required roles, inputs and outputs for those roles and the personnel associated with the roles. The roles and responsibilities structure will be fully incorporated into the detailed and documented following a proposed scoping phase for the project.
Progress Reporting
We propose 4 key Board/Customer Escalation points (Milestones) with supported documentation
- Post Scoping (Functional Specification)
- Conference Room Pilot (CRP)
- User Acceptance Testing (UAT)
- Deployment
To accompany the above we will recommend a range of ongoing progress reporting mechanisms and we can supply a full document management system to the project to manage and control internal reporting requirements. Our standard reporting cycle will adhere to the timelines for response and resolution and will incorporate:
- Risks and Issues document (RAID) updated by lead consultant and escalated to Project Manager.
- Document management system updated daily.
- Weekly Highlight reports issued to the client, supplemented with weekly Risks and Issues document (RAID).
- Weekly update meetings.
- Weekly project plan updates (issued as full plan or iterations).
- Fortnight/monthly project sponsor report.
Relationship with Oracle in terms of ensuring problems are quickly solved
iTrain is an Oracle partner and therefore works closely with the Oracle account management, consultancy and support teams in Dublin and Swindon.
Our relation with Oracle is managed directly by Lewis Jones, our channels account manager. Lewis is an ex-Oracle employee and has excellent links into both the licensing and the support organisation at senior management level. We will therefore be pleased to escalate issues with Oracle as required and Lewis will provide a full liaison service between Oracle and the customers team to ensure that issues are resolved in a timely and efficient manner.
Project Control and Escalation
Regarding project management and escalation, iTrain provide 4 core functions to be involved in day-to-day management of project faults/ risk/ issues. The following person(s) will in the first instance be contacted within the timelines detailed below, for a response and a resolution plan:
Consultant – Reports to the Lead Consultant and will be involved with the Functional and/or Technical set-up.
Lead Consultant – Responsible for the Functional and/or Technical set-up of the solution.
Project Manager – overall project control and responsible for project audit and ongoing quality assessment. Minimum response within next working day
Programme Director – responsible for the commercial arrangements and ongoing commercial requirements. Minimum response within the next working day
Roles & Responsibilities
Our approach to roles and responsibilities is to clearly identify these and to document them within the project initiation document (PID). This will identify required roles, inputs and outputs for those roles and the personnel associated with the roles. The roles and responsibilities structure will be fully incorporated into the detailed and documented following a proposed scoping phase for the project.
Progress Reporting
We propose 4 key Board/Customer Escalation points (Milestones) with supported documentation
Post Scoping (Functional Specification)
Conference Room Pilot (CRP)
User Acceptance Testing (UAT)
Deployment
To accompany the above we will recommend a range of ongoing progress reporting mechanisms and we can supply a full document management system to the project to manage and control internal reporting requirements. Our standard reporting cycle will adhere to the timelines for response and resolution and will incorporate:
Risks and Issues document (RAID) updated by lead consultant and escalated to Project Manager.
Document management system updated daily
Weekly Highlight reports issued to the client, supplemented with weekly Risks and Issues document (RAID)
Weekly update meetings
Weekly project plan updates (issued as full plan or iterations)
Fortnight/monthly project sponsor report
Relationship with Oracle in terms of ensuring problems are quickly solved
iTrain is an Oracle partner and therefore works closely with the Oracle account management, consultancy and support teams in Dublin and Swindon.
Our relation with Oracle is managed directly by Lewis Jones, our channels account manager. Lewis is an ex-Oracle employee and has excellent links into both the licensing and the support organisation at senior management level. We will therefore be pleased to escalate issues with Oracle as required and Lewis will provide a full liaison service between Oracle and the customers team to ensure that issues are resolved in a timely and efficient manner.
With respect to the raising of support requests with Oracle on behalf of the project on a formal basis, these will be fully documented and managed as part of our programme governance standards through the maintenance of a standard project issues log. These will be reviewed on a regular basis as part of the overall project governance programme.
The overall approach
iTrain solution’s provide comprehensive business transformation, consultancy and change management to fully deliver our customers requirements. The customer programme, implementing the various Oracle modules required, will recognise that there will be a number of core phases to the programme as follows:
- Business Transformation and Process Modelling.
- Functional Analysis.
- System Integration.
- Testing and Implementation.
- Change Management and Training.
In respect of each of these phases, we recognise that the programme will commence with a major process modelling phase that will be used to identify process improvements and best practice change prior to the specification of technology change and integration. This programme will be supported by a full change management programme designed to ensure that change is quantified and managed throughout the duration of the programme. These two programmes will be managed by our business transformation and change management practices respectively.
Our approach will be to configure and integrate the Oracle r12 eBusiness Suite applications and related functionality as part of an overall business focused programme and to provide a bespoke configuration and training service that fulfils the agreed business needs, processes, and rules that have been specified as part of the business transformation and process modelling phase. Additionally, our approach is to add value to the programme by providing best practice advice and recommendations to ensure that the solution is fully fit for purpose. In this respect, we aim to add value to the use of existing and new Oracle functionality by providing ongoing best practice advice and business improvements to the processes and system that are being used within the business and by delivering functionality that fully deploys the functionality available within the Oracle modules and applications and other 3rd party systems. Our approach will therefore be to work collaboratively with the IT and business teams to identify and deliver business and system improvements through the entire project lifecycle.
All modules will be configured to work with the existing interfaces and reporting tools and our aim will be to both develop in-house expertise and knowledge of these interfaces and to ensure they are fully fit for purpose. In respect of bespoke interfaces, we will commit to ensuring that these are fully supported whilst trying to make as much use of standard Oracle functionality to achieve these objectives.
A Single Integrated Business Application
We will provide expert BI and reporting consultancy to ensure that all required information outputs are delivered as part of the overall programme. Our integrated approach will allow us to significantly reduce the ongoing support costs as well as expensive in-house IT costs for the maintenance of cross-instance interfaces. By deploying the Stratus suite through a fully supported programme of business transformation and associated change management, the iTrain solution will meet the full Customer requirements and there will be the opportunity to further develop the functionality of the suite post go-live, realising ongoing efficiencies and savings across the Customer range of businesses.
Best Value Solution
Our solution has been proposed to fully conform in line with the issued requirements documentation and it is our intention to deliver the full specification of requirements as an overall fixed price solution.
iTrain’s proposal therefore provides both short and long term best value approaches, building on the Oracle solutions already in place and the licences purchased as well as delivering a solution that will provide a fully integrated business solution, enabling the customer to deliver a full solution.
Proposed Methodologies
In accordance with our IS09001:2000 quality management standards, iTrain’s customer programmes are governed by a set of flexible methodology templates. Each methodology is drawn from industry best practice and is designed to maximise the benefits of each transformation programme. Our aim is to deliver flexible services that are robust and adaptable to each of our customers needs. We operate different methodologies depending on the nature of each transformation programme and each of the following methodologies will be deployed within the Oracle programme:
- Programme Governance: Our programme governance methodology is based upon Prince 2 management and ISO9001:2000 quality standards and is designed to ensure that our customer transformation programmes contain integrated management, communication and quality audit controls.
Business Transformation: iTrain deploys an integrated transformation methodology designed to incorporate business best practice with business process and procedure identification and control. Our business transformation programmes are based around classic audit, deploy and review cycles and are designed to ensure that all of our technical and change management programmes are fully integrated and consistent with the aims and goals of business improvement.
Change and Training: Our standard change management methodology is based upon our proprietary “4 D’s” approach – Define, Design, Develop, Deploy. We concentrate heavily upon the detailed analysis of customer needs, relating these to defined roles and organisation responsibilities. The methodology incorporates customer business processes and procedures to an applied range of communication and assessment standards, fully supporting the development and delivery of bespoke and off-the-shelf change, training and mentoring programmes.
Integration and Development: Our technical methodology is designed to support all of our system integration and bespoke development services. The methodology is based upon an original SSADM “waterfall” approach, streamlined to incorporate Prince2 management controls, Oracle “AIM” configuration control together with a significant prototyping phase within the main technical development rollout. Our aim is to provide flexible customer focused service within the context of robust management and quality controls. Associated change and training programmes can be incorporated into each programme according to our change management and content creation methodologies.
Programme Governance and Assessment
iTrain Project Managers are qualified Prince 2 practitioners and Prince 2 methods are applied to each project to provide appropriate levels of governance and control during the project life cycle. In addition, the iTrain Quality Management System, designed to support registration to ISO 9001:2000, is the foundation and driver of customer satisfaction assessment and continuous improvement. Documented processes are used to capture and resolve issues as they arise and to take action to prevent recurrence, and to assess customer satisfaction at all appropriate levels within the customer organisation at points in the project lifecycle that are agreed with customers as part of the project Quality Plan. Whilst iTrain has in place standard satisfaction assessment criteria, these are often tailored to suit the needs of individual customers so as to provide both parties with the best possible information.
As part of our overall proposal, we have provided a 15% effort allocation for project management time and a 3% effort allocation for quality management, including satisfaction assessment, on all of our development and delivery estimates.
Programme Evaluation and Assessment
iTrain recognises that in many if not most situations, the “customer” is not one person with one set of views that remain fixed over time. Success will mean different things to different parties within the customer’s organisation and iTrain is committed to ensuring that all stakeholders’ views are sought and captured as part of the assessment process and that, as appropriate, this is done at various stages of the project lifecycle. Typically, assessment processes and criteria will be established both for end-users as well as for managers, group leaders, project sponsors and others within the customer organisation. All documentation and controls are maintained by the project control group (to be agreed as part of the Project Initiation process) and assessment criteria then acts as a core governance control throughout the duration of the programme. iTrain, in conjunction with the customer will be pleased to operate a range of project control standards to guarantee consistent documentation and governance control.
Customer Applied Integration Methodology
The following chart outlines the iTrain integration and development methodology that we plan to deploy for the system delivery programme:
Chart 1: iTrain integration and development methodology template
As a general overview, our approach is to deliver a full configuration specification for the technical integration elements of the programme that is rooted within our transformation and change management programmes to ensure that we deliver best practice solutions. This is achieved through the development of a full functional specification designed to identify the relationship between required business functionality and the associated systems. This is also then used to assess the programme deliverables within the system and user acceptance testing phases to ensure that the identified business improvements are fit for purpose within the configured systems.
Project planning and Control
The primary responsibility for project planning and control lies within our Project Management Practice and the iTrain Project Office. A dedicated project manager will be allocated to the project. Working with the iTrain Project Office, they will function to ensure that all elements of the project are operated and managed in a cohesive and consistent manner. This will be achieved by ensuring that all projects adopt a common approach to managing:
- Project plans
- Financial tracking
- Operational tracking
- Risks
- Issues
- Milestones
- Dependencies
- Costs (forecast and actual)
- Benefits
- Deliverables
- Change
- Reporting
- Compliance with relevant Standards
To facilitate this, for all iTrain projects, the Project Office:
- Track and reports on key milestones.
- In conjunction with the Project Manager, monitor risks, issues, assumptions and dependencies. Particularly related to an activity that may impact progress for the project.
- Manage resource allocation with a view of ensuring all projects have highly skilled subject matter experts deployed to each individual project.
- Manage any budgetary considerations and produce relevant forecasts reports, plan v actual.
- Ensure clear benefits/deliverables are identified and that appropriate measures are in place to track their delivery.
- Be pro-active in establishing a regular communication framework with iTrain’s deployed team on site.
Benefits of utilising iTrain’s Project Office:
The key benefits that will be delivered by the iTrain Project Office are:
- Awareness and complete focus on risks, issues, assumptions and dependencies, leading to mitigation of such and prompt resolution of issues.
- Ability to manage/report on key milestone activity and ensure focus on benefits and deliverables.
- Consistency of operations across all iTrain projects.
- Clear focus on programme budget and management of activities within set financial targets.
- Support and facilitation services to Project Manager, Lead Consultants and all Consultants, deployed on the project.
- Improved decision making process against the big picture by maintaining quality data.
Oracle r12 Upgrade – Project Implementation Plan:
iTrain’s process model for all project management is described in the steps below:
Note: In this example, for an Oracle r12 upgrade project, we will use the CRP session to establish best practice, introduce functional improvement and demonstrate the upgrade plan.
iTrains project governance methodology is based upon the Prince 2 project management methodology. Particular highlights of our approach include:
Strong customer planning and reporting.
Strong project governance through the deployment of a communication infrastructure that incorporates project team, project customers, project managers, project sponsors and project control.
Strong project communications through regular feedback and controlled reporting infrastructure.
Strong project control through identification of risk and issues and resolution of the risks/ issue log.
Process based project methodology based around the project initiation document (PID) and ongoing change management and control within the context of an agreed project and customer based management framework.
Our thorough approach to testing incorporates early user involvement to facilitate organisational readiness, user acceptance and ongoing support of the system.
The suggested Testing Approach for the project is represented by the following schematic.
This shows the five main stages of the test process, starting with the definition of the Test Strategy, through Unit Testing, System Testing, Integration Testing and Business (User) Acceptance Testing before any Go-Live decision. The relative involvement of technical resources from the project team and each of our client business users is indicated along the bottom. This diagram shows that as the testing stages proceeds, there will need to be more involvement from the business.
Process-oriented testing:
The basis for the tests will be the “process maps” as defined in the Business process specification document to establish a process-oriented way of testing. Based on business processes multiple test scenarios will be defined to simulate the various business conditions. This Business “scenario-driven” approach for solution testing will not only help to verify the business transactional functionality of the solution but also that the solution holds together to cater for end to end processes.
Testing Business Scenarios represent variations of business situations. There are two different levels of scenarios:
- Scenarios that will test horizontally of all functional areas: end-to-end processes;
- Scenarios that will test vertically within functional areas.
According to the type of testing being performed, business functions or processes will be selected and realistic business scenarios and test data will be developed to test. The expected results of the tests will be determined in advance of the tests and documented for comparison with actual results.
The outcome of the testing will be recorded in detail in the individual scenario documents and summarised in a status log maintained for control.
Building block approach to solution acceptance:
There are number of solution components that will be working together to form part of the overall solution. iTrain believes that our solution testing can in general be qualified as a building block approach to solution acceptance. Each level of testing increases in scope and control, until ultimately system performance on production architecture can be simulated, using production level transaction volumes and concurrent user activity.
Well-documented, repeatable test models:
Our approach will help to develop well-documented, repeatable test models to facilitate analysis and regression testing of defects in the current release, as well as the testing of future releases. For complex testing needs of the solution, we believe our approach will help to perform:
- Early up-front planning to facilitate starting the test on time and staying on schedule;
- Clearly defined execution steps, test condition, expected results and identified test data;
- Use metrics to measure the quality and the progress of the testing activities.
Testing will require a significant amount of involvement from your representatives, mainly Business Process Experts and key users. This involvement is critical in order to gain knowledge on the implemented solution and to accept the developed systems processes. Testing of all types will take place under controlled and supervised conditions with regard to the technical environment(s). If testing leads to necessary changes, these changes will be transported on request in a controlled manner by the solution testing team from initial development, through quality (testing) and eventually into the production system.
Unit Testing, Regression Testing, System Testing:
In addition to functional testing, as described, we will also undertake a range of technical test programmes as follows:
- Unit Test – testing each CEMLI and Report to ensure it is functionally and technically fir for purpose
- System Test – ensuring that all functional components are technically operational (i.e. no technical/java /configuration errors etc.)
- Regression Test – we will regression test all patch updates to ensure that system functionality is maintained. Our proposal will be to use Mercury to ensure that test harnesses are modelled and maintained.
As per our proposed Progress Reporting structure, found under the Project Control and Escalation tab, the customer’s and iTrain’s Project Manager shall meet weekly to discuss matters relating to the project. If either party wishes to change the scope or execution of iTrain’s Services relating to the project, it shall submit details of the requested change to the iTrain Account Manager or customer equivalent, in writing.
If a customer requests a change to the scope or execution of the Services:
iTrain in conjunction with the customer shall, within a reasonable time (and in any event not more than five working days after receipt of the request, provide a clear, precise and unambiguous written estimate to the customer of:
- The likely time required to implement the change.
- Any necessary variations to the Charges arising from the change.
- Fitness for purpose and the likely effect of the change on the Project Plan.
If the customer does not wish to proceed, there shall be no change to the Charges or the Project Plan. If the customer wishes iTrain to proceed with the change, iTrain shall do so after agreement on the necessary variations to its Charges, the Services and the Project Plan.
Change Management and Business Transformation Programmes
Our overall approach is to deliver a full three-way consultancy programme incorporating business transformation, change management and integration. To provide a fuller explanation of our change and transformation programmes, we have provided below, details of our change management and business transformation methodologies together with details of our proposed training methodology. For definition:
Change management is taken as a structured approach to change in individuals, teams, organizations and communities that enable the transition from a current state to a desired future state.
Business transformation is taken as a business initiative that attempts to align People, Process and Technology initiatives of a company more closely with its business strategy and vision to support and help innovate new business strategies. Business transformation is achieved through efforts from alignment of People, Process and Technology strategies towards a strategic end-state.
Dynamic Enterprise Modeling is the approach that iTrain uses to align and implement the organizational and change architecture needed to support our change programmes and is based upon the development of a formal reference model. The underlying models incorporate:
- Business Control Model: The Business Control Model represents the primary processes of the organization and their control, grouped in business functions. The DEM reference model exists of one main Business Control Model, resulting in several other Business Control Models per function area of the organization.
- Business Function Model: The Business Function Model focuses on the targets of the several functions within the company.
- Business Process Model: The Business Process Model focuses on the execution of the functions and processes that originate from the Business Control Model and the Business Function Model. Processes flows are depicted and processes are specified in detail.
- Business Organization Model: The Business Organization Model focuses less on the processes and more on the organizational aspects such as roles and responsibilities and is used as the basis of change logistics.
Through the identification of these drivers and models, iTrain’s solution will provide a fully documented change management programme to ensure that we deliver a best practice technical solution that fully meets the business needs of the customer.
The iTrain range of training services are deployed by four specialist delivery practices responsible for Oracle Finance, Human Resources and Payroll, Supply Chain and Siebel/CRM respectively. Each practice is deployed within a fully project managed team structure headed by a project delivery manager who is accountable to the customer for all aspects of the training programme delivery and a project account manager who is responsibe for the commercial relationship. The iTrain Consulting practices can develop programmes for the development, maintenance and delivery of full life-cycle Oracle training programmes across the entire ERP and CRM service and function range.
The team uses industry standard role-based change management methodologies that use customer driven business processes to deliver customer specific training services that directly meet the needs of the students that attend the delivered training events. Our training development and delivery methods are designed to ensure that our customers maximise their investment in their technology and process improvement programmes through the effective development of their own staff’s competencies.
Project-based Training Delivery
iTrain Consulting’s training consultants have broad experience working directly in partnership with our customers, having deployed major ERP training rollouts for global organisations such as ITV, Transport for London, Lafarge Aggregates, AT&T, Hertz Cars, Del Monte Fresh Produce, Canon, Hewlett Packard and for government organisations such as the DTI, Salford City Council and Northumberland County Council. Our focus is to provide quality driven services that are adaptable and flexible to the needs of each customer.
iTrain Consulting will adapt its approach to the delivery objectives of each customer based programme team through the provision of fully costed and project managed services. Working alongside the customer project team to facilitate and fulfill the project delivery objectives, iTrain Consulting will also provide a comprehensive business management service to ensure that our deliverable responsibilities are fulfilled to the specified needs of the programme. Working in partnership with the implementation group and the customer business team, iTrain Consulting will always add value to any major ERP and CRM training project by providing the expert training resources needed to complement and enhance the business objectives of our customer’s change management programme.
Training Delivery Methodologies
iTrain provides fully managed training services designed to fulfil the lifecycle training needs of our customer’s Oracle implementation programmes based around a proven training delivery methodology. The iTrain Consulting delivery methodology is based on customer driven sets of business processes designed to ensure that our customer’s maximise their investment in their applications, bespoke implementations and business services and is structured in four key phases as follows:
Stage 1: Definition
Define the exact nature of the requirement by initiating a Business Analysis/Process Modelling phase. This requires input from
- The iTrain Consulting Project Manager
- The Client Project Team
- Key system users outside the project team
This information is used to define the change management objectives of the programme, and to ensure that business requirements are incorporated into the training as well as understanding the corporate context of the business change programme. When this information has been collated, the iTrain Consulting Project Manager, working in partnership with the customer business team can define the project delivery plan for the development and rollout phases of the programme.
Outputs from this stage are as follows:
- Project Initiation Document – incorporating project control and quality control plans
- Training Needs Analysis Specification – incorporating training delivery definitions and business roles
- Business Process Map and Process-Role Matrix – incorporating training needs analysis matrix.
- Agreed Project Plan
Stage 2: Design Change Management and Supporting Training Programmes
The second stage involves the detailed design of the deliverable outputs for the programme. In particular, this phase is used to design the collateral templates and control configurations required for all ongoing development. This will also incorporate any local standards and define the document control requirements for the project. This stage will deliver a set of quality standards for the development of the identified training needs together with standards for training appraisal plans for the delivered events.
The collated information will be used to design a Training Standards Framework to incorporate:
- Process design and development controls associated with business change management needs and contexts
- Training collateral template design standards, incorporating customer specific design needs
- Document management standards and controls together with customer access and resource sign-off support materials
- Logistics planning controls
- Message management and contextualisation controls together with identified standard programme messages for the rollout of the programme
- Programme assessment and appraisal standards and templates together with an appraisal framework designed to define and assess the outputs from the delivered training events
- eLearning support and storyboards (if required)
iTrain Consulting prefers to deploy an iterative design methodology, working with customer appointed representatives to qualify requirements, assess and agree documented design specifications and sign-off agreed schedules for the development phase of the programme. This requires input from;
- The iTrain Consulting Project Manager
- The iTrain Consulting Development Team
- The Client Project Team
Stage 3: Develop Training
Courseware and associated training collateral will be developed for each of the identified programmes as agreed in the definition stage using customer based business processes and system-specific implementation.
Any additional configuration or process-based information can be contextualised and incorporated into the courseware to ensure the client specific messages are fully reinforced throughout the delivery programme. At this stage, the development team will also provide technical resource specifications needed for the delivery of the training programme developing model cases for the proposed training events and populating the necessary training instances for a roll-on roll-off method of courseware/hands-on exercise support.
Our training delivery team has experience of a wide range of development styles and supporting training delivery products and would be pleased to deploy our training development programmes across a wide range of standard learning development platforms. We have specialist in-house expertise covering the following training development approaches:
Classroom Collateral
- Process Development Tools including Oracle Tutor
- Desktop Manuals
- Quick Reference Cards
- Trainer Support Materials
- Exercise Development and Classroom Appraisals
- Simulation Development across a range of technologies including Oracle UPK
Self-Tutoring/eLearning Collateral
- Storyboard Development
- Storyboard Specification
- eLearning Development
- Self-Study Materials Development
Mentoring and Support Programmes
- Support Guides and on-line help development
- Systems support reference systems
iTrain Consulting grants a full copyright licence for all developed courseware to ensure that the courseware is developed specifically for each customer’s requirements and would only be used for the instruction of our customer’s staff.
Stage 4: Deploy Training
iTrain Consulting will provide exclusively full-time expert instructors to deliver the courses and to train the end-user community across the rollout regions as agreed in the project plan. Additionally, iTrain Consulting will supply a full logistics management service to organise and manage student attendance, supported by our in-house logistics management system, “Central”.
Training Delivery Methodology
iTrain Consulting has experience of a wide range of training delivery modes and the appropriate delivery profile will be defined for each customer depending upon the results of the definition phase of the programme. Training delivery modes range across the following delivery styles:
- Classroom Delivery
- Train the Trainer delivery – providing preparation and in-classroom support both customer super-user support and in-house training delivery staff classroom support
- One-to-One tutoring and on-site mentoring
- Self-Tutoring and remote eSeminar delivery
- eLearning Delivery
- Blended training delivery
Mentoring Support
In addition to full-scale training delivery and deployment programmes, iTrain Consulting would also be pleased to discuss ongoing mentoring and training support programmes for post-implementation training support and also the wider development and deployment possibilities of both our classroom training services and our bespoke support services that could be used during the ongoing deployment of our customer’s Oracle r12 eBusiness suite.
iTrain will be pleased to provide a full support service. The nature and level of the required support can be determined by contract.
As robust but flexible Oracle specialists, iTrain offer real value for money in the delivery, support and exploitation of Oracle Applications. Whether you simply require an ad hoc telephone support service, or a fully managed solution and infrastructure, iTrain provides extensive capability, comprehensive Service Level Agreements and a professional partnership approach.
Our services are aligned and committed to the recognised standards for IT Service Management, including Best Management Practice and IT Infrastructure Library and co-ordinated by our dedicated Business Assurance and Quality Manager who reports to the Managing Director. The service is fronted by a help desk and managed by a Service Manager at our support centre and can be provided remotely from iTrain locations and network-linked to customer locations, or on customer sites.
iTrain are pleased to provide a range of full business and technical support services. Our support contracts are developed with appropriate SLA’s for each customer including:
- Business hours telephone support is routed through our first line support function. 2nd line support is routed for direct response from our specialist internal practices and third line technical support is provided as field support or from New York, London and Amsterdam.
- Full service desk support for fault identification, escalation and resolution based out of our UK Support centre in London including full Oracle technical and applications support
- On-site technical support. This can include an option to provide unlimited onsite application maintenance on the basis of a standard monthly support contract.
- Business applications support including DBA and eBusiness suite support; remote diagnostics and management; 24/7 technical backup and emergency management and control; centralised diagnostics and management centre in London.
- iTrain’s support service contracts are designed to deliver full technical and business support as well as incorporating measures for the development of ongoing best practice and improvement through the provision of fully tailored and bespoke SLA structures.
- iTrain support can also include full Oracle configuration and rollout of additional Oracle eBusiness Suite functionality for Financials, HR/Payroll, Siebel/CRM and Supply Chain.
- Call tracking and robust escalation procedures.
- Team of application and technical consultants who will have relevant and current experience to the product combinations deployed.
- Excellent DBA resource and pro-active system monitoring.
- Patching and Archiving.
- Established relationship with Oracle. Support.
- System, Infrastructure and Process Audits.
- New software and functionality reviews.
- Audits and system health checks.
In addition to these services, we provide value and, through on demand services based on the Oracle eBusiness suite applications and as an established education provider, iTrain can also provide focused Oracle learning and awareness for IT teams and users. One of our Service Managers will be pleased provide further details on iTrain Support Services.
The iTrain quality management system contains full procedures for fault management and escalation and we would be pleased to provide copies of our procedure manuals. Our processes deal with the recognition and handling of incidents, recording, tracking and resolution for support and for project management and control. From a support perspective, we utilise ITIL based procedures to manage and control incidents and for project management and control, we follow Prince 2 standards.
Incident and Resolution Procedures
iTrain supports a full ITIL compliant set of processes for recognising faults and escalating incidents to ensure faults are identified, recognised, tracked and resolved through our service desk functions, based at our UK support centre in Edinburgh. The basic procedures followed are ITIL compliant and are structured as follows:
Service Desk function
A critically important function used by the business and all iTrain operations and technical teams. Our processes are designed to ensure that the Service Desk is effective and efficient is fundamental in the provision of exceptional customer service. The Service Desk is the Customer facing entry point for the business into iTrain technical and management support. iTrain Consulting Services service desk related services are extensive including:
- Service Desk design.
- Review of internal / outsourced Service Desk requirements and benefits.
- Service Desk operational and process assessment.
- Process development.
- Development of prioritization, categorization procedures included CTI (Category, Types and Item) classifications.
- Development of escalation procedures 9both functional and hierarchical).
- Report and metric development and production.
- First Line investigation and diagnosis service implementation.
- Role definition.
- Skills development.
- Service Desk script development.
- Self Help tool design.
- Development of Request Management procedures and work flow.
Incident Management
In addition to the Service Desk operational activities, other Incident Management procedure development includes:
- 2nd/ 3rd Line Incident Management procedures.
- Major Incident procedures.
- Incident Models.
- Incident diagnosis techniques.
Problem Management
Closely linked to Incident, Change and other ITIL processes, the Problem Management function is involved in the prevention of recurring Incidents and taking steps to minimize Incident impact. We are able to assist in:
- The definition of Problem Management scope and how it differs from Incident Management.
- Problem record categorization and prioritization.
- Distinction between reactive and proactive Problem Management processes.
- Development of Knowledge Management tools.
- Problem Management report development including trend reporting.
- Problem Management techniques.
- workaround development.
- Major Problem reviews and development.
We would be pleased to provide further process details for our service desk functions and we can also offer ITIL change management and training on request.