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In the summer of 2002
we provided a customised series of Project
Management and Microsoft Project training events for
the Sales and Marketing team within Bentley Motors
Ltd.
In this case study:
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Background |
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There can be few more
evocative names in the annals of the automotive (and
motor sports) industries than Bentley. Founded
by W.O. Bentley, Bentley Motors saw spectacular
racing successes in the twenties and thirties.
The names of the Bentley Boys and their contribution
to the victories at Le Mans are still legendary.
Success in motor sport influenced commercial success
with the marque becoming synonymous with luxury,
performance, quality and craftsmanship.
However, time has marched on and with the twenty
first century upon us a new Bentley is beginning to
reinvent itself.
Already the company is
no stranger to change, having been acquired by
Rolls- Royce in the thirties and in 1998 acquired by
the Volkswagen Group. Now trading as Bentley
Motors once more, Bentley is preparing to enter
another important chapter in its history.
“We are undergoing a
huge period of change, both internally, here
on-site; outside with our network of dealers and
obviously for our own customers” comments Ed
Striebig, formerly launch planning manager for the
business.
“The split of
Rolls-Royce & Bentley, preceded by the change of
ownership to become a wholly owned subsidiary of
Volkswagen AG, have been the catalyst and the means
by which we’ve been able to express our ambitions
which we’ve harboured for a long time of growing the
business and growing it quite considerably. The
change is not just in the ownership but also in what
we are able to achieve and the new targets we are
able to set ourselves realistically as a business.”
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Requirement |
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So how does an
organisation such as Bentley approach a review of
its systems and processes, and more importantly
identify the areas for change? A decision was
taken to establish a dedicated team of three people
to focus on business improvement. The
important factor here was the ability to take people
out of their day-to-day roles and as Ed states
“focus them very clearly on the future of the
company.” This approach allowed the team to
take an independent view of the organisation to
examine the future plans of Bentley and to match
them to the requirements: “whether they are systems,
processes or people.”
It was as part of this
team that Ed began to look at the management and
coordination of activities, the allocation of
resources and more critically the allocation of
funding for such initiatives. This was to lead
to a review of the way that Bentley managed its
sales and marketing projects. The business
process improvement team started to look at the
previous shortcomings in project planning and at
ways to address those issues.
In January 2002, the
team focused on theoretical approaches to the
processes, techniques and skills involved in
successful project management.
Realising at this stage
that the desired solution was a much larger task
than had been initially envisaged, Bentley sought
expert help and appointed Project Learning Limited
(PL) to provide guidance on how to successfully
adopt and implement current project management
techniques and support tools.
The importance of
obtaining a solution was underlined by the nature
and scope of the project that had to be managed.
With the new Bentley Motors would emerge a new
family of vehicles – most especially the launch of
the Bentley Continental GT, a project of paramount
importance to the business. |
…take people out of their day-to-day roles and
“focus them very clearly on the future of the
company.” |
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Consultation and
contract award |
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Following detailed
consultation, PL proposed a way forward as Ed
Striebig explains: “The way in which it had
been put across to me made sense, and I felt it
important that those arguments be put across to my
manager, we were mid project, there was an immediate
need to improve and the expectation was to bring an
immediate solution.”
The meeting provided an
exploration of the appropriate solution for
Bentley’s requirements and the match with the
products offered by PL. A tender was
subsequently created detailing the scope of the
requirement. However, before this could be
issued to potential suppliers the requirement for
project management training had to be approved by
the company’s internal training team. Having
achieved sign off, the specification could then be
issued.
A formal proposal was
submitted by PL detailing the training
recommendations proposed delegate numbers and
tentative dates. Following a benchmarking exercise,
against other project management training suppliers
PL were awarded the contract. |
“The way in which [the proposal] had been put across
to me made sense…we were mid project, there was an
immediate need to improve...” |
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Fact finding and
course customisation |
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The first element of
the delivery was to be a fact finding day which was
to put in context what it was we were trying to
achieve and what were our specific objectives for
engaging in an education process around project
management and Microsoft Project. Also
important to Bentley was the inclusion of the
delegates and their “personal objectives and
personal needs”.
The fact-finding day
was to provide both parties with an understanding of
the individual’s backgrounds, existing skills and
more importantly, the culture within which the newly
learned skills were to be deployed. The format
chosen for this day was to be an open, ‘round table’
discussion, the proposed tutor from PL and some of
the prospective delegates. For continuity a
single tutor would be assigned to the entire
contract, in this case Diane Gosling, partner at PL.
Attending the fact-finding day was to be of great
benefit to Diane “Without doubt, the fact finding
day offered us the opportunity to really get under
the skin of Bentley, its people and its culture.
I was able to establish a rapport with key personnel
and with a number of the delegates – this helped to
provide an informal relaxed learning environment
when the training was subsequently conducted.”
The next requirement
was the customisation of the course material itself.
With the knowledge gained in the pre-delivery
consultation, Diane and Ed set to work to modify the
existing structures for both the project management
and Microsoft Project courses.
“We agreed very early
on that the content of both courses would need to be
tailored to meet specific needs at Bentley. We
had some very clear objectives, and we wanted to
emphasise certain elements of the course content,”
stated Ed.
Diane’s input here was
also extremely useful: “We were able to introduce
elements to the courses that would provide the
delegates with the maximum interaction whilst
ensuring that the knowledge gained was appropriate
and focused.” The flexibility of Project
Learning as training provider in this tailoring was
to prove of great importance, as was their
flexibility in delivering the courses. |
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“Without doubt, the fact finding day offered us the
opportunity to really get under the skin of Bentley,
its people and its culture.”
"The flexibility of Project Learning as training
provider in this tailoring was to prove of great
importance, as was their flexibility in delivering
the courses." |
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Delivery |
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Finally the
establishment of a delivery schedule was required.
No small task when you are co-ordinating thirty
people’s diaries for a total of 4 days training
each. Bentley had initially established that
it required two courses for project management
theory and two courses for Microsoft Project, each
to be a two-day duration event. A time buffer
also had to be built in, between the project
management and software courses to allow every
delegate’s time to absorb the new information.
The result, by virtue of the logistics of
coordinating such events was somewhat different, and
for Bentley the flexibility of the training provider
was paramount “both on the timing and the content of
the courses.” PL finally concluded the training in
July 2002 having delivered six events equally split
between project management theory and Microsoft
Project training. The fact finding day,
training and a post training surgery, were conducted
at the Bentley’s Crewe factory utilising the
company’s own training facility.
The conclusion to the
exercise was for Diane to spend a day at Crewe
closing off the delivery when a senior management
briefing was prepared. Additionally, the
opportunity was taken to create some template plans
which the sales and marketing team could use as a
blueprint for their planning processes. This
also gave Ed and Diane a chance to assess the
project; “the feedback for the whole exercise and
more specifically to the training that people
undertook, has been consistently positive,” comments
Ed. |
“the feedback for the whole exercise and more
specifically to the training that people undertook,
has been consistently positive” |
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The exercise provided a
ground up reassessment of the way Bentley Motors
sales and marketing team’s processes operated.
For the future new questions are now being raised
and opportunities to extend these ideas are being
explored. In Ed’s view, the positive
contribution of PL was a key factor in the success
of the training events; “from the first point of
contact on the level of consultation was first class
and gave me a great degree of confidence”.
Ed also appreciated how
involved PL became with the project “PL’s enthusiasm
to genuinely help us make the most out of this, the
effort taken to understand as fully as they could
the context that the training was being delivered
in, the current business situation, our future plans
and the individual issues faced by the delegates was
very impressive”.
He concludes: “the most
impressive element was their knowledge of the
subject matter, in all probability a function of
their specialisation and concentration on project
management, rather than being everything to all men
at all times”. |
“from the first point of contact on the level of
consultation was first class and gave me a great
degree of confidence”
"the most impressive element was their knowledge of
the subject matter, in all probability a function of
their specialisation and concentration on project
management" |
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