Management

Our Approach

We take you and your business through a three stage approach to generating profit improvement and resolving operation and business problems:-

1. We take the time to understand your business by carefully analysing it.
2. We identify improvements that can be made; We quantify the benefits of making those improvements, in terms of profit, service improvement, customer experience and benefits to you and your people.
3. We work with you to implement the agreed solutions. We deliver increased profits and sustained business improvement.

Client Relationships

We build trusted business relationships with our clients.  We’ll meet with you and your senior team frequently to ensure you achieve the business benefits you expect. We gain much of our work from client referral and we immensely value our relationships with our clients.

Projects

Achieving confident delivery of any major project depends on effective project management.
Depending on the existing range of skills and collective experience made available through their able and qualified people, most businesses are well served when it comes to carrying on their regular daily business.

However, a major project will often present a different type of challenge, requiring more unusual techniques, meaning that it probably cannot be tackled in the same way as the day to day, routine activities of the organisation.

In addition, a business cannot always risk distracting the people who carry out the routine work from their usual tasks by diverting their attention to a project. Even if an organisation's own people can be made available, they may not have the necessary skills and experience.

It may be stating the obvious but, if not managed properly, a project may have the dual effect of failing to produce the desired outcome while badly disrupting the general flow of regular business.

Projects may partially succeed but complete success will depend on effective planning, coordination, structures, reporting mechanisms and methods of control throughout the project life cycle. The more unique a project is to a particular organisation, the more likely it is to go wrong without the effective skills to keep it on track.

About Projects

A project needs to be recognised and defined as such. Any project will usually have certain characteristics in common with other projects:

• Defined objectives and deliverable.
• A stated specification or URD.
• A life span, with a definite start and finish.
• Limited available resources.
• It may be outside the normal business operations of the organisation concerned.
• It may be more risky than the normal business activities.
• It may create change and uncertainty.
• It may require unusual skills, knowledge and expertise, not readily available in that organisation.

Project Planning

Project planning and organisation are crucial to the successful outcome of a project.
A project plan — which may, of course, change as the project proceeds — can be produced by considering some of the most obvious questions about the project:

• What are the goals or what is the desired outcome?
• What is the budget?
• What is the timescale?
• Who will be the project manager?
• How can the work be structured and programmed?
• Who are the people to form the project team?
• What are the risks and problems and when might they occur?

Project Managers

Project managers, who concentrate fully on the successful implementation of a project, will not become distracted by the daily, routine tasks of the business but will ensure that the desired outcome of the project is effectively delivered. The job of the project manager will include:

• Drawing up the project plan to achieve the desired outcome according to time and resources.
• Identifying and quantify risks (or ensuring that a risk management process is put in place).
• Focusing on delivery.
• Ensuring that tasks are accomplished in the right order.
• Managing resources, using them effectively, creatively and in the right order.
• Ensuring coordination.
• Resolving people problems.
• Defining roles and responsibilities of others involved in the project.
• Implement channels of communication and communication plan.
• Ensuring cooperation, motivation and commitment of the project team.
• Monitoring progress and take effective creative action.
• Deliver reports and updates.
• Manage the project programme.
• Asserting the right degree of authority while keeping the team on side.

Business Continuity

What is Business Continuity Management?

Business Continuity Management is a process that examines the potential risks to an organisation and their likely impact on its capacity to continue delivering its products or services in the event of a crisis.

The documented Business Continuity Plan that is developed for an organisation as part of the process provides it with a tested response to a crisis, enabling it to resume or continue with its business activities in the face of disruption, safeguarding its future and maintaining the confidence of its customers.

Why is Business Continuity so Important?

All organisations need to be prepared for a potential natural or other disaster by having a tested plan in place that will enable them to recover and be up and running in the swiftest possible time frame.

Nobody now believes that floods, earthquakes, ’flu epidemics, fuel shortages or terrorist attacks will never effect their business operations.

Business Continuity Management governs an organisation’s actions from the time that an incident occurs or a risk is identified through to the mitigation or elimination of the danger.

Strategies can then be determined that will enable an organisation to continue with its usual activities, possibly using alternative operating methods.

Business Continuity Plans can then be documented, setting out the way in which an organisation can not only survive a major incident but continue to deliver to the satisfaction of its customers. The documentation will include policy and objectives; controls and measures; performance; and continuing improvement. The Plan can be tested for practical purposes by carrying out a Business Continuity Exercise.

Even with a Plan in place, it is essential for an organisation to remain prepared for a crisis by carrying out regular audits and reviews of its Plan and keeping its people aware and trained to respond without warning.

How We Can Help You Achieve Business Continuity Management for Your Organisation

Our approach to Business Continuity Management provides a practical framework that enables an organisation’s key contributors to the process to work in an effective and economic way to produce a successful Business Continuity Plan.
We will lead and guide your organisation and its people to produce a tested and documented Plan that is suitable for your organisation and we will not allow the process itself to disrupt your day to day activities!

STEP 1 – Understand where your business is vulnerable

We will start by carrying out an audit and gap analysis in discussion with your selected managers and other representatives to provide an assessment of where you are, where you need to be and what you need to do to close the gaps.

STEP 2 – Define your Business Continuity Strategy

Then, if you wish to proceed, we will take you through each step to ensure that policies and plans are tailored to your organisation’s needs, taking away from you as much of the work involved in doing this as we can. We will help you to safeguard the future of your business and position your organisation to bid more successfully for contracts with clients who are concerned about Business Continuity.

STEP 3 – Develop Your Business Continuity Plan

We can work with you to produce a documented Business Continuity Management System.

STEP 4 – Cultural Change

We can support you in training your people, your suppliers or partners in terms of awareness and the part that they must play in the process.

STEP 5 – Rehearse Your Plan

We can lead you through an exercise to test your Plan and better prepare your organisation.

OMCS Can Help Your Organisation with Project Management

How OMCS Can Provide Project Management Support

OMCS can offer a range of solutions that are complementary to the mainstream management of a project. These are particularly useful when projects are complex, with several stakeholders and the ability to see the whole picture is needed.
Projects come in many different guises. There are the traditional projects that deliver assets replacement or capital builds and also those with less tangible outcomes that can be more difficult to evaluate.

OMCS can help organisations to plan, execute and evaluate these, using our expertise and experience that can add considerable value to the project, supplementing usual project management techniques. We can work with project teams to correct project difficulties and recover a project that has drifted off course or to evaluate what was achieved and learn from success or difficulties.

At OMCS, our aim is to ensure that our clients’ projects are successfully managed to achieve the outcome that they require while also allowing them to continue with the day to day tasks of running business as normal.
We have years of experience of managing projects of all types and sizes for a range of organisations.