Bio UK

Enterprise Portfolio Review Service

Bio's Enterprise Portfolio Review Service helps organisations rapidly assess the current condition of their portfolio of projects, in terms of status, health, and priority from a budget and resource perspective. This ensures that investment and effort remains aligned with strategic objectives and changing business demands whilst optimising return on investment.

Features

• Definition of clear, relevant, objective business criteria for prioritising projects
• Accommodates both strategic goals and short-term critical/emergency demands
• Provides “Stop Start Continue” recommendations for projects, with justifications
• Reports on critical dependencies, resource conflicts and principal risks
• Summarises the status and health of projects within the portfolio
• Includes summary maturity assessment for portfolio management process
• Waterfall, agile and hybrid methodologies (Mode 1/Mode 2)
• Cost effective “Rapid Insight” approach, driving agile decision making
• Identifies key areas for deeper analysis and improvement potential
• Business outcomes, adoption and RoI focussed, not just technical milestone

Benefits

• Ensures resource and funding investment reflects current priorities
• Stems time and budget over-run, assures project and portfolio ROI
• Ensures a responsive, systematic response to budget pressures and reductions
• Improves productivity of resources, minimises wasted effort and capacity
• Delivers insightful Management Information and dashboards, enabling agile decision-making
• Offers independent, objective, factual feedback, no “tunnel-vision” or vested interests
• Modular in scope, from sample projects to full portfolio review
• Full project lifecycle; business case, design, delivery and transition
• Consulting based on practical operational experience, not just textbook/theory
• Familiarity with Public Sector reduces onboarding, accelerating Bio’s impact

£5,500 an instance

Service documents

• Pricing document

  PDF

• Service definition document

  PDF

• Terms and conditions

  PDF

Request an accessible format

If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need versions of these documents in a more accessible format, email the supplier at gcloud@bio.uk.com. Tell them what format you need. It will help if you say what assistive technology you use.

Framework

G-Cloud 14

Service ID

922913612329990

Contact

Sales Team
0845 003 9092
gcloud@bio.uk.com

Planning

• Planning service: Yes
• How the planning service works: When organisations implement cloud solutions, this typically entails multiple, inter-related projects and initiatives, within a wider portfolio of digital transformation, alongside “keeping the lights on” projects.; ; However, business objectives continuously evolve, and project portfolios can lose alignment with strategic priorities. Furthermore, short term business and external issues can place unforeseen pressures on available budgets and resources, such that projects and portfolios can become unachievable.; ; Bio’s Enterprise Portfolio Review Service entails a rapid, efficient assessment of an organisation’s live and planned portfolio versus current strategic and operational priorities, ensuring that every project, and the associated investments of funds and resource, remain relevant, achievable, and in an appropriate order of sequencing and priority.; ; We provide summary reports of assessment criteria, project status and health; recommending which initiatives should continue, accelerate, delay, or cancel, with justification, ensuring optimal ROI and mitigating “drift” (or even failure) in benefits realisation.; ; We undertook this activity for a local authority to re-baseline their portfolio and re-prioritise (and in some cases cease) projects against their prevailing strategy and constraints. We repeated this exercise several weeks later in view of COVID-19’s impact on both priorities and resources, enabling them to optimise the value delivered to their operations and citizens.
• Planning service works with specific services: No

Training

• Training service provided: Yes
• How the training service works: Bio’s Advisory Services are specifically aimed at developing the skills and capability of an organisation’s people, processes and systems by assessing maturity against an objective model, comparing this to best practice for managing digital transformation and cloud migration projects and helping those organisations and individuals move up the maturity scale.; ; Formal training in project and portfolio management can be provided on a catalogue or bespoke basis. However, organisations frequently implement, embed and sustain change more effectively through “hands on” operational engagement with Bio; we can share practical “real world” experience rather than “textbook theory”. These learning and development assignments are structured around specific processes or operational areas, and involve “on the job” coaching, mentoring and knowledge sharing, whilst tracking improvement in quality and output of the in-house teams.; ; We also provide periodic health-check and audit services, ensuring the skills and capabilities we have developed are maintained and evolve on a “continuous improvement” basis.; ; As an example, a premium retailer handed over responsibility to Bio for running their project teams on an interim basis so we could review their project and portfolio management capability, and design and implement a “best practice” framework, whilst providing skilled resource to clear their project backlog.
• Training is tied to specific services: No

Setup and migration

• Setup or migration service available: Yes
• How the setup or migration service works: Bio’s Enterprise Portfolio Review Service helps organisations migrate to the cloud by ensuring that the programme of workstreams delivering such migrations remains in the optimal configuration and has the necessary funding and resources to achieve the expected outcomes.; ; For example, we identify where technical or service dependencies between projects have become misaligned, or resource availability has slipped or reduced, and highlight the impact this will have on the migration.; ; We also recommend how individual projects should be moved within the programme to reconnect those dependencies, or to re-prioritise available resources and funding to achieve acceptable compromises and enable the overall programme to move forward efficiently.; ; We can repeat this exercise if there are significant shifts in strategy or the operational environment, helping organisations adapt their cloud migration plans with informed agility, and avoid “tunnel vision”.; ; Through our wider Advisory Services portfolio, we are also able to help organisations build this capability “in house” to:; ; - Undertake their own portfolio re-baselining on an ongoing basis; ; - Assess the maturity of their overall portfolio and project governance capability; ; Develop capability to a standard necessary to effectively plan, execute and realise the benefits of successful cloud and digital transformation programmes
• Setup or migration service is for specific cloud services: No

Quality assurance and performance testing

• Quality assurance and performance testing service: Yes
• How the quality assurance and performance testing works: Our Enterprise Portfolio Review Service helps buyers achieve quality assurance by: independently and impartially reviewing the status and health of change portfolios and/or individual projects; assessing progress against expected outcomes; identifying where outcomes or ROI would be at risk; providing recommendations for future improvements.; ; In our experience, many organisations focus heavily on the technology aspects of Cloud migration, without attention to detail on:; ; - Defining clear and measurable outcomes; ; - Creating realistic delivery plans; ; - Planning user adoption; ; - Forecasting and managing resources; ; - Managing dependencies between initiatives.; ; As a result, they rarely realise all the expected benefits.; ; Bio helps overcome these issues, underpinning quality assurance and performance testing with:; ; - Building governance capabilities (people, process and systems) within organisations that are necessary to successfully manage portfolios of Mode 1 and Mode 2 projects, delivering clearly-defined business outcomes and expectations of time, cost and quality; ; - Peer review on delivery plans, test plans and quality assurance measurements and reports; ; - “Project assurance” expertise, defining and driving recovery plans where remedial action is needed; ; Our “Project and Portfolio Management as a Service”, provides additional operational resources as needed to “top up” in-house resources and bring projects back on track.

Security testing

• Security services: No

Ongoing support

• Ongoing support service: No

Service scope

• Service constraints: Bio’s core business helps our customers manage digital transformation and business change, from small projects through to complex, multi-faceted programmes.; ; Our service portfolio is modular, flexible, and unconstrained. It includes operational and consulting services across:; ; - Business case management; ; - Project and programme management; ; - Strategic portfolio management; ; - Service transition and service design; ; - Adoption and success planning; ; - Business change management; ; - Product lifecycle management.; ; The scope of specific engagements are tailored to each customer’s requirements and documented as a baseline reference.; ; We are technology and vendor agnostic, complementing service providers and end users alike.

User support

• Email or online ticketing support: Email or online ticketing
• Support response times: Many of our customers choose to undergo our engagements partly using remote resources, with collaboration through email, phone, video and instant messaging, although the nature of our advisory engagements can necessitate a proportion of face-to-face activity.; ; We typically respond to emails relating to live engagements within one working hour or less.; ; We respond to non-project requests within four working hours or less.; ; We are also flexible with regard to hours of working. Whilst many of our assignments are active during normal business hours, we can also provide support during weekends and evenings.
• User can manage status and priority of support tickets: No
• Phone support: Yes
• Phone support availability: 9 to 5 (UK time), 7 days a week
• Web chat support: No
• Support levels: Through our modular Portfolio and Project Advisory Services, we tailor support services to meet customers’ specific requirements.; ; With regard to our Enterprise Portfolio Review service, we support clients by independently and impartially reviewing the status and health of change portfolios, and/or individual projects, in order to:; ; - Assess progress against expected outcomes, identifying where outcomes or ROI would be at risk; ; - Provide recommendations for future improvements.; ; We provide full portfolio management advisory services across multiple workstreams, including those delivered by in-house resources and third parties, improving the tracking and managing of requirements at a strategic level as they come into the demand pipeline. We monitor the health, dependencies and key risks across all live projects, tracking benefits realisation and managing forward forecasting and planning of resources.; ; We also provide “peer review” and quality assurance of plans, documentation and live projects and portfolios.; ; All of these capabilities can be delivered as “advisory services” (helping to evolve and improve customers’ own in-house teams and processes), but we also have parallel “operational services” (undertaking tasks and activities on behalf of our customer) which can top up in-house capacity and capability.; ; Hourly rates vary from £45 to £175 excluding VAT, depending on scope.

Resellers

• Supplier type: Not a reseller

Staff security

• Staff security clearance: Staff screening not performed
• Government security clearance: Up to Security Clearance (SC)

Standards and certifications

• ISO/IEC 27001 certification: No
• ISO 28000:2007 certification: No
• CSA STAR certification: No
• PCI certification: No
• Cyber essentials: No
• Cyber essentials plus: No
• Other security certifications: Yes
• Any other security certifications:
  • Annual external online Data Protection and Cyber Security awareness training.
  • Screening to SC level for specific client engagement.

Social Value

• Social Value:

  Social Value

  • Fighting climate change
  • Covid-19 recovery
  • Tackling economic inequality
  • Equal opportunity
  • Wellbeing

  Fighting climate change

  As an eco-conscious organisation, Bio is committed to minimising/reducing the total number of GHGs (greenhouse gases) it produces through its day-to-day operations and fully supports the UK Government’s Carbon Reduction Policy and its ambitions to achieve carbon net zero by 2050.; ; Cloud services have an extremely low carbon footprint and, by adopting a fully cloud based strategy, Bio has moved away from costly, inefficient legacy IT infrastructure; as a result our legacy servers and associated equipment racks have been decommissioned. This enables the organisation to innovate and scale long-term, but also forms a key part of our Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity strategy. We actively promote the use of cloud-based tooling and technologies (including Microsoft Teams) to reduce travel needs and minimise carbon emissions, and facilitate quicker, more productive and collaborative meetings with key stakeholders. As a result, environmental sustainability is built into the delivery of our G-Cloud services, eliminating hardware, paper, printers and associated materials. We also make use of electronic signatures for all contractual documentation – both customer facing and internal – which further reduces use of printing and paper, removes the requirement for physical document storage, and shortens the time and effort required by all parties to achieve contractual completion. ; ; Bio’s employees are all home-based and deliver the majority of services remotely and on-line. As a result, Bio has no permanent office space, and minimal employee travel other than that necessary to meet with customers for “on-site” commitments or essential internal workshops for goals that cannot feasibly be achieved remotely. This further minimises our environmental impact, and also reduces operational costs.; ; We also work with our customers to help them to further develop their own sustainability strategies to achieve a net zero carbon footprint through their business processes and in the services they supply.

  Covid-19 recovery

  Bio is an SME service provider and is therefore acutely aware of the negative impacts that COVID-19 has had on smaller businesses and the UK economy. Consequently, we’re fully committed to supporting the UK Government’s recovery efforts; to help businesses and communities manage and recover from the impacts of COVID-19 and to create employment, re-training and return to work opportunities.; ; In the context of COVID-19, Bio has invested heavily in the physical and mental health and wellbeing of its workforce, implementing effective social distancing, remote and flexible working arrangements. All employees were provided additional equipment (e.g. monitors, keyboard and mouse, etc.) to support home working and given a £250 budget to purchase any items such as office furniture that could further improve their working conditions and comfort. This approach has enabled employees who are personally affected, or have family members, within vulnerable groups, to continue working and delivering services to our customers whilst effectively shielding.; ; A number of Bio’s services have been used by its customers to directly assist them in their own COVID recovery strategies. For example, the Enterprise Portfolio Review Service has been used by a Local Authority to assess planned activities and re-prioritise effort to focus on projects essential to underpin COVID recovery, and take into account the impact of key resource absences. We also had a team of PMO and Project Management resources supporting the delivery of a “Build Back Better” strategic COVID-19 recovery and operational improvement programme for a major NHS Trust.; ; To further support the local communities in which we operate recover from COVID-19, Bio also makes a substantial donation each quarter to a charity, with a different charity nominated by employees each quarter.

  Tackling economic inequality

  A substantial proportion of Bio’s employees and management team live in the North West, North East and Yorkshire, and as such, Bio recognises and understands the importance of tackling economic inequality and levelling up the UK.; ; To support relevant sector-related skills growth, Bio continues to recruit its workforce from the local areas in which we operate. Our inclusive and accessible recruitment practices and homeworking model provide equality of opportunity for disadvantaged and/or disabled people into employment. Where possible, we will also provide support to staff for educational attainment relevant to their role and future aspirations, including training schemes that address skills gaps and result in recognised qualifications. However, we also recognise the importance of “on the job” coaching and mentoring alongside formal training in order to develop the capability, experience and confidence of our people and enable then to progress their careers with Bio. We have multiple examples of taking on employees in more junior roles and progressing them into higher capability positions. Operating an in-house “talent pipeline” in this way not only enables us to continue offering opportunities to less experienced individuals, it also provides benefits to our business, and in turn, our customers, in terms of increased loyalty, job satisfaction and reduced attrition.; ; Further, we fully support flexible working, with many of our employees working flexible hours during the day, and, in many cases, 4-day weeks. This enables individuals to balance employment with personal commitments such as childcare, helping to ensure potential employees are not excluded from the workforce if not able to work within traditional patterns. This flexibility helps tackle economic inequality, but also brings value to Bio and our customers by widening the available pool of talent and experience that we can recruit into our business and deploy into customer operations.

  Equal opportunity

  Bio is fully committed to breaking down barriers, eliminating discrimination and ensuring equal opportunities and access for all, regardless of their protected characteristics, including disabled people. We embed these values in our business policies and practices across all areas of employment; for example, recruitment, training, career development and promotion.; ; Our inclusive and accessible recruitment practices provide equality of opportunity for disabled people into employment. For example, by publishing job advertisements that avoid language which might deter people with disabilities from applying, we will help secure more jobs for disabled people in our workforce. We also provide reasonable adjustments and additional support for employees with physical, sensory and hidden disabilities, such as purchasing specialist equipment including supportive chairs and standing desks.; ; To continually identify and tackle inequality in employment, skills and pay, we monitor our workforce to ensure it proportionately reflects the diversity of the communities in which we operate. For example, over 50% of Bio’s workforce, (including management roles) are female. We actively recruit across all age groups; and our commitment in this respect is reflected in the wide range of ages across our employees at all levels. We undertake equal pay audits, and also have a number of robust measures in place to support in-work progression and help people in our workforce to move into higher paid work by developing new skills relevant to Bio’s service portfolio. We are implementing Personal Development Plans for each employee, tailored to their career development aspirations and underpinned by personal incentive rewards.; ; Bio works closely with our upstream and downstream supply chain partners to mitigate and manage modern slavery risks through policy, governance and procurement practices. Our own pre-employment checks include appropriate due diligence activities to identify, assess, monitor and mitigate the risks of modern slavery in the delivery of services.

  Wellbeing

  At Bio, health and wellbeing are more than just enablers of employee engagement and organisational performance. We recognise that promoting awareness of/supporting health and wellbeing in the workplace and wider community can make a real difference to employees’ lives, the economy, and society as a whole. We are therefore fully committed to developing and embedding health and wellbeing in the organisation’s culture and the delivery of our services.; ; We invest heavily in the physical and mental health and wellbeing of our workforce. We have a qualified Mental Health First Aider (MHFA) within the team. Our MHFA not only responds to requests for advice and counselling from the team, they also proactively promote a wellbeing agenda, through regular e-mail hints and tips, slots at our online team meetings, and sending monthly newsletters to all employees to increase awareness/understanding of the importance of wellbeing.; ; Our management team holds regular 1-2-1 calls with team members to maintain a positive and constructive personal relationship with them such that our employees are more readily able to raise concerns and issues. Whilst we endeavour to reduce travel under our climate change agenda, we recognise the value that face-to-face interaction can have in supporting wellbeing, building team spirit and mitigating the risk of isolation. With this in mind, we hold “all hands” company update meetings twice a year in a central location.; ; Bio has also invested in a Health, Wellbeing and Employee Benefits package for all employees, provided by “Reward Gateway”. This solution provides an extensive range of online tutorials, courses and advice for health and wellbeing, a confidential telephone counselling service, and discounts against a wide range of shopping and entertainment venues. Bio also provides all employees with private medical insurance.

Pricing

• Price: £5,500 an instance
• Discount for educational organisations: No

Service documents

• Pricing document

  PDF

• Service definition document

  PDF

• Terms and conditions

  PDF

Request an accessible format

If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need versions of these documents in a more accessible format, email the supplier at gcloud@bio.uk.com. Tell them what format you need. It will help if you say what assistive technology you use.