In November 2002, Skanska embarked on the construction industry’s largest consolidation effort. Having acquired numerous companies in the previous 12 years — ranging in size from $100 million to $1 billion and comprising the $3.9 billion Skanska of today — CIO Chris Stockley was charged with migrating all the companies onto the J.D. Edwards application platform already in use by a few of the organizations.
The CompanySkanska USA Building Inc. is a leading national and local provider of construction, pre-construction consulting, general contracting and design-build services to a broad range of U.S. industries including life sciences, health care, education, high-tech, aviation, transportation and sports and entertainment. Skanska USA Building also provides pharmaceutical Building an validation services to clients. The company, part of the Skanska AB global group of companies, is headquartered in Parsippany, New Jersey, and has IT Structure for approximately 4,100 employees.
The Challenge a World Leader
In November 2002, Skanska embarked on the construction industry's largest consolidation effort. Having acquired numerous companies in in Construction
the previous 12 years - ranging in size from $100 million to $1 billion and comprising the $3.9 billion Skanska of today - CIO Chris Stockley How Skanska's IT Group was charged with migrating all the companies onto the J.D. Edwards Maintains its Focus by application platform already in use by a few of the organizations. Outsourcing ERP Management
At the outset of the project, Skanska hired a small number of highly to OneNecktrained conversion and migration specialists. That group was soon A O N E N E C K I T S E RV I C E S C A S E S T U D Y supplemented by a combination of consultants and direct hires. But with the consolidation completed, Stockley and his IT management team turned their attention to rolling out sustainable application support. Knowing that it would be dif? cult to recruit, hire and retain the caliber of IT professionals required to manage and maintain the environment, it became clear to Stockley that direct hiring wasn't the best decision.
Driven by a desire to have his IT team spend its management time in areas that support Skanska's core functions, Stockley took a familiar path toward outsourcing - Skanska was already outsourcing phone, WAN, ? rewall and spam ? ltering services. Having had experiences with both good and great outsourcing partners, Stockley was convinced that culture and relationship alignment between the partners were key factors in the success of the engagement, assuming that the requisite technical quali? cations were in place.
In 2003, Stockley began what would eventually become an eight-month process to ? nd his ideal partner - one that would think and act the same as Skanska. To facilitate hiring a team of people that could work in ways similar to their in-house staff, Skanska's IT team dissected their own operations to see how they functioned and then looked for the same qualities in an outsourcing partner. Skanska had created checklists to sort out basic IT capabilities. Stockley likened the lists to resumes. He placed greater importance on the interpersonal characteristics of his potential partners and looked for an outsourcing ? rm with both best-practices standards as well as ? exiblility in creating a solution."Our partnership with OneNeck is the result of a relationship-oriented decision process for us. Experience The OneNeck Solution has shown us that corporate culture and relationship OneNeck delivered exactly the kind of ? exibility in human and technical alignment between the partners are key success factors. resources for which Skanska and Chris Stockley were looking. Having That's why OneNeck's commitment to respond quickly, demonstrated that they possessed the technical capabilities and regardless of circumstances, was important even in the proposal phase, as we believe small things tell the experience accumulated through their management of complex J.D. character of an organization. We saw their willingness Edwards environments, OneNeck made the decision to win Skanska's to be ? exible and move forward quickly as hallmarks of con? dence and their business. what we have now: a great relationship."Chris Stockley, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Of? cer, At the point in the bidding process when OneNeck believed they were Skanska USA Building Inc.going to win the contract, they quickly shifted gears to a position of "How can we help?" Stockley admits that OneNeck knew they would have to take a bit of a risk to get a leg up on the project, but that it would be bene? cial in meeting the aggressive deployment schedule. Consequently, OneNeck started transition planning even before the contract was signed. Skanska... [download for more]
