The Background
Founded in the UK in 1946, Turner & Townsend has grown over 75 years to become a world-leading professional services company, with 112 offices around the globe. It is involved in highly innovative and creative construction projects with significant diversity such as: the Hyperloop One high-speed travel infrastructure system in India; the Aker BP Alliance Delivery Model subsea project off the coast of Norway; and the award-winning V&A Dundee, Scotland’s first design museum and the first V&A museum outside London.
Paul McSeveney is the UK Lead for CostX and eTender at Turner & Townsend. He speaks about challenges that are familiar to organizations before they have started the journey towards autonomous commerce: “For years, tendering had been a manual and resource-intensive activity at Turner & Townsend, as is the case across most of the construction industry. We work with a lot of contractors, and the flow of information backwards and forwards, largely by email or hard copy, was often inconsistent. We lacked control. For example, suppliers would often adjust standard submission templates. Managing the correspondence throughout the procurement lifecycle was highly demanding on the local teams.”
All of this made it difficult to assess suppliers when making awards, because it was very time-consuming to make direct like-for-like comparisons with such a mixed response.
McSeveney reports that this was the main driver behind the adoption of JAGGAER – to get greater consistency from the returns coming in from the supplier network. “JAGGAER appealed to us because it gave us the ability to build our own workflow structure, enabling our teams around the world to approach contractors in a consistent way and to ensure that the tenders came back in a structured format that allowed easier comparison across the entire supplier network,” McSeveney said. “We wanted intelligent central control over the instructions, the content and the process, and alignment with global best practices in the industry, while at the same time being able to adjust to specific local needs.”
JAGGAER’s autonomous commerce approach tailors the user’s experience based on their role and frequency within the system to ensure success and value creation. They are in and out of the system quickly, after which they are free to turn their attention to strategic value-adding activities.
McSeveney underlines that this also brings benefits to suppliers because there is much greater clarity and contractors are guided through the process to the point where they submit a tender with eligibility, commercial, and technical envelopes.
However, a solution is only beneficial insofar as it is actually used. With so many users in procurement around the world, Turner & Townsend took the decision to make a further investment in JAGGAER Adopt, part of the JAGGAER Digital Mind concept and the comprehensive approach to autonomous commerce.
JAGGAER Adopt gave us the opportunity to provide help and tailored guidance to users at the point of need, creating more autonomous interactions and reducing the reliance on standard learning materials and manuals, which need to be updated periodically. It also significantly reduces users’ reliance on issuing support tickets or taking up the time of super-users.
The Solution
“Turner & Townsend has made amazing progress on digitalization of its processes, but people always need some support, and some more than others. Before we implemented JAGGAER Adopt it was not surprising that a number of users were rather hesitant, especially because at the time, many people were working at home. That meant they did not have the option of asking the person at the desk next to them how to do something,” McSeveney said.
Empowering Users
In this situation there is a risk that people might revert to the old way of doing things. There is only so much information they can absorb and retain through conventional training and onboarding. “The best form of learning is doing, and with the JAGGAER Adopt pop-up information, combined with the online walk-through guidance we have created, it’s not only a lot easier, but it gives the users a sense of ownership and empowerment,” he added.
Implementing Adopt will allow Turner & Townsend users to undertake an interactive training session in a test environment before undertaking live procurement exercises. Regular users will have quick hints and tips ready in the live platform to enhance their experience. New and occasional users can get access and work through the training guides step by step in the test platform with reduced assistance required from the central digital team. “We see this method of self-taught learning really important to the development of our people,” McSeveney said.
Turner & Townsend has more than four hundred cost managers in the United Kingdom alone, so these developments have had a major impact on efficiency and productivity. Moreover, some of the users only drop into the system on an ad hoc basis.
Global Rollout
Having proved the value of the technology in the United Kingdom, Turner & Townsend started rolling JAGGAER Adopt out across its global regions, which means more users will benefit. It’s a big improvement to how Turner & Townsend undertakes procurement activities and manages them around the globe. Users can focus on more strategic activities, while McSeveney’s team spends less time following up on support tickets and more time making system enhancements.
McSeveney cites an example: “One of our junior members of staff recently completed the procurement preparation process as a first time user without any need to raise tickets or seek assistance. The user managed to build the procurement package and populate all aspects of it up to the point where a senior member of the team reviews it before publication.
“For suppliers, too, everything is streamlined and simplified. Autonomous commerce means benefits for all!”
Turner & Townsend has office locations in 46 countries and there is considerable variation in workflows and processes. “JAGGAER gives us the flexibility to adjust to these regional differences, but at the same time, JAGGAER Adopt enables us to reinforce best practices and give some visibility to our corporate identity,” McSeveney said. JAGGAER Adopt can be easily customized to reflect the user organization’s corporate colour palette and branding.
We are looking forward to building on the progress so far to increase the standardization of our procurement processes here in the United Kingdom and around the world
The Benefits
- Significant reduction in support tickets
- Reduced time spent on conventional onboarding & training
- Reduced requirement for retraining occasional users
- Support for remote working
- Efficiency gains
- Gives users a sense of empowerment