Transition Stall and Green Dashboards at Vantage Travel
Vantage Travel is 22 months into a SIAM implementation with seven providers. Wave 1, covering service desk and hosting, is live. Wave 2, covering applications and network, is nine months late because two providers dispute process ownership and tooling integration has stalled. The programme reports 80% completion. Provider SLAs are all above 99.6%, yet customer NPS has fallen 22 points, first-contact resolution is 41%, repeat incidents are 18%, and 30% of tickets are reassigned three or more times. The improvement register holds 120 items, none closed in six months and no benefits tracked. Staff describe SIAM as 'another layer'. The board wants a recovery plan before the next contract cycle. Wave 3, security and facilities, has not started. The SIAM lead reports to the programme director, not the CIO.
1. Is the programme's 80% completion claim credible? What would you require before calling the transition complete?
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No, the claim is not credible. Eighty per cent is measuring programme activity, not operational capability. Wave 2 is nine months late and two providers dispute process ownership, so the end-to-end model does not yet cover applications and network, the areas most likely to cause cross-provider incidents. Tooling integration has stalled, so data is not shared. The customer measures are deteriorating: NPS down 22 points, first-contact resolution at 41%, repeat incidents at 18%, and 30% of tickets reassigned three or more times. Staff see SIAM as another layer, which is an adoption failure. Reporting to the programme director rather than the CIO also weakens the SIAM lead's authority to challenge progress.
Required before transition is complete. All in-scope providers operate the agreed processes with evidence; roles such as MIM and process owners are filled and competent; tooling provides a single incident, change and configuration view; governance makes and records decisions; end-to-end performance baselines are live; business service owners have signed service acceptance; and a benefits baseline exists. Until then, report the percentage of capability live by service, not the percentage of project tasks completed. A realistic recovery plan should re-baseline wave 2, not defend 80%.
2. How should the SIAM lead restart continual improvement and measurement so that the 120-item register becomes useful?
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Close the register as a programme artefact and restart with a governed improvement portfolio. Select no more than six improvements linked to the customer journey: repeat contacts, ticket reassignment, first-contact resolution, major incident handoff, change visibility and knowledge reuse. Each needs a named owner, baseline, target, benefit and review date. An item without a measurable benefit should be killed, not carried.
Balanced scorecard. Use four perspectives: customer (NPS, CSAT, first-contact resolution), operational (end-to-end MTTR, change success, repeat incidents), compliance (end-to-end service levels and OLAs), and people and cost (SIAM role competency, adoption, cost per ticket). Stop reporting only provider SLAs, because they are green while the customer experience falls. Add contributing measures that show how providers affect the end-to-end result.
Governance and benefits. Put the portfolio under the service governance board with a monthly benefits review. Track disbenefits too, such as extra handoffs or duplicated tooling. Publish quick wins to counter the 'another layer' perception. Improvement should be run by the service integrator with named improvement leads in each provider, not by the programme office. Link the improvement plan to the recovery plan so that wave 2 delays and customer metrics are addressed together.
3. Two providers dispute process ownership and resist wave 2. What commercial and behavioural actions would you take?
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Separate the commercial issue from the behavioural one. Commercially, check whether the contracts require participation in the SIAM model, data sharing and attendance at cross-provider forums. If not, negotiate a contract change or side letter before wave 2; do not rely on goodwill. Use the next contract cycle as leverage, and make collaboration a scorecard condition. Discretionary work and future scope can be made conditional on participation.
Behaviourally, decide the ownership question rather than letting it drift. The integrator owns the end-to-end process; providers own domain execution and have a named process interface. Co-design that interface with the two providers so they retain control where it is legitimate. Run a joint simulation and deliver a quick win in the disputed area to demonstrate value. If resistance continues, escalate to provider executives through the governance board and record the decision.
Address the internal perception. Staff see SIAM as another layer because they have not seen what it removes. Show the reduction in duplicate escalations, unclear ownership and reassignment. Fix the reporting line so the SIAM lead has authority to challenge the programme and providers. A recovery plan that is only a revised Gantt chart will fail; it must include decision rights, contract changes, quick wins and a credible benefits case.