Unilever – business partnering
“Our Business
Partnering Programme
was created to ‘bridge
the gap’ between IT
Unilever is one of the world's leading suppliers of fast-moving consumer goods, with a wide portfolio of
and the business. It
household name brands across the food, personal care and home care sectors. The company strongly
sought to do this by
giving our employees
believes that success means acting with ‘the highest standards of corporate behaviour towards our
the same level of skills,
capabilities and
employees, consumers and the societies and world in which we live’, and since 2000 has been developing
confidence as Business
its Path to Growth, a five-year strategic plan.
Partners, Relationship
Managers and
Consultants in the
external IT Industry.”
The challenge Following feedback from participants that five days was a long
Unilever is changing the face of its IT function with an innovative time to be away from the business, modules one and two have Neil Cameron
IT Business Partnering Programme that aims to support the been adapted to a blended learning solution comprising a CIO
change from a “deliver all” function to one with a far more combination of virtual sessions, eLearning and a three-day
Unilever
strategic and pro-active focus. intensive classroom session. Feedback following this recent
As this means that strategic partners now supply many of the
change has been extremely positive and module quality reviews
commodity components of IT through a targeted multi-sourcing
have continued to be consistently high.
programme, Unilever needed to help its teams develop new skills This successful programme has started to change the image of
to support this new environment. The Programme was created IT within Unilever enabling the Business Partners to have
using the BCS Skills Manager (SFIA+) and reflects those skills strategic conversations with our business leaders. In the words of
identified as essential to the Business Partnering role. one senior business representative, “Every time I meet someone
Unilever
The principal objective of the Business Partnering Programme is
from IT I am now enthused.” www.unilever.co.uk
to change the role of IT to make it more business focused. It is
Comments from some of the participants who have
about building a relationship with the business and working with it
started this journey:
to identify strategic opportunities. The BP programme will give
Unilever’s IT people the skills to do this with the same capability
“The programme came with some confirmations and 35
as external consultants.
some very clear new directions.”
Unilever had identified skills central to the skills development of
its teams, grouped into Relationship Skills and Professional IT
“I believe that the programme is an extremely useful
Skills. These included:
preparation for the difficult work that the IT function
Account Management
has to face ahead.”
Consultancy
Selling
“The course brought to the fore some relationship
Stakeholder Relationship Management
issues I was facing. The personal coaching has
Innovation
helped me move these forward in a positive
Business Process Improvement
direction.”
Business Analysis
Benefits Management
This capability meant that a set of skills similar to those used by
external consultants was needed. In addition, the Business
Partners needed a similar level of confidence to use the various
techniques at the appropriate time.
The solution
With significant experience of delivering learning development
programmes for Unilever, QA was appointed as the skills
suppliers for the Professional IT Consulting part of this
programme.
Developed and delivered by QA, Module 1 concentrates on the
changing role of IT and the need to embed Relationship Skills.
This module also includes a session on Personal Development
and thus starts to build the confidence that is required. It ran
ten times since March 2006 with more than 200 participants.
This started with those directly in the Business Partnering
Community, and, due to its initial success, participation has
increased to include all of those IT managers with a customer-
facing role. This module was also rolled out across the other
regions of Asia/AMET (Africa, Middle East & Turkey) and the
Americas.
Module 2 combines Relationship Skills with Professional IT
Consulting Skills and is developed and delivered by a
combination of all three learning partners, including QA.
This has enabled Unilever teams to pre-empt, prompt and inspire
the business to think of better ways of doing things. Relationship
skills are improved to enable the participants to manage a conflict
situation – the examples used include managing a service
disruption and having to say no to a senior business leader
because the requirement is outside of the Service Level
Agreement.
Contact us on: 0845 757 3888 info@qa.com www.qa.com
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