The client
Ready Steady Store offers self storage space at 26 locations across the UK.
Whether people are looking to move home, store items while doing building works, declutter their homes or are a business that’s looking for extra space to store documents, tools or stock, they offer 24/7 access to storage units.
The challenge
Hallam supports Ready Steady Store with a monthly retainer, offering SEO, digital PR and content writing services.
However, after experiencing challenges with delivering complex, technical projects to improve their internal systems, Ready Steady Store approached us to provide deeper technical support and guidance.
As a highly tech-driven and data-oriented company, Ready Steady Store required powerful internal systems for managing their business and operations. With their existing project delivery, they felt that work was being duplicated, so wanted assistance with how best to move forward.
Their existing project management stack relied on Trello, with a variety of different board structures and workflows for different purposes. The boards weren’t transparent across the business, leading to confusion in project status with wider business stakeholders.
What we did
Some of Hallam’s most senior technical experts worked deep within Ready Steady Store, running workshops and interviews with both key c-suite stakeholders and Ready Steady Store’s own technical team.
After a full diagnosis of the key problems and challenges, our team met regularly with their technical team and directors to listen, coach and mentor.
Recommending solutions to solve delivery issues, including systems, briefing and project ceremonies, we provided guidance on how to use systems better to automate processes and integrate different parts of the business.
Alongside this, we supported with better briefing to third parties doing work on behalf of Ready Steady Store and provided a methodology for creating a better cost/benefit analysis of projects and systems.
Helping the technical team to focus on doing the ‘right work’, we recommended and supported with hiring additional technical resources and coached the business into understanding the importance of limiting technical debt.
The results
After receiving our technical consultancy support, Ready Steady Store are now in a better position with their resource and technical delivery capability, with less disruption internally than before and with more trust in technical delivery.
Their key technical stakeholder is now doing higher-level work that better suits their position and value, and they have now resolved some key issues that had previously distracted the business from meeting its core objectives.
Wider business stakeholders are now able to view the status of a project in real time, with confidence that what they’re seeing is correct. Work is also now better briefed internally and with third parties, leading to better execution first time.
We engaged with Hallam’s Technical Director, Jon, over a year ago in order to help us gain a wider perspective of current IT issues, especially within the context of improving the digital customer experience. Jon has also been assisting us with advice on how to better manage internal IT resources across the entire spectrum of services including software development. He has also guided us toward better decision-making based on considered cost-benefit-analysis of projects which has saved us a considerable amount of labour cost and reduced execution risk. What we have found that sets Jon apart from other senior technical professionals is his wealth of experience that stretches well beyond any technical expertise. His insights into people and talent management have been key to improving employee engagement and productivity.
Mehran Charania, CEO at Ready Steady Store
Do you have a similar project in mind?
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Just tell us what you want to achieve, and we’ll let you know what experience we have in your sector, and how we can help you. Alternatively, you can check out more of our work here. Our methodology has been successful in almost all sectors, delivering double and triple-digit improvements on average.
