Education and strategy plan gives global IT services leader the tools to grow
SVB has helped the IT services company to expand its team’s social value knowledge, putting the business in a better position to bid for work in the UK public sector.
The Challenge
Our client is a global IT services leader. Its work includes business process outsourcing, applications, security, cloud, and analytics and engineering.
The company approached Social Value Business at the end of 2021 for support to:
- Understand social value and why it’s important
- Find the gaps in its knowledge and strategy, and communicate these findings to the client
- Learn how to create social value and embed it in the business
The client wanted the initial focus to be on the area of its business that bids for work in the UK public sector. But it also wanted to explore how it could roll out the work with SVB to other parts of the business.
The Solution
Social Value Specialist Greg Watts started with a Gap Analysis to discover how much the client’s team already knew about social value. His comprehensive research found there was potential to increase awareness and knowledge of social value among staff.
Greg created a tailored training plan, which included:
- A webinar for the team members who would benefit most from learning about social value and its impacts
- An internal ‘library’ of knowledge, so staff could quickly and easily access social value information
Greg said: “The client already had some good social value processes in place. It was more about helping them to share that knowledge internally. So, by raising the profile of their social initiatives among the team, those staff can then use these as examples when bidding for work in the UK public sector.”
Greg also worked with the client to help them develop a better understanding of the results of their initiatives.
Greg said: “By measuring an initiative at different points in its process, the client can see which activities have the most positive impact, so it knows where to focus its future efforts.”
SVB also worked with the client to create a social value strategy.
Greg said: “We measured the client against the five levels of our social value maturity model, and plotted and compared the company to its competitors. We could then point them in the direction of what they needed to do to build on that, such as working with SMEs and volunteer organisations where possible.”
The Result
As a result of working with SVB, the client has gained:
- A greater understanding of social value among its team
- An effective strategy to expand its social value initiatives
- A strong position to bid for work in the UK public sector
Greg said: “We received great feedback from our client, who said the staff were delighted with the process and what they’d learned..”