The past two years have seen an acceleration of digital transformation at engineering and design consultancy Harrison Grierson (HG), led by Chief Digital Officer Terri Carajannis.

As part of the ‘Next Generation’ HG strategy, Carajannis and the digital team lay down the technology foundations, working with the rest of the business in a time of immense disruption and uncertainty due to the pandemic. 

The digital transformation journey began in 2020 with the successful implementation of Deltek, HG’s new cloud-based operating platform.

“ERP implementations are difficult at the best of times, let alone the addition of a constantly changing environment due to Covid,” reflects Carajannis. “Shifting in and out of full virtual mode for our people was particularly challenging from a training perspective as not everyone is comfortable earning online. I led our technology implementation plan and was able to adapt our training schedule in real time to make sessions as interactive as possible.” 

Carajannis underlines that the size and impact of this project for HG was “full heart transplant stuff with Deltek replacing the multiple systems and integrations in use for project management, financials, CRM and document management – a huge change for our people in an already unsettling time. The project was delivered on time and slightly under budget, which was a great effort.”

In addition to our Deltek implementation, in July 2022 the team completed the migration of all other HG applications to Azure cloud (a total of 95 applications). 

“The cloud migration was another important step I instigated to enable our strategy to deliver innovative solutions for our clients and a better user experience for our people through a more flexible, scalable, and cost-effective environment,” says Carajannis.  “As a result, we reduced the number of applications from 95 to 55, ensuring our infrastructure was fit for purpose and we were operating efficiently in a future fit manner.”

The cloud project reduced infrastructure costs by circa $500k/annum and design teams are seeing huge value in terms of reduced time to load files, according to Carajannis. 

She also right-sized the IT team from three to seven to better support this cloud-native way of working and “shift us from reactive, firefighting mode to strategic, future focused mode. Having the right people in the right roles, coupled with a continuous improvement mindset has resulted in more innovation (more efficient ways of working), better risk management and a better internal customer experience overall.”

It has taken 12 months to bed in the new system, but Carajannis says the 137-year-old organisation is starting to see real value from both initiatives. “Having all project information in one place has resulted in less duplication of effort in maintaining project information in multiple systems. As the team gets more experienced with Deltek, we are also seeing better quality information coming out in the form of project and financial reporting. More transparency enables our project managers to make better quality decisions and improve project profitability as a result.”