Providing Visibility of a Global Organizational Model

CGI defines three main stakeholders in their organization: their clients, shareholders, and employees, who are also called members, as a large part holds shares of the company. With continuing growth and expansion, the organization was looking for a way to provide the stakeholders around the globe with a consistent experience. That entails, for instance, making sure that they have access to the same accurate information at any time. Not an easy task considering the global nature of CGI.

This intricacy does not only stem from its growing size but also from the various types of services and industries the company is managing. Finding a solution that could handle this effective but complex business was rather difficult. For that reason, CGI was looking for a tool which offered the possibility for individual configuration and thus, to meet the requirements of their different stakeholders.

Moreover, CGI places great emphasis on their organizational model. Having the right visibility of the actual reality of their organization is key for the company. Being able to display important key metrics necessary to measure, for example, the performance against the three stakeholders, was, therefore, another requirement that needed to be fulfilled.

To put it in a nutshell, CGI was looking for a solution to create visibility of their organizational model. This clarity should provide executives and HR business partners with information necessary to align them with the company’s principles and – as a result – enhance their performance and help the company continue its growth.

Even though there was some skepticism whether there was a solution that could truly fulfill the complex requirements, Ingentis org.manager was ready to accept and master the challenge. Today, it is mostly CGI’s leaders who work with the software. However, given that the organizational model is critical to the business strategy, it is used in multiple ways.

For this to be possible, different perspectives of the organizational structure had to be created. While there are organizational
charts that include financial metrics and more detailed information, there are also simplified charts which present a subset of KPIs within the structure. The access protection feature of Ingentis org.manager ensures that managers can only view information to which they are entitled. Furthermore, the software allows for an easy navigation and drill down through the different hierarchy levels.

The layout of and logic behind the displayed organizational charts were precisely defined by CGI in advance. The requirements also included, for instance, the visualization of dotted lines to indicate additional corporate functions and predefined color coding to highlight particularly important information.

Thanks to Ingentis org.manager the org charting process at CGI is now fully automated. This does not only result in significant time savings but also ensures that included key metrics are always up to date. Questions about whether one is looking at the most recent version of the organizational model as well as inaccurate data are problems of the past. This makes the tool an integral part of the so-called Global Ops meeting, a quarterly meeting of the top 100 leaders of the company.

In addition, Ingentis org.manager supports CGI in their talent review process. When discussing the evolution of leadership, it is crucial to create awareness and truly understand the reality of the organization. For that reason, the software now also plays a decisive role in the VP nomination process.

One of CGI’s principles is that visibility is key to improving and advancing the organization. Ingentis org.manager provides this clarity and helps identify both aspects that are well-aligned with the CGI model and gaps that need to be addressed, for instance regarding industry groupings, number of layers, or spans of control. Once these areas for improvement have been detected, leaders can act and find a solution that is in line with the overall organizational model.

With Ingentis org.manager being visible at the highest organizational level, the success of the project was even more important. The good partnership between CGI and Ingentis right from the start formed a solid foundation to achieve this. Ingentis proved to be open and really listen to the company’s needs. Additionally, the consultant was always ready to proactively suggest potential alternative ways to reach set goals when there was no immediate solution. In doing so, CGI found all the attributes in Ingentis with which they identify themselves. This, in turn, enabled a smooth and profitable cooperation. The reaction of the executives was extremely positive when they first saw the result created with Ingentis org.manager allows to call the project a true success.

The extraordinary collaboration is not the only reason for CGI to look into further expanding the use of Ingentis org.manager. The software offers a variety of features and possibilities designed to help companies focus on essential business. While the next steps have not been set in stone yet, the simulation feature is likely to play an important role in the future. It allows the company to plan an organization which is different from the one they have today and, at the same time, provides a basis for discussions to make the best possible decisions. Since the organizational model at CGI contains various key metrics, it comes in particularly handy that Ingentis org.manager updates affected KPIs right during the modeling process; therefore, enabling the immediate evaluation of performed changes before actually putting them into place.

But it is not only the introduction of new features that is on the agenda. Ingentis org.manager is also to be used by more employees in the future. Besides leaders and HR business partners, controllers and key players in each business unit are now onboarded making the tool even more important for the future development of the company.

Founded in 1976, CGI is among the largest independent IT and business consulting services firms in the world. With 76,000 consultants and other professionals across the globe, CGI delivers an end-to-end portfolio of capabilities, from strategic IT and business consulting to systems integration, managed IT and business process services and intellectual property solutions.

 

CGI works with clients through a local relationship model complemented by a global delivery network that helps clients digitally transform their organizations and accelerate results. CGI Fiscal 2020 reported revenue is C$12.16 billion and CGI shares are listed on the TSX (GIB.A) and the NYSE (GIB). Learn more at cgi.com.