Delivering a £130m annual synergy target at GVC holdings

The enlarged Group has a workforce of c.25,000 people and with a network of 3,500 bookmaking shops operating under the separate Ladbrokes and Coral brands, it is the UK’s largest high street bookmaker.

The Situation

Following the acquisition, GVC was looking for a highly experienced and talented Global PMO to lead and deliver on a set of synergy targets, which would result in significant savings and benefits to the business on an annual basis

The Solution

GVC turned to BIE to find the right candidate. The remit was to find an experienced interim with the skillset and experience needed to coordinate and oversee the delivery of key initiatives across 10 global workstreams, encompassing Finance, HR business partners and IT leads. It required someone who could implement project charters and implement strong team governance to support the initiative tracking across all workstreams in line with executive expectations and targets.

The successful candidate was Hayley Fenton, an IT project management professional with 17 years of combined experience orchestrating full project lifecycles from planning to delivery across various challenging business environments.

Hitting Targets

The synergy target was set at £130m on an annual basis.

To achieve the target, 10 large-scale workstreams were put in place, with each having its own finance, HR & project management leads.

A high percentage of the overall synergy targets were reliant on effective tech integration and platform migration, and further savings were made through HR restructuring and system reviews.

Hayley facilitated and tracked fortnightly steering committee meetings to ensure strong governance and subsequent visibility was in place throughout the life-cycle of the integration.  The governance was further underpinned by clear status reporting and initiative tracking mechanisms which were used by the full programme team on a regular basis, this further provided assurance to senior stakeholders.

Subsequently, the Global PMO Lead interim role was made a permanent resource in Vienna, a testament to Hayley’s success in the position.