At a Glance
- Client: Mid-market IT services firm, 250–400 employees, Canada
- Engagement Type: Implementation Recovery & Delivery Governance
- Programme Value: $12M SaaS workforce management platform rollout
- Status at Engagement: 5 months in, 4 months behind schedule, client relationship at risk
- Outcome: Programme delivered on revised timeline; client renewed at full contract value
The Situation
A fast-growing Canadian IT services firm has won a significant contract to implement a workforce management SaaS platform for an enterprise client in the professional services sector. The deal represented one of the largest implementation contracts in the firm's history.
Five months into an eight-month engagement, the programme had delivered less than 30 percent of its committed scope. The client had escalated to senior leadership twice. Three separate integration workstreams were blocked by undocumented dependencies. The delivery team was working unsustainable hours with no clear path to completion.
The firm's leadership recognised that without outside intervention, the programme would fail and with it, a client relationship that represented substantial recurring revenue.
The Diagnosis
Arise Consultants conducted a rapid programme assessment over five business days. The findings identified four compounding failure points:
1. Scope Had Never Been Formally Defined
The contract specified commercial terms but provided no delivery boundary. What the sales team had committed to verbally during a six-month sales cycle had never been formally translated into a delivery scope document. The client had one understanding of the programme. The delivery team had another. Neither was wrong. They simply had never been reconciled.
2. No Governance Structure
The programme had a delivery manager but no programme governance model. There were no formal escalation paths, no documented risk register, and no consistent reporting cadence that gave either the vendor's or the client's leadership a reliable view of delivery health. Decisions that required senior sign-off were circulating informally for weeks without resolution.
3. Blocked Integrations With No Ownership
Three critical integration workstreams connecting the new platform to the client's existing HRIS, payroll, and reporting infrastructure had been stalled for six weeks. The root cause was that neither the vendor nor the client had formally assigned ownership for resolving the technical dependencies. Each party was waiting for the other to act.
4. Resource Allocation Misaligned to Delivery Risk
The firm's two most experienced implementation consultants had been moved to a new client engagement mid-programme. The team that remained, capable and committed, lacked the authority and the seniority to make the decisions that the programme required. No transition briefing had been conducted.
The Intervention
Arise Consultants deployed a structured recovery approach across three phases:
Phase 1: Programme Reset (Weeks 1–2)
The first priority was to create a shared reality between the vendor and the client. Arise facilitated a structured programme reset session attended by senior leadership from both organisations.
The session produced:
- A formal revised scope document agreed and signed by both parties
- An explicit list of what was deferred to a Phase 2 engagement and what remained in scope
- A revised timeline with milestone gates not optimistic delivery dates, but dates the delivery team confirmed as achievable
- Named owners for every open workstream, on both sides
Phase 2: Governance Implementation (Weeks 2–4)
Arise established a lightweight but effective governance model for the remainder of the programme:
- A weekly programme health review attended by project leads from both organisations
- A shared risk register visible to both parties updated before every review session
- A formal escalation path: operational issues resolved within 48 hours; strategic decisions within five business days
- A fortnightly executive alignment session bringing the firm's delivery director and the client's programme sponsor into direct contact
Phase 3: Integration Unblocking (Weeks 3–6)
The blocked integration workstreams required a specific intervention. Arise brokered a joint technical working group: two engineers from the vendor's team, two from the client's IT department with a clear mandate: resolve the dependency blockers within three weeks or escalate to the executive alignment session for a commercial decision.
All three integration workstreams were unblocked within 18 days.
The Outcome
Delivery
- Programme completed 11 weeks after Arise engagement began 6 weeks beyond the original contract date, but within the revised timeline agreed in the reset session
- All Phase 1 scope delivered to the agreed acceptance criteria
- Phase 2 scope formally documented and contracted as a follow-on engagement
Client Relationship
- Client renewed the annual support contract at full value
- The enterprise client's programme sponsor provided a written commendation to the firm's leadership
- A Phase 2 implementation engagement was contracted within 60 days of programme completion
Internal Capability
- The firm adopted the governance model introduced by Arise as its standard delivery framework for all client implementations above $500K
- A formal sales-to-delivery handoff protocol was implemented, informed directly by the failure pattern identified in this programme
What Made the Difference
The programme did not fail because the product was wrong, the team was incapable, or the client was unreasonable.
It failed because the execution infrastructure was absent.
No scope boundary. No governance model. No ownership for critical workstreams. No mechanism to surface and resolve risks before they became crises.
What the recovery demonstrated and what this firm now operates with as standard practice is that structured execution is not a constraint on delivery speed. It is the condition that makes reliable delivery possible.
About Arise Consultants
Arise Consultants provides execution-focused project management and strategic consultation to technology providers, financial institutions, and enterprise organisations. We specialise in programme recovery, delivery governance, and building the execution infrastructure that firms need to deliver complex client programmes reliably.
Explore our work with technology providers or learn more about our project management services.
