Major Programmes: Complex and Transformational Report

This report examines two major, complex, and transformational programs: the digital transformation of UK Post Office Ltd. and Amazon's evolution into a leading cloud provider. The Post Office's transformation focuses on enhancing customer experience, modernizing its brand, and streamlining processes through a Common Digital Platform (CDP). The analysis highlights the program's large scale, complexity, and transformational impact. Amazon's transformation, from an online bookseller to a cloud computing giant, is also explored, detailing its shift to web services, the development of Amazon Web Services (AWS), and the benefits of cloud computing. The report underscores how both companies leveraged technology and strategic initiatives to adapt to market changes, improve operational efficiency, and meet customer needs. The report provides insights into the strategies, challenges, and outcomes of these major programs, offering valuable lessons for business development and transformation.

Major programmes are large-
scale, complex and
transformational
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Table of Contents
Introduction.................................................................................................................................................2
Examples of major programmes..................................................................................................................2
Digital Transformational of UK Post Office Ltd. (POL)..............................................................................2
Amazon’s transformation from an Online Bookseller to the leading cloud provider..................................5
Conclusion...................................................................................................................................................8
References...................................................................................................................................................9

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Introduction
The primary purpose of the paper is to identify two major programmes that are large-scale,
complex and transformational. The examples will help to understand the reasons behind such
transformation and how it is beneficial for the organizations. The paper will provide details
regarding the transformation strategy or program used by the organizations to enhance their
productivity. Such transformations help the organizations to drive a successful business by
fulfilling the needs of the customers. The paper will help in examining the short-term and long-
term effectiveness of the transformation program implemented by the organizations. Therefore,
the overall concept of the paper is based on the major program of transformation implemented by
two different organizations.
Examples of major programmes
Digital Transformational of UK Post Office Ltd. (POL)
Over the end of the last decade and at the beginning of this decade it has been observed that POL
has to keep itself relevant and public to its customers. This major programme interests me as
being a consultant by profession and as an empathetic person. However, it is significant for the
organizations to give primary importance to the customers by providing them best quality
products and fulfilling their needs. As a result, this constantly enhances culture by focusing on
innovation. The example of POL covers all the relevant points that are truly needed by a large
scale transformational and complex programme. According to the recruitment manager of POL,
when people enter their offices they are surprised to see such a digital transformation as they
expect to view an environment that is old-fashioned, something like a post-office. POL aims to
attract the next generation of digital talent to work in its offices by refashioning itself into a
digitally innovative and modern brand1. POL implements such transformation without losing
connections with the legacy and history that has gained a trusted position in British culture. It has
been observed based on this transformation POL focuses towards three particular key areas are
as follows:
1 T Macaulay, in Post Office CIO Rob Houghton Fuses Digital And Physical Customer Needs, ,
2019, https://www.cio.co.uk/cio-interviews/post-office-cio-rob-houghton-fuses-digital-physical-customer-
needs-3685239/. [accessed 18 March 2019].

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Customers
POL have to target new millennial customers to provide them digital content, all-time access and
easy to use by not losing their existing customers.
Culture
The culture of POL is required to convert from the traditional back office to new agile ways.
This involves modifying the way the branches execute their work that is efficient for Postmasters
and secure for clerks.
Continuous process
POL created the platform known as Common Digital Platform (CDP) where the website could be
easily accessible and are kept up to date. The services such as, Drop and Go for sellers and Click
and Collect for buyers are latest and easily accessible to the consumers.
The Post Office Digital Channel Director of POL stated that they are incredibly proud of their
inclusion and diversity. The post office works hard to enhance diversity while recruiting and
investing in screening software that will eliminate the difficulties at the time of the recruitment
process. The digital transformation helps POL to be connected with the communities and people
effectively and efficiently. POL is focusing towards developing identity products and credible
financial services that make the services such as, banking, buying travel insurance, driving
license applications and tax returns digitally seamless and enabled. As a result, in 2017 the
agreement with the high street banks helped 99% of the banking customers to execute their
banking process at a POL by serving lifeline for bank customers2.
Currently, POL is giving utmost priority to enhance customer experience with the aim of hiring
user experience (UX), architects and designers. It has planned to create a website that will
improve the user and navigation journey by making the post office's digital products easier for
customers to communicate with3. The innovation team of POL has launched a brand-new travel
2 A Bounfour, "Digital futures, digital transformation", in Springer International Publishing, Cham,
Switzerland. doi 10, , 2016, 978-3.
3 Q Yan, "Software-defined networking (SDN) and distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks in
cloud computing environments: A survey, some research issues, and challenges", in Communications
Surveys & Tutorials 18, no. 1, , 2016, 602-622.

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app and various other apps that could be easily accessible to the customers. Presently, the team is
looking forward to appointing new app developers and designers to join its rank4. However, POL
has implemented a multi-channel audit that facilitates a clear and concise understanding of the
digital opportunities and presence to drive incremental sales, increase channel performance and
optimize current speed.
Moreover, it clearly states that this transformation of POL into digital transformation which is
entirely based on three pillars are as follows:
Large scale
The post office aims to maintain the accessibility and size of the network; thus at the end of
March 2018, there possess 11, 547 branches. The network remainder is made up of 11,285
branches that operate the policy of the agency basis5. The network provided by POL serves
businesses, families, individuals, and communities. It is determined to be a key component of the
UK's infrastructure that meets the requirement of telecoms, government, financial and postal
services.
Complex
Moreover, it had also developed the KPI framework and new reporting channel dashboard to
facilitate visibility on performance across all channels and products. Based on this
transformation the digital team of POL has re-defined its digital strategy by bringing channel
management in-house that results in sales growth and cost savings6. POL has implemented best
practice and new management processes across digital disciplines that enabled impactful
decision-making and closer management of the agency that supports profitability.
4 M Levinson, in Amazon.Com's IT Leader Leaving Huge Customer Service Infrastructure As
Legacy, , 2019, <https://www.cio.com/article/2437865/amazon-com-s-it-leader-leaving-huge-customer-
service-infrastructure-as-legacy.html> [accessed 18 March 2019].
5 G Kane, "Strategy, not technology, drives digital transformation", in MIT Sloan Management
Review and Deloitte University Press 14, , 2015, 1-25.
6 A Majchrzak, "Designing for digital transformation: Lessons for information systems research
from the study of ICT and societal challenges", in MIS Quarterly 40, no. 2, , 2016, 267-277.

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Transformational
The digital transformation program of POL develops a mentoring programme where the
consultants work on-site with the managers of a digital campaign, focusing agencies on
performance and advising regarding marketing plans. However, over the last ten months, POL
has emphasized a digital transformation where the marketing team has evolved from a product-
led, tactical function to being a customer-centric, digitally-focused and strategic. To achieve this
target POL has reduced the number of campaigns by 95%, minimized its team size and brought
marketing closer to huge organizations that possess 11,500 branches, 120 different products as
well as six business units that serves 20 million customers every year7.
On the other hand, POL measures the network performance in opposition with the government
access criteria by dividing the country's population into census output areas. The digital
transformation strategy helps the post office to support 47 million transactions per and 17 million
customers per week8. The strategy helps POL to increase the percentage of postal volumes that
helps the customers to place several orders and return the products that do not interest them.
Therefore, it can be said that the program implemented by POL is large scale, complex and
transformational.
Amazon’s transformation from an Online Bookseller to the leading cloud provider
Amazon.com is determined to be a technology services provider site established in 1995 that
only sold books. The company has shipped books to 40 different countries within a month of its
inception. After that, Amazon becomes one of the world’s leading e-commerce companies that
accounts for around 44% of the total sales in e-commerce in the US9. However, the organization
transformed when it offered its website developers and customers with new content and features.
The company that originally started its business as an online bookstore currently produces the
world's most competitive delivery services, cloud computing services, and consumer electronics.
This particular example interests me as it describes the outstanding strategy used by Amazon to
7 T Janowski, "Digital government evolution: From transformation to contextualization", in , , 2015.
8 E Iveroth, "Strategies for leading IT-enabled change: lessons from a global transformation case",
in Strategy & Leadership 44, no. 2, , 2016, 39-45.
9 C Advisor, in From Bookstore To Superstore: The Evolution Of Amazon, , 2018,
https://www.channeladvisor.com/blog/industry-trends/from-bookstore-to-superstore-the-evolution-of-
amazon-com/ [accessed 18 March 2019].

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transform their online services into cloud computing services. This helped the company to
integrate those features into their sites. Such new services are known as Web Services that aimed
to involve the developers with Amazon.com brand. Currently, Amazon.com provides a wide
range of web services to more than 240,000 established organizations, entrepreneurs and
developers. Such web services involve Elastic Compute Cloud that enables the users to access
the computing capacity of Amazon.com in a virtual computing environment by pay-per-page10.
On the other hand, the web services also include Simple Storage services that allow the users to
store data in data centers of Amazon and pay only for the capacity of storage they required. The
organization offers on-demand computing to its existing and new set of customers with the help
of these web services interfaces11. Amazon.com opened up its technology to the external users
who are determined to be a strategic move that outlines the ability to fragment and unbundle the
internet. The short-term financial profit of Amazon.com is questionable, although it charges
customers for storage and computing capacity. Thus, Amazon needs to focus upon executing
their businesses with open platforms to become successful in providing long term internet and
efficient technology. Currently, the companies that work with open platforms are gaining profits
as well as becoming a successful business. The investors of Amazon are very excited about the
company as it has improved its margin and rebuilt its growth. The IT infrastructure of the
company has scaled to support 42 product lines from apparel to video games, more than 69
million active customer accounts, $10.7 billion in sales, growing contingent of software
engineers and more than 1.1 million third sellers12. Such software engineers are entering into the
web services and computing prowess that has been developed by the organization.
From this, it is clear that Amazon has built the three pillars such as large scale, complex and
transformation.
Large scale
10 P Manuel, "A trust model of cloud computing based on Quality of Service", in , , 2015, 281-292.
11 R Tesseras, "The Post Office on swapping tactics for strategic transformation – Marketing Week.
Marketing Week", in , , 2017, https://www.marketingweek.com/2017/10/16/post-office-swapping-tactics-
strategic-transformation/ [accessed 18 March 2019].
12 A company, in Cloud Migration With Amazon Web Services, , 2019,
https://aws.amazon.com/cloud-migration/ [accessed 18 March 2019].

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By making efficient use of cloud computing platforms, Amazon can fulfill the needs of the
supply chain, employing transparency and elastic cost base and finding a pathway to optionality.
It develops consistent maintenance programs and reduces the need for hardware refresh
programs. The AWS helped Amazon to reduce its risk profile that in turn minimizes the risk of
cost mitigation.
Complex
With the help of AWS, Amazon could gain profit from massive economies of scale, increase
capital expenditures for variable expense as well as maximize agility and speed. Through this
transformation, Amazon provides a better experience and lower latency to its customers at a
lower price.
Transformational
Based on this transformation the company has developed Amazon Web Services (AWS) that
provides on-demand cloud computing services to governments, companies, and individuals by
metered pay-as-you-go pricing. However, these cloud computing web platforms computing
distributed building tools and blocks, abstract technical infrastructure and a set of primitive. The
computing service allows the subscribers of Amazon to pay for a single virtual AWS computer.
Based on this subscription agreement, the company secures the subscription system. The services
deliver the IT resources, database storage applications and compute power13. The cloud
computing provided by Amazon facilitates a simple way to access a wider range of applications
services, databases, storage and servers over the internet. With efficient use of this service,
Amazon develops and manages the networked-connected hardware needed for such application
services.
The main reason that forced Amazon to transform into a cloud provider is the speed as well as
agility provided by the cloud computing service. However, AWS provides more than 90 services
that serve artificial intelligence, data analytics and continuous integration at the fingertips of the
customers14. This enables the customers to implement the cloud computing services without
13 H Shaughnessy, "Creating digital transformation: strategies and steps", in Strategy & Leadership
46, no. 2, , 2018, 19-25.
14 Wenzhong, Li. "Mechanisms and challenges on mobility-augmented service provisioning for
mobile cloud computing." Mechanisms and challenges on mobility-augmented service provisioning for

8
taking much time. This has proved to be beneficial for Amazon as some consumers are migrating
to the cloud. This helps Amazon to enhance its productivity within their organization. Amazon
consists of rationalization projects and data center consolidation that prepares for divestiture or
acquisition15. This means that Amazon is looking forward to re-design its business by making use
of modern technology that will enhance the bottom line by minimizing their prices. Such
minimization of prices will prove to be advantageous for the company in several ways.
Conclusion
The paper helped in identifying two major programmes that are complex, large-scale and
transformational. The examples are Digital Transformational of UK Post Office Ltd. and
Amazon's transformation from an Online Bookseller to the leading cloud provider. Both these
examples are widely explained within the paper based on their transformation of services. It has
been observed that focusing upon the changing needs of the customer base the POL has
transformed its services to a digital service provider that will enable customers to use the
services easily. Moreover, Amazon has decided to transform itself into a cloud provider to
enhance workforce productivity. Thus, it can be seen that the transformation program
implemented by both organizations proved to be highly beneficial for them to gain a huge profit.
mobile cloud computing." IEEE Communications Magazine 53, no. 3 (2015): 89-97
15 S Deng, "Computation offloading for service workflow in mobile cloud computing",
in Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems 26, no. 12, , 2015, 3317-3329.

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References
Amazon.Com's IT Leader Leaving Huge Customer Service Infrastructure As Legacy, 2019,
https://www.cio.com/article/2437865/amazon-com-s-it-leader-leaving-huge-customer-
service-infrastructure-as-legacy.html [accessed 18 March 2019].
Bounfour, A, "Digital futures, digital transformation.". Springer International Publishing, Cham,
Switzerland. doi 10, , 2016, 978-3.
Cloud Migration With Amazon Web Services,, 2019, https://aws.amazon.com/cloud-migration/
[accessed 18 March 2019].
Deng, S, "Computation offloading for service workflow in mobile cloud computing.”
Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems 26, no. 12, , 2015, 3317-3329.
From Bookstore To Superstore: The Evolution Of Amazon, 2018,
https://www.channeladvisor.com/blog/industry-trends/from-bookstore-to-superstore-the-
evolution-of-amazon-com/ [accessed 18 March 2019].
Iveroth, E, "Strategies for leading IT-enabled change: lessons from a global transformation
case.". Strategy & Leadership 44, no. 2, , 2016, 39-45.
Janowski, T, "Digital government evolution: From transformation to contextualization.". , , 2015.
Kane, G, "Strategy, not technology, drives digital transformation.". MIT Sloan Management
Review and Deloitte University Press 14, , 2015, 1-25.
Macaulay, T. in Post Office CIO Rob Houghton Fuses Digital And Physical Customer Needs, ,
2019, https://www.cio.co.uk/cio-interviews/post-office-cio-rob-houghton-fuses-digital-
physical-customer-needs-3685239/. [accessed 18 March 2019].
Majchrzak, A, "Designing for digital transformation: Lessons for information systems research
from the study of ICT and societal challenges.". in MIS Quarterly 40, no. 2, , 2016, 267-
277.
Manuel, P, "A trust model of cloud computing based on Quality of Service."., , 2015, 281-292.

10
Post Office, , 2019, https://www.caci.co.uk/case-studies/case-study/post-office [accessed 18
March 2019].
Shaughnessy, H, "Creating digital transformation: strategies and steps.". Strategy & Leadership
46, no. 2, , 2018, 19-25.
Tesseras, R, "The Post Office on swapping tactics for strategic transformation – Marketing
Week. Marketing Week."., 2017, https://www.marketingweek.com/2017/10/16/post-
office-swapping-tactics-strategic-transformation/ [accessed 18 March 2019].
Wenzhong, Li. "Mechanisms and challenges on mobility-augmented service provisioning for
mobile cloud computing." Mechanisms and challenges on mobility-augmented service
provisioning for mobile cloud computing." IEEE Communications Magazine 53, no. 3
(2015): 89-97.
Yan, Q, "Software-defined networking (SDN) and distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks
in cloud computing environments: A survey, some research issues, and challenges.".
Communications Surveys & Tutorials 18, no. 1, , 2016, 602-622.