The only reason an organisation should run a programme of change is to achieve benefits. While benefits can come in a number of forms, both tangible and intangible, it is imperative that the organisation is clear at the outset what specific benefits it is aiming to realise.

CITI's implementation planning support team uses a four-stage approach to planning and scoping programmes of major change:

1. challenge and establish the relationship between the vision and benefits
2. model the impacts and establish the metrics for programme tracking
3. define a complete, relevant and feasible set of products to deliver the impacts
4. define tranche plan and initial portfolio

Targeting significant cost savings our multinational client spent considerable time, energy and money attempting unsuccessfully to implement an operating blueprint that differentiated between global and local processes.

Though it had been agreed that marketing a particular brand was a global process and advertising in a particular market was specifically local, there was increasing debate and confusion about where the global programme and local project boundaries lay.

Working closely with senior stakeholders over a period of six weeks CITI's strategic implementation planner used the "as-is" and "to-be" blueprinting process to model how the organisation operated currently and the implications of changing its operations to the future organisation. A programme was structured, including the identification of initial projects and critical project interfaces, to deliver the new operations model.