An outsourced Project Manager for the changes that will transform your business
I make your projects happen – on time, on budget, on vision
Where next for your business? What is the project that you have to deliver to move your business forward … to new markets … to new ways of operating … to long-term growth?
Whatever it is you want to achieve – new physical or digital infrastructure, customer-service excellence, business-process improvements – I have the project-management skills and experience to bring it to life. I am the outsourced Project Manager who delivers projects that you don’t have the time to manage yourself.
“She is focused and customer driven with a can-do attitude for delivering results"
Speed, agility, collaboration, and rigorous attention to detail
The essential components of successful project management
Through MBR I get your time and business-critical projects done. I’m the external project manager you call in whenever you have a business-improvement project that you cannot manage in-house through lack of time or resources. You need change badly, but you also have a day-to-day operation to run. Which is why you need me. I’ll be central to your project for as long as I’m needed. Once I’ve achieved what you want, I’ll be gone. No long-term commitment.
Knowing how to get people working together
Motivational and leadership skills are fundamental to project management. A good project manager is rarely an expert in the subject matter. Her job is to coordinate the work of the subject-matter experts – to bring a disparate set of teams, skills, and technologies together for a common cause. It’s all about communication and collaboration. Everyone has to know what’s required of them and how their input links to the input of other participants – and how they are all working collectively to achieve a seamlessly successful project. The effective project manager cuts through the silos; she gets strangers working together as colleagues; she helps you achieve your business vision and strategy.
“Rachel is a full-of-energy, project-delivery professional. Rachel was not only tenacious, but a listener – and for such complexity, listening, digesting and then delivering were all skills in her capability tool kit.”
I’m Rachel Williamson, and I’ve been making change happen for more than 25 years – in my own business, as Program Director of a telecoms company, and for clients in a range of sectors. MBR (= Managed By Rachel) is just me with all my skills and experience. Which, if you’ll excuse this one boast, is all you need.
The vision for your project comes from you. The technical elements come from the team we pull together. The delivery comes from me. I manage the schedule and the budget; I provide the motivation, direction, and leadership; and I keep everyone pointing in the same direction. It’s my job to spot the bottlenecks long before they become a problem, to get the entire project team working as collaborators, and to make sure everyone understands how their individual input contributes to project success.
Since project management is my only activity, I’m not distracted by the daily demands of running a complex business. I use my time to draw the strands of your project together – to deliver your project with minimum fuss and for maximum impact.
What customers and collaborators say about me
Previous projects brought to life
Examples of lasting and successful change
Migrating European financial call centres to a performance-boosting, cloud-based platform
An international financial institution, operating in nine European countries, had found a unified comms solution for its 900 staff. The plan was to move from its mixture of legacy on-premise and cloud PBXs to an 8×8 cloud-based UCaaS platform within a Citrix virtual desktop infrastructure.
Earlier attempts to migrate UK locations had not gone so well, and the teams at those locations had lost a little faith in the new technology. Since the institution relies on the one-to-one rapport it generates with its customers, it had to fix the issues before it could risk any further roll-outs.
The institution needed a dedicated project manager who could bring all the stakeholders and technological strands together, reignite passion for the solution, and create an environment in which success was the logical outcome. My task was to understand the technology, build camaraderie and a can-do mindset, and lead the team that would deliver success.
It was a steep learning curve for all of us, but our forensic and inclusive approach teased out the evidence that made the problems identifiable and fixable. Step by step, we rolled out to larger contact centres, resolving fresh issues at each stage until we could make the final, company-wide release that unlocked huge quality and
performance improvements.
Getting a retail start-up connected and trading in record time
A retail business was eager to generate early sales by opening stores quickly and trading immediately. It did not want to wait for the installation of physical telephony services. The challenge was to develop and prove a concept for a cost-effective, telecoms and data solution with the capability for instant deployment. By bringing in all the technical teams early, I achieved exceptional collaboration and fast-tracked innovation. The result was a concept ready for multi-site roll-out to over 160 stores.
Design and delivery of a new business division
A complex project to create a new revenue source – a multi-million-turnover unified-comms operation – for an established mobile telephony business. The project required a new supplier-compatible billing platform and a full technical and support team. It also needed buy-in from the existing business to facilitate cross-selling. By 2021, the operation was generating over £3m a year and accounted for more than 30% of the business’s turnover. Customer-service levels across the business were so high, O2 named it Direct Partner of the Year four years in a row.
Deploying a new cost-saving WAN and voice network
A social housing charity needed to set up a new WAN with a larger capacity together with a new voice network and contact centre. The challenge was to do it without any downtime and before the current supplier’s contract ended. By pulling all stakeholders – multiple suppliers and the internal team – together, I made sure that everyone understood what was needed of them. As a result, we collectively delivered in full and within budget.
Regulatory upgrade to 20,000+ phone numbers
A household name in the insurance industry had to upgrade its 0845 numbers to meet a regulatory timescale set by OFCOM. This project was complicated by the fact that multiple departments used these numbers. To achieve success, all of them had to be brought on board. For efficiency, we broke the project down into phases aligned with business priorities. Under my project-management, all the numbers were changed on time, and the customer achieved regulatory compliance.
Speedy deployment of a multi-site contact centre
A UK energy company wanted to upgrade its existing unified comms voice platform to an omni-channel solution and create a single contact centre for its UK and South African operations. I had to complete the entire project within three months to generate the business benefits at speed. In this case, the project over-achieved. It provided all the required benefits – and more.
Migrating a multi-site business to a new comms network
An enterprise business with a wide range of activities wanted to deploy a new cost-saving WAN that would support a new unified voice network. The challenge was to develop the new system to run in parallel with the existing one without any disruption to the business, and to complete before the contract on the existing system expired. It was huge success – delivered on time, on budget, and with absolutely no business disruption. During the project I was able to feed in more locations and more requirements that added value without adding costs or delays.