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ICL PATHWAY LIMITED
MINUTES OF A MEETING OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS
HELD AT
ICL PATHWAY LTD, FOREST ROAD, FELTHAM, MIDDLESEX
ON WEDNESDAY, 7th MAY 1997
Present: Sir Michael Butler (Chairman)
Mr T K Todd
Mr R Banks
Mr J H Bennett
Mr A E Oppenheim
Mr T Reynolds
In attendance: Mr R F Scott (Secretary)
Mr T Austin
Mr A Ward (Item 21)
Mr S Muchow (Item 22)
Apologies for absence were received from Mr R Christou and
Mr J White.
97/16 MINUTES OF PREVIOUS MEETING
The minutes of the meeting held on 14 March 1997
were approved as a correct record and signed by the
Chairman.
97/17 MATTERS ARISING
97/11 - Single European Currency - version 2 of the
MR BENNETT ICL Pathway paper on the subject would be sent to
the Chairman for comment.
97/12 - POCL - there was concern over POCL's lack
of skills in client management. They needed help
to instill an entrepreneurial culture. The seven
POCL Regional Directors would be with AN POST
MR BENNETT shortly and Mr Bennett would talk to Mr Reynolds
MR BENNETT about communication with them. Mr Bennett would
arrange a meeting with Stuart Sweetman, involving
Mr Todd and the Chairman as appropriate. Mr Todd
MR BENNETT said to encourage POCL to try to sell new products
through their outlets, we had to give them a
dramatic example of how they could increase their
projected revenue growth figures.
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97/18 MANAGING DIRECTOR'S REPORT
Mr Bennett presented. Points noted:
a) Release 1b, including OBCS was working
satisfactorily in one Post Office so far and
attempts were being made to come back to schedule.
However, the delay had consequences (see minute
97/20) on issues lc, le and beyond.
b) Mr Bennett said the most significant consequence
was the likelihood of achieving a roll-out to
significantly less than the projected number of
Post Offices by the year end.
c) Surveys of the Post Offices continued and there
were many which appeared to have inadequate counter
space and other facilities, including electrical,
ISDN etc links. However, constructive meetings had
been held with POCL on who would do the remedial
work and a modus operandi had been established.
Certain of the improvements would be the
responsibility of the Postmasters/SubPostmasters
but POCL had acknowledged it was their
responsibility to see that they did it. Mr Austin
added that the remedial work in Post Offices
impacted considerably on the logistics for ICL
Pathway's implementation of the new releases. He
was assessing whether he thought we could achieve
peak release in 300 Post Offices per week during
1998, as planned.
d) There was considerable pressure on POCL staff in
surveying and implementing changes in the Post
Offices and Mr Todd suggested it was necessary to
have an "Implementation Board" as a forum for
formal meetings between Pathway and POCL on
MR BENNETT implementation. Mr Bennett would consider this.
Pathway would also attend carefully to the
commercial implications.
MR BENNETT ec) Mr Todd added that Mr Bennett and Mr Sweetman of
POCL should meet on a monthly basis to go through
relevant issues.
£) Mr Bennett said that the PDA (representing the
Benefits Agency) had asked Andersen Consulting to
review progress. POCL had declined to be involved
in this and had asked French Thornton to conduct
another review. French Thornton had been in
discussion with ICL Pathway and were cooperating.
However Andersen's appeared not yet ready to talk
to ICL Pathway and Mr Todd said this would be
MR BENNETT raised at the next Steering Committee as it was
important we should not suffer as a result of a
secretive review into which we had no input.
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g) Mr Todd added that when indicating problems in his
MR BENNETT report, Mr Bennett should give an expected time of
resolution.
h) The Board noted Mr Bennett's critical issues list,
issued in this format for the first time, which
would be updated regularly. Resolution dates were
included here and it was noted that all the
critical issues would impact on the programme some
way in terms of time and money.
97/19 PROGRAMME DIRECTOR'S REPORT
Mr Austin reported, including information
supplementary to Mr Bennett's report. Points
noted:
a) The late release of Issue lb had been principally
as a result of bugs in the connection between the
Post Office and the HQ Data Centres. Considerable
regression testing was necessary following
resolution of these bugs, in order to check that
other parts of the system were not affected. This
had impacted on the timescale for Release lc, now
expected to be six to eight weeks late (ie August).
By the end of the week we hoped to be back on
course with Release lb, in a total of twenty Post
Offices.
b) Although Release 1c had been expected to be
incremental between Releases 1b and le, it was
turning out to be more complex and functionally
rich. This was occasioning part of the delay, but
would nevertheless de-risk Release le. Also the
new release of Riposte (Release 6) could be worked
into Release le in due course.
c) The Chairman enquired about the commercial and
penalties implications of the six/eight week delay
on Release 1c and whether the customers’ problems
with CAPS could mitigate this. Mr Oppenheim said
the objective was to avoid penalties for the six/-
eight week delay (some of which might be made up
although the technical complexities were
increasing) and said that so far we had not missed
an acceptance date. The delays were impacting only
intermediate dates in the programme. He felt
taking all the factors together, we should ask the
customer to agree to a new master plan which took
account of all the delays so far, without penalties
arising. It was noted that if we did reduce the
delay period, we could begin, eg the model office
testing, earlier and gain favour with the customer.
d) Mr Austin said the plan to achieve Release 1 (Child
Benefit only) in 2,200 Post Offices by the year end
was now impacted through the delay and we might
reach only 1,300. But there would also be an
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effect in pushing national roll-out on Release 1,
planned for 24 November, into 1998. Multiple
benefits, Release 2 etc, was still planned to go
live late January 1998 although this would also be
impacted by the delays.
e) Mr Austin expanded on the effects on future
releases in 1998. At present a release was planned
in January (Release 2) in April and in October. He
also suspected another release in July would be
necessary because there was a new CAPS release at
that time. However he had proposed to POCL and BA,
and he believed it would be acceptable, that there
should be only two releases in 1998, in March and
July.
£) It was noted that there might be a considerable
effect on IcL Pathway from the change of
government, in particular since there might be
CHAIRMAN plans to reform the "welfare state". The Chairman
would discuss this with Mr Todd and Mr Bennett
separately.
97/20 SYSTEM SCALABILITY
Mr Ward gave a presentation in which he emphasised
that the present release of Riposte, Release 5.2
could not support the full load required for the
horizon, namely beyond 5,000 outlets. (The plan
was to extend eventually to 20,000 outlets, 40,000
counters.)
ICL Pathway's solution was Riposte 6, which would
take six months to develop and which potentially
could delay plans to implement in more than 5,000
Post Offices. Two-hundred man-days of development
would be required for tactical solution prior to
Release 6 availability. One of the issues was that
the foreign encashment agent, in the Riposte
software, was owned by Escher. It was expected
Escher would support ICL Pathway producing this
interim solution. Relations with Escher were good
and they were working to support ICL Pathway at
present. The new release had not yet been
discussed in detail with PDA. Plans were being
made on how to integrate the release into the
programme.
97/21 SERVICE MANAGEMENT
Mr Muchow gave a presentation on Service Management
and reported on a considerable amount of work by
ICL Pathway, with some help from ICL Sorbus, in
setting up the systems and arrangements which would
be used to support the solution, including the
HelpDesks. The target was that 80% of calls from
the public (eg lost benefit cards) or Post Offices
etc would be answered within twenty seconds and 90%
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within forty seconds. The calls would not be
answered by an automatic voice system but queuing
MR BENNETT would be used. At the Chairman's request, Mr
Muchow would consider whether an answer-phone
message could be given for calls which could not
get through to the queuing system, for example
outside working hours. Mr Muchow would also
further consider how the system could cope in times
of crisis. The potential of how ICL Pathway might
be able to exploit the enormous databases being
built up, was also being given consideration.
97/22 FINANCE DIRECTOR'S REPORT
Mr Oppenheim reported. Amongst matters covered he
mentioned customer education where he was ensuring
that ICL Pathway was paid for its activities. He
said it had been possible to make one change so far
to the Score card to recover additional operating
costs and Mr Todd urged that ICL Pathway consider
Score card changes as a means to recoup further
costs in future. Mr Todd emphasised that as soon
as the base line systems, including the baseline
service management system was in place, it was
necessary to drive cost out as much as possible in
order to increase profitability. For the long
term, we needed to be vigilant in encouraging POCL
to develop more business with us.
Mr Oppenheim referred to the drivers of the ICL
Pathway business and tabled a volume matrix
summary, showing the figures which helped to
identify opportunities, as well as the negative
cost drivers to be reduced where possible.
Mr Oppenheim added that the Company's statutory
accounts for 1996 had now been agreed by the
Auditors and would shortly be signed under the
authority of the Board Committee of Mr Todd and
himself established for the purpose. He added that
it was intended to use the Company's subsidiary,
Pathway 2000 Limited (possibly with a name change)
in connection with proposals for project finance.
Mr Todd added, Fujitsu were in the process of
approving the proposals.
97/23 DATES OF NEXT MEETINGS
Wednesday, 9 July
Monday, 29 September
Thusday, 13 November
All in ICL House, Putney, Room 1402 at 10am.
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