“Atos Consulting achieved an enorous amount in an impossibly short timescale. The success of this programme was a vital step forward in the ongoing evolution of the Global Fund.”
Heather Allan, Corporate Services Cluster Director, Global Fund
The Global Fund is an international institution which invests the world’s money to save lives by fighting three killer diseases, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.Formed in 2002 under special arrangements with the World Health Organisation,the Global Fund needed to become an administratively autonomous organisation to ensure the most efficient response on behalf of its donors, stakeholders and, most of all, for people suffering disease. When Atos Consulting became involved, there were just seven months to take its staff out of the familiar confines of the United Nations and into a new standalone organisation.
Business Challenge
- Based in Geneva, the Global Fund is a unique worldwide partnership. For example, its board comprises representatives of donor and recipient governments, non-governmental organisations, the private sector and communities.
- The organisation has committed over US$16.3 billion in 140 countries to support large-scale prevention and care programmes for HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria – amounting to a quarter of all international financing for AIDS and two-thirds of the tuberculosis and malaria finance programmes.
- In December 2007 the Global Fund Board decided to terminate its arrangement with the World Health Organisation (WHO) and make the move to full autonomy. It would then have the ability to shape its own future and explore new ways of working to deliver services and disburse stakeholder funds even more efficiently.
- All the functions that were being supplied by the WHO had to be up and running by the pre-set deadline, and there was an added complication in that the organisation had to simultaneously adapt to the introduction of a WHO computerised management system.
Solution
- First of all we established governance processes to ensure effective stewardship of the programme, along with a framework and an influential decision-making forum of senior executives drawn from across the Global Fund.
- Meticulous planning was clearly essential, and we began to develop what eventually became a 25,000 line programme plan that included all the risk complexities and dependencies that could derail delivery to the deadline.
- Meanwhile, an entirely new IT system had to be chosen and implemented to support all the new administrative functions. We chose the Oracle Enterprise Resource Planning system, which proved key to ensuring the separation process met its objectives.
- Our team then had six months to develop and implement the new system – a phenomenally short timeframe. We focused on tailoring processes to suit system functionality so that these could then be adapted after go-live to ensure continuous improvement. And we simultaneously worked to make sure the new system would integrate with a separate payroll system and other systems from banks and pension providers.
Benefits
Moving the Global Fund to an autonomous organisation was a dynamic and constantly changing process that required a very wide range of management capabilities. Our past experience was therefore crucial to delivering benefits such as:
- Managing the transition without any impact upon business continuity or staff roles
- Establishing and maintaining multiple work streams and taking full responsibility for all milestones and outcomes
- Dealing with every area of change, from administrative functions to finance, procurement, new technology, resource planning plus all the human concerns arising from the 33 new services introduced
- Being accountable for meeting individual deadlines and delivery of the whole programme
- Making every effort to give stakeholders and staff the information and support they needed to make their own decisions – by advising and communicating transparently and openly at all times.
The Global Fund now has the independence and flexibility to manage its operations in line with the most efficient financial disbursement practices for helping to fight major diseases.
But the transition programme also provided a rich opportunity to demonstrate how much the Global Fund values its employees and their commitment. So it may well be no coincidence that the organisation has since grown to almost 600 people.
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