THE CLIENT & THE INITIATIVE

In 2022, Firewood were engaged by the London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) to manage the technical delivery of the Quote-to-Cash (Q2C) programme. LSEG is a leading global financial markets infrastructure and data provider, serving customers in over 190 countries. They own the London Stock Exchange, one of the world’s oldest stock exchanges, and completed a significant acquisition in 2021 to strengthen their data and analytics capabilities.

​

LSEG plays a critical role in delivering financial data and analysis to institutions worldwide. With thousands of products, each featuring unique data sets, delivery methods, and pricing models, transactions occur daily on both a recurring and one-off basis. To enhance their operations and customer experience, LSEG launched a strategic transformation programme to modernise the entire Quote-to-Cash process.

​

The key objectives included:

• Implementing a modern solution: Updating systems to reduce operational risk and enhance capabilities.

• Migrating to a new secure platform: The transition to a new Salesforce platform called CPQ (Configure Price Quote) ensured a more agile and scalable approach to sales and order management.

• Establishing a unified Quote-to-Cash process: The new process was designed to enhance customer experience whilst ensuring service continuity.

​

OUR ROLE

The Q2C programme was structured with a clear distinction between the business and technical components. LSEG required a trusted partner to manage the technical delivery aspects of this strategic initiative.

​

Firewood acted as the client-side delivery partner, providing a programme leadership team managing a £100m+ budget whilst orchestrating global system integrators and Big 4 consultants. The programme spanned three continents, requiring day-to-day engagement with both customers and project stakeholders across multiple time zones and regions.

​

Beyond technical execution, Firewood played a pivotal role in enhancing how business requirements were addressed. We supported the client with business analysis expertise to help prioritise their most critical needs. Crucially, we established a dedicated team to implement immediate tactical changes that delivered value quickly, allowing the business to realise benefits whilst awaiting the completion of major releases. This pragmatic approach ensured stakeholders saw tangible improvements throughout the programme lifecycle, maintaining confidence and momentum.

​

KEY BENEFITS DELIVERED

Firewood enabled a complete restructure of the programme's approach, working hand-in-hand with the Business Programme Director and Head of PMO to establish a workstream model that enhanced execution. Through our collaborative involvement, we delivered several key benefits:

• Consistent on-time, on-budget delivery: Release after release was delivered as planned, giving stakeholders confidence in their financial investments.

• Enabled DevOps transformation: We implemented practices allowing multiple teams to work on the same platform concurrently, significantly improving efficiency.

• Created an adaptive delivery model: Our approach balanced strategic platform uplifts, tactical fixes, and major releases, ensuring continuous progress.

• Supported broader corporate objectives: We carefully expanded our scope to enable other M&A integration activities to proceed smoothly.

• Established a model for delivery excellence: Our approach has become a reference point for how complex technical programmes should be managed within the organisation.

​

The programme involved over eight core releases across multiple years. Importantly, we enabled a monthly release train so that the business received continuous benefits throughout the transformation journey, rather than having to wait for large, infrequent deliveries.

 

LESSONS LEARNED

Through strategic oversight and technical expertise, Firewood ensured the successful execution of one of LSEG’s most critical transformation initiatives, enhancing operational efficiency, scalability, and long-term stability.

 

Key factors driving the programme’s success were:

• Multi-model delivery teams: This approach ensured we never stopped moving the needle, maintaining momentum throughout the programme lifecycle.

• Enhanced governance: The complexity of technical challenges and potential impact on business-as-usual operations required robust oversight mechanisms.

• Strong cross-team and cross-supplier collaboration: We fostered a ‘one team’ mentality that was essential to the programme's success - without this collaborative approach, the initiative would have faced significant challenges.