The Children’s Trust

The challenge

Social and Sustainable Capital (SASC) is an asset management firm that invests to deliver social impact as well as financial return.
SASC had set itself ambitious growth targets; however, its ability to achieve these targets was limited by its existing ways of working.
Detailed knowledge of the business’ operations was only known by a small number of employees; which created two key challenges:

• Being able to demonstrate to investors and regulators the rigour and
quality of SASC’s risk management
• New joiners quickly learning the best known way of performing their
roles.

How did we help?

Using an agile approach, we identified, prioritised and documented SASC’s business processes. We iteratively refined the level of detail captured, until we reached a point at which further documentation was no longer value-adding. Each process was enhanced with relevant meta-data, such as the systems used, relevant templates, and the RACI of roles for each process step.

We formed a team comprised of both Clarasys consultants and SASC employees. Clarasys contributed deep knowledge and experience of Agile ways of working and process analysis, which complimented the industry expertise of SASC’s employees. Working together allowed Clarasys to upskill SASC’s employees, so that they would be able to document other processes in future, as well as keep the existing documentation up-to-date and relevant.

Benefits

SASC now have an interactive process library, which can be used to demonstrate a clear process to the regulator and investors, upskill new staff, and provide an aide memoire to staff on an ongoing basis, including access to templates and policies. Their training and the backlog of enhancements enable them to carry the library forward, standing on their own feet and without the need for a continued external presence. They intend to use the library as a single source of truth of their core processing for risk management, compliance, audit readiness and financial administration.