Case Study

The Challenge

During a high-stakes data centre migration for a global Consumer Markets, an unexpected legal and commercial roadblock emerged. The parent company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on behalf of a US-based subsidiary, which held licensing rights for critical applications and infrastructure hosted in its US data centre. This legal action immediately froze all migration activities involving those assets, threatening to delay the programme by up to three months.

The financial stakes were equally severe. Continuing operations in the legacy data centre was costing the client around £850,000 per month, while the migration programme itself incurred a £1 million monthly run rate. Even a short delay risked undermining the business case, straining commercial relationships, and jeopardising regulatory compliance tied to the data centre exit.

Our Approach

Our Change Squad took a proactive and agile response to the emerging risk. While the Chapter 11 development introduced unforeseen external disruption, we immediately engaged with all relevant stakeholders to reassess the plan and identify actionable paths forward. Our approach included:

• Rapid Impact Assessment & Replanning: Without knowing when it would end, this was a live issue that we were monitoring every day. We identified which workloads and environments were affected and prioritised unaffected components, such as pre-prod and test workloads, for immediate migration.
• Licence Repurchase & Rental: Where possible, licences were repurchased at low cost or temporarily rented to maintain migration momentum. Where this was not viable, applications were decoupled from the main migration plan and rescheduled with a two-to-three-week buffer to accommodate potential overruns.
• Prioritising Workable Environments: Development environments that either did not require licences or used lower-cost alternatives were prioritised to keep work progressing during the licence freeze.
• Cross-functional Orchestration: We facilitated tight collaboration between legal, procurement, and technical teams, acting as translators between the licensing experts and infrastructure engineers to maintain alignment and velocity.
• Strategic Use of Buffer Time: Fortunately, a quiet delivery period was pre-planned for December. This was strategically repurposed to absorb rescheduled migrations, avoiding downstream slippage.
• Procurement & Licensing Leadership: We worked closely with third-party vendors and licensing specialists, identifying lower-cost or temporary alternatives where possible, and implemented twice-weekly stand-ups to maintain progress and address any blockers promptly.

Supporting People Through Change

We helped the client navigate the people side of change by ensuring everyone across the organisation felt informed, involved, and supported throughout the journey. A respected colleague from within the business was appointed as a programme ambassador; already part of the steering board, she helped shape and translate key updates, ensuring delivery conversations were grounded in real operational context.

Working with her, we brought business champions into the programme from across departments. These individuals played an active role in delivery, kept their teams informed, and helped surface risks early; strengthening trust and ownership from the ground up.

We also shaped how communication and governance worked across the programme. This included:

• Establishing a a clear, centralised communication cadence to keep messaging consistent across channels, roles and regions
• Introducing feedback loops, such as retrospectives, to help adapt governance and messaging in real time
• Defining clear roles and responsibilities, supported by a full RACI
• Creating terms of reference for meetings to focus decision-making and reduce duplication
• Setting out clear escalation routes to remove blockers quickly and keep momentum
• Involving both operational and strategic colleagues in governance forums to balance pace with real-world practicality
• Supporting internal communications through business-led town halls and newsletters led by the business
• Embedding knowledge transfer practices throughout the lifecycle to support sustainability beyond go-live
• Creating space for teams to raise issues, ask questions and share insight, ensuring they felt heard, valued, and part of the journey

This people-first approach reduced friction, improved confidence, and helped the organisation move through the change with clarity and control. It ensured the programme was not only delivered successfully, but also embedded in a way that could be sustained and supported long after go-live.