Case Study
The Port of Dover is one of the UK’s most strategically important transport gateways, handling over £122 billion of trade annually. As a vital piece of national infrastructure, the Port operates at the intersection of commercial performance, public accountability, operational resilience and strict regulatory requirements.
The Port’s existing enterprise systems were ageing and no longer fit for the operational demands placed on the organisation. Leadership recognised that a major ERP transformation was necessary but was equally aware that the biggest risk lay not in the technology itself, but in how the programme was set up and governed before a single line of code was written.
The Port needed an independent, expert partner to sit on the client side: someone who would challenge assumptions, protect the Port’s interests during procurement, and ensure the organisation was genuinely ready for transformation.
OUR SOLUTION
Shape Associates was engaged to provide independent client side advisory support across the full programme lifecycle from procurement strategy through to post go live stabilisation. Our approach followed Shape’s proven methodology, aligned to the Public Procurement Act 2023, and was structured across four interconnected workstreams.
RESULTS & IMPACT
The programme delivered measurable operational and financial improvements across the organisation. Through rigorous BAFO (Best and Final Offer) negotiations, Shape secured £500,000 in contractual savings significantly reducing the Port’s overall investment commitment while strengthening the long-term value case for the transformation.
Alongside the commercial workstream, Shape led a major data cleansing and migration programme, validating and cleansing 40% of the Port’s data estate to ensure only accurate and relevant information was transferred into the new ERP environment.
Using Shape’s continuous improvement methodology, more than 40 business process reviews were completed, allowing legacy workflows to be challenged, simplified and redesigned around operational best practice rather than historic ways of working.
This included a 70% reduction in approval steps across key workflows, helping to remove administrative friction and accelerate decision making across the business.
Shape also redesigned the chart of accounts, rationalised the Port’s asset hierarchy, and streamlined inventory and stores structures creating a cleaner operational and financial foundation for the future.
Supported by strong programme governance, embedded change management and a comprehensive training strategy, the programme was delivered on time with high levels of user adoption and stakeholder confidence, enabling benefits to be sustained successfully into business-as-usual operations.
Shape Associates’ role throughout was consistently that of a client-side champion: independent, outcome-focused, and entirely aligned with the Port’s best interests. From challenging the procurement process to drive better value, to building the operational readiness that gave the programme its best chance of success, Shape brought the expertise and impartiality that only a true Business Integrator can provide.
The result was a programme that entered implementation with clarity of purpose, clean data, optimised processes, engaged stakeholders and half a million pounds of savings already secured.
