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CASE STUDIES
Creating a Best Place to Live, Work and Play (2006-2008):
To
thrive in the new economy, a fortune 100 company needs to attract the best
talent. Top talent expects to work for a great company, but they also
expect to reside in a livable city or one that has
a distinction for being a best place to live. Midland,
Michigan a relatively unknown small town is home to a global fortune 100
company, the Dow Chemical Company. Transportation in and out of this town
of 40,000 is not ideal and neither are the entertainment, shopping or
restaurant choices. Peyman was commissioned to turn this town from a
liability to an asset in attracting and retaining top talent and do it in less
than 3 years. This challenge was further enhanced by the fact that no
additional investments were to be added to achieve results. Marketing
Midland's existing attributes such as low crime and no traffic was task number
one. However, to improve the remaining issues, the town leaders needed to
agree on the vision and be educated in urban and community design and
development. This was achieved through creating a leadership forum,
hosting a number of town hall meetings to collect ideas, sharing best practices
and gain buy-in from the community. In addition, the firm Project for
Public Spaces was brought in from New
York to educate folks on making Midland a place that attracts people.
This project also required a close working relationship with local city
government, the chamber of commerce, economic development arm and local
charitable organizations. The results were nothing less than
astonishing. In less than 3 years, Midland went from a relatively unknown
Midwestern town to being ranked # 11 Dream town by Biz
Journal Magazine in
the U.S.- a vision turned into reality.
When Information Technology (IT) Strategy is not just about IT (2008-2009)
By
late 2007, Dow Chemical Company had asked Peyman to renew and revise the
Information Technology Strategic Plan. In the past the IT Strategy went
through a major overhaul once every 2-3 years with a yearly refresh to the document.
The old document from 2006-2007 year was complete and an outstanding testament
to the technologies leveraged and a detailed manifest of the IT industry trends
and direction. What it lacked, however, was a close tie to the business
direction and even the business uncertainties. The first order of
business was to understand where Dow businesses were heading. Each
Divisional CIO of the company was asked to prepare a 2-page summary of their
perspective businesses validated by the business group presidents and
leaders. A multi-disciplined team of IT and Business executives was
formed to oversee the revision efforts and finally tools such as Scenario Planning was leveraged to determine not just
what happens under optimum conditions, but to develop a plan for any
circumstance. The results yielded one of the most integrated strategy
documents that a global fortune 100 company had in their arsenal to forecast -
a strategy turned into reality.
Great Lakes Loons Baseball and the Dow Diamond Stadium Project (2006-2007)
Something amazing happens to a town when
there is a professional sports team to cheer for. People come out to watch the
games, eat at restaurants, the mood is enhanced and the town feels
lively. To further enhance Midland's attractiveness and to boost its
economy, Peyman was commissioned to lead a project for purchasing a Minor
League baseball team and building a state-of-the-art stadium. To enhance
the impact of this project, the vision of the former Dow CEO was to obtain a
non-profit status for this operation. He wanted the proceeds to be poured
back into the community for youth sports and development. Through intense
negotiations and relationship building with minor league and major league
baseball organizations, architectural and construction firms, local companies
and charitable organizations secured the purchase of a team and built a Class-A
stadium in record time of one year. Today the Great Lakes Loons attract over 300,000 fans a
year to the area with an estimated $15 million in economic impact to the
community and the results have created a vital downtown. The operation
has been profitable from year one, which has resulted in providing over
$100,000 annually in grants to youth related activities. Dow Diamond was
named "Stadium of the Year" by Ballpark Digest two years in a row and fans keep flocking to the stadium to
see the Loons - a vision turned into reality.
Establishing the Global Corporate Real Estate
Function (2004-2006)
What does a 100 year-old global company who
operates in 37 countries spend on managing facilities and real estate?
That was a good question asked by Dow CEO in 2004, so a team of 5 individuals
lead by Peyman was commissioned to both find out the operating costs and
improve the services across the globe. To succeed two main activities
needed to take place: First, understand how each site operates, their best
practices and cost management techniques and second to develop work processes
and implement appropriate technologies to manage the facilities. The
consolidation of suppliers, work processes, workforce and technologies resulted
in a 20% reduction in cost. Today, Dow has a streamlined work process and
a comprehensive Corporate Real Estate function across the globe that
effectively manages everything from cleaning offices, to purchase and lease of
major buildings - a vision turned into reality.
e-Michigan
Government services on-line, not
in-line (2000-2002)
It
is year 2000, the State of Michigan had just successfully implemented its
Year-2000 remediation efforts, then Governor Engler had two more years in the
office before he was term limited and Peyman was commissioned to place 600
services and 250,000 pieces of content on-line and do it in less than one
year. By the time the funding was secured, the contractors were brought
in and the office of e-Michigan developed, the team had roughly three months
to roll-out the e-commerce and content management solutions. The product
offering had to be superior to other States and it had to make financial sense
for the state agencies and boast cost savings to the government operations.
Peyman worked closely with Agency leaders to understand their principal
needs and operations, re-engineered their processes to fit the new on-line
delivery systems and launched the very successful site www.Michigan.gov in 89 days, saving over $11 million a
year in operational costs. The site won over 10 industry awards including PC-Week, Governing, Government Technology and
Detroit Free Press to name a few - a vision
turned into reality.
Link-Michigan, Economic Development through Network (1999-2001)
By late 1990s, e-Commerce and Internet were
hard at work changing the economic landscape of this country. States were
clamoring to attract businesses, and businesses were looking for States with
the best connectivity to the Internet. After all, much of the new economy
depended on solid and robust connection. After a failed attempt to
attract Cisco to locate offices in the Ann Arbor area due to lack of good
network connectivity, Peyman went to work to improve the situation and not lose
the next candidate. The State government had no data on this particular
topic. Peyman created Link-Michigan, an initiative to collect data
throughout the State to identify gaps in network connectivity. This was a
collaborative effort between governments, educational institutions and private
sector to create a comprehensive database. The results would allow the
State to work diligently with these organizations to build out the connectivity
in order to attract businesses. Later in 2006, Google opened offices in
the Ann Arbor area as it met its connectivity needs -
a strategy turned into reality.
Office of Project Management - New Business Development (1998-2002)
By 1998, one of State's project had spent over $300 million in over 10
years and management had no confidence that there was an end in
sight. To make matters worse, the federal government was about to impose
millions of dollars in penalties to States that did not complete these projects
by year 2000. Governor Engler wanted a remedy to these and other
projects. Peyman was brought in to establish the Office of Project
Management, a self-funded internal consulting firm, to oversee the State's
major Information Technology Projects.
Peyman hired top talent from the private sector, build a robust Project
Management methodology, developed tools and educational programs. In less
than 18 months, the State gained control over its projects and launched new
projects with overwhelming success. Peyman also sponsored the creation of
the local
Project Management Institute (PMI) Capital
Area chapter to help foster a
professional networking environment for project managers - a vision turned into reality.
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