WaterNSW
"FBS’s highly experienced team was always professional, committed to providing excellent ‘value-for-money’ and constantly acted in WaterNSW’s best interest. I have had the opportunity to work with FBS on several occasions on challenging and complex programs of work, which have all resulted in successful outcomes and as such I would not hesitate to recommend them." – Joseph Pizzinga, CFO, WaterNSW
"The FBS team provided valuable expertise using best practice, considered implications to the business at every step, engaged with the WaterNSW business community, managed and negotiated with the vendor on our behalf, bridged the information gap in product architecture, supported processes, provided documentation and prepared our organisation for ‘business as usual’." – Ian Robinson, CIO, WaterNSW
RailCorp | Transport for NSW
"FBS demonstrated their consulting versatility by undertaking several challenging assignments within the Commercial Services functions under my management. These included: relocating the RailCorp 450 seat training campus; a Health Check of the existing $40M Property Management Service Agreement to inform an impending contract renewal; facilitating the resolution of critical audit items reported monthly to the Board Audit Committee; working with critical stakeholders to develop a Target Operating Model for RailCorp’s non-operational Property Management Group, and project management of the construction of a service road at the RailCorp Clyde Maintenance Facility. All tasks were completed in a thorough and professional manner, with requirements met or exceeded.” – Aidan Hughes, General Manager of Commercial Services.
Goulburn Valley Water
"FBS played a critical role in supporting GVW to review and recommence its project at a time where internal staff were fatigued and lacked confidence in the project. FBS resources were instrumental in developing systems, tools and processes to cleanse, export, transform and upload data from the old system to the new. This was previously an area of concern for GVW and the approach delivered by FBS supported increased confidence and auditability ~ the tools delivered by FBS were able to demonstrate clear progress in data migration activities and integrity of data migration outcomes. GVW achieved a successful Go Live of D365 in November 2020 and has only experienced minor issues with the system since this time." – Leon Sargeant, Manager - Digital Programs, GVW
NSW Police Force
"FBS always provided 'value for money' and operated with the best interest of the client in mind. Their consultants combined the necessary discipline, versatility, and experience necessary to consistently deliver complex projects on-time and within the NSW Government’s strict compliance and governance framework for operating agencies. I would not hesitate to recommend their services." – Aidan Hughes, CFO, NSW Police Force.
Flow Systems
"Focused Business Solutions provide an end-to-end consulting service. Their consultants have deep domain knowledge in specific business value chains and this is complemented with experience in company management, program management and governance. You get more than a consultant, you get a team who supports you as you move through any engagement. This vastly improves the quality of work, executive engagement and outcomes for my business." – Brendan Dunn, IT Manager, Flow Systems
Ingham's
FBS engaged and led the in-house technical resources effectively and engaged the outsource provider confidently and reliably. The key objective of the transition to migration without disruption to business operations was achieved and all changes were managed within an approval and delivery framework. Their professionalism was instrumental to the success of this engagement and has contributed positively to the transformation of the Ingham’s IT team." – Steven Cooper, IT Infrastructure and Operations Manager, Ingham's
SuperChoice
FBS presented succinctly and professionally what is a very complex service in a simple way to time-poor consumers of the RFP. As importantly, they created a flow of key repeatable artefacts that have been re-utilised for other similar tender assignments and proposals.
The engagement was professional in every respect and highly successful (SuperChoice was awarded the contract). We would have no hesitation recommending FBS providing service-based businesses like our own – with a strategic and professional presentation of any complex business or service." – Mike Fielding, General Manager, Superchoice
Sabre
"Focused Business Solutions provides an end-to-end consulting service that Sabre has found to be instrumental in its business operations. Sabre has drawn on the expertise of a knowledgeable FBS consultant for the past five years. A valuable team-player, this particular consultant has demonstrated great initiative while playing an integral role in defining long-term solutions within the organisation. The FBS team has also been extremely easy to work with in relation to billing and invoicing." – Karen Printzenhoff, Manager of Product Development, Sabre
Rookwood Cemetery
"We engaged Focused Business Solutions to project manage a number of strategic projects. Due to their skills and dedication to our organisation, they have helped us to transform the way we operate." – George Simpson, CEO, Rookwood
Cabcharge
"Highly professional, services required are delivered, resources are competent and experienced. – Fred Lukabyo, COO, Cabcharge
Serco
"Managed the team well to improve their collaboration and performance." – David Fryda, CIO, Serco Asia Pacific
Macquarie University
"Starkly contrasted from the usual zero-care, revenue depleting, intern-deploying, drone-like project management that is so prevalent with big-five consulting practices, FBS was strategic, mission oriented and laser focused from the outset. Fred’s personal motivation, patience, care, coaching, and mentoring organically inspired camaraderie and even allowed us to develop effective professionals through our university cadet program.
Moreover, from a personal perspective, Fred was able to proxy for me and navigate complex political negotiations according to clear rules of engagement with zero supervision/intervention. Technical and management depth of experience supported the entire project team, identifying future opportunities, and exposing risks and weaknesses before they arose...
Ultimately OneNet unified the digital experience of every single student, researcher, teacher and staffer at Macquarie, an innovative university with a $2.5B annual budget. Its success built a strategic foundation that engendered political capital and trust in the reformed Informatics team for future projects, and was an important early win for me as CIO. I remain convinced that would not have been the case but for FBS, Fred Etter and his dedication." – Marc Bailey, CIO, Macquarie University.
Intersect
"I turned once again to Fred Etter and his organisation, FBS, to allow me to focus on customer, personnel and financial priorities. The ability to successfully manage a staff-in-transition, balance four strategic projects, and not merely maintain but improve daily operations was exceptional; especially during a period of organisational restructure. Through Fred and his team’s delivery professionalism and ability to grasp extremely complex computing technologies all four goals were achieved on budget, on time, and met all funding body acceptance tests. We created, launched and operated state-of-the-art Space peta-scale research cloud storage and Time tera-scale research cloud compute in 2015. Intersect successfully competed against multinationals Amazon, Google, Microsoft, IBM and VMware with research oriented first-to-market offerings like cloud MPI and GPU computing-as-a-service, and elastic big data-as-a-service.
I am professionally indebted to Fred Etter for these and other successes and will have zero hesitation in engaging Fred and Focused Business Solutions for my next unassailable project. I could not commend them more highly to others and will be happy to do so if requested." – Marc Bailey, CEO, Intersect.
FuturePlus
"FBS in my opinion gets the balance right. They apply project discipline with a focus on getting the outcome. The difference being that they bring insight and understanding on how to get things done and work within the constraints of the given environment. If I have a new project or one that is failing FBS is who I reach for to bring it back on track." – Chris Matthews, GM Operations, FuturePlus.
"I always found FBS consultants to be reliable and technically proficient." – Tony Griffin, COO, FuturePlus
Media Super
“Having successfully worked with FBS on projects historically it was appropriate that we engaged FBS for their project leadership and technical knowledge in regard to s Successor Fund Transfer (SFT) project. The project involved transitioning approximately 72,000 superannuation fund members with $7 billion of superannuation investments to a much larger fund. This was a very complex project with rigid governance controls and a series of operational and strategic challenges. FBS provided project management services which assisted Media Super in the implementation of the funds retention strategy which involved engaging key executives and developing and scheduling retention activities in the period leading up to the SFT. The FBS team also provided leadership in developing and executing a plan for the management of wind up procedures relating to the return and disposal of corporate assets and IT infrastructure. The outcome was that the components of work that FBS were responsible for were completed within the required timeframe and the SFT consequently took place on the agreed date.
FBS also provided a technical resource to reconfigure and maintain a database that the fund utilised for the data capture and administrative management of the funds client Partnership program. The FBS resource then worked in conjunction with our Growth Team executive to ensure the database and Partnership program was transitioned efficiently across to the team at the successor fund.
I would recommend FBS in relation to their project leadership skills along with their ability to allocate relevant technical resources.” – Tony Griffin, CEO, Media Super
Bushmans
The managing director for Bushmans have been employing Brett and FBS for over 2 decades now in different organisation’s for a variety of projects. Recently, Bushmans engaged FBS to assist with the selection of an enterprise resource planning system for the business. We were in a position where we had vastly outgrown our legacy system, were reliant on very manual processes, using paper and spreadsheets, and lacking a digital maturity that a manufacturer in 2022 would be expected to have.
FBS came into Bushmans and straight away sought out what our priorities were for the ERP upgrade project. We conducted various workshops with key stakeholders to deduce the organisation’s current state, digital maturity, expectations for the project, and the business’ requirements.
Throughout this process, useful documents and artefacts were created. These would form the basis of the RFP that FBS created for us to go to market with. The methodology behind the business requirements workshops were very helpful in getting a clear picture of what our priorities were, whilst engaging Bushmans stakeholders – giving them a sense of ownership over the project.
FBS were highly diligent in the creation of the formal RFP – they included clauses that we would’ve never have though of, make sure we covered all our bases and always looked out for our best interests. FBS then managed the various vendors that responded to the RFP. We used a number of scoring tools provided by FBS come to a shortlist of vendors that were then invited to demonstrate. This culminated in the selection of a vendor, and because we were so impressed with FBS’ work so far, we invited them to manage the project.
One of the key benefits we have found throughout this whole process is the expertise that FBS provides, and then imparts onto our organisation. They walked us through every step of the selection process, explaining it clearly for our stakeholders who otherwise would have had no experience or learnings with these kinds of projects.
We have engaged FBS with our ERP upgrade project and look forward to continuing our work with them. If other digital projects arise within the business that would be suitable to FBS’ expertise – we would have no hesitation in engaging them again."
James Glenn, Project Manager, Bushmans