Services
How we workWe only undertake roles where we believe we can make a difference, there are many areas in which independent business professionals are placed uniquely to add value not only within customers organisations but also in with their customers and supply chain. We operate in independent roles, often at the interface between service providers and their customers to quality assure the delivery of the service. We have particular expertise in consultancy and outsourcing.
We offer both empirical and modelled analysis techniques and we ensure that our associates have relevant experience and knowledge.
The range of our services is evolving, here are some highlights of how independent and highly experienced consultants have can supported organisations on both client and provider sides to ensure that value is derived from processes enabled by IT investment.
1 - Project and Programme Forensics. (Including but not restricted to project management)
Many IT projects fall short of the original intent of the stakeholders. Whilst there are many reasons for this, it is unusual for the technology to be the prime cause. More often the reasons are complex and cannot be allocated to a specific cause, project management failings or scope creep or something else. Too often it is a combination of things and the relative importance of each contributing factor often changes through the life cycle of the project. This leads to the post mortem failing to offer objective lessons learnt which would be beneficial for the next project and indeed for the IT industry. Business executives need to know when things are going off track whilst there is still time to contain the problems within original costs and timescales. But neither project teams nor the vendors involved can deliver (nor have any motivation to deliver) the necessary project forensics, either on the client side nor on the vendor side, to establish the facts, assess the risks and to recommend options for action which might include stopping the project. We offer independent assessment and solution definition to customers.
2 - Organisational Development Diagnostics for project portfolios (including but not restricted to IT strategy, IT governance models, Maturity Matrix and ITIL)
Quite often the problems are not related to a particular project; firms and project teams fail to recognise and manage the interfaces between projects which contribute to the same processes. Portfolio management of improvement projects is difficult, quite often some fundamental business issues are involved such as the lack of cohesion between business strategies and technology strategies, the ongoing maintenance of this interface and often the very governance of change and IT itself. We offer the skills to undertake organisation reviews both in function and corporate wide.
3 - Joint Venture and Vendor relationship management assessment and strategy forensics
The relationships in joint ventures and the governance and relationships with the key IT vendors and service providers whether wholly or partially out sourced or in house often do not recognise the differing objectives of the seller and customer. The relationship with vendors may be purely contractual or highly strategic but either type of engagement requires open ongoing and mutually supportive management. Business executives are often faced with "Hobsons choice" and feel that too many IT purchases are in fact distress purchases. As contracts mature key players in the client and the service providers move on to new assignments and if the relationships are not renewed decline is inevitable. We offer assessment tools which can identify areas for improvement and the independence to "broker" corrective action with all parties.
4 - Recruitment and Retention
The modern CIO is often a member of the executive team but also has to be the technical guru. Recent survey's indicates that the average CIO's tenure is quite short. Improved recruitment processes and improved post appointment CIO coaching and support will increase the probability of a successful out comes both to the organisation and the individual. We can offer independent support of recruitment processes often in conjunction with executive search consultants and undertake executive and CIO mentoring in support of executive teams.
5 - Change management, mentoring and business support, either full time or part time as the position in the project/portfolio life cycle requires.
Many firms recognise the need for change but often find difficulty in freeing up the resources for change; this can be financial but is often related to the capacity and capability of the existing management to deliver change programmes at speed. Making the technology work is only a small part of any change process, maybe 20% of cost and time, the remainder is about process communication training, implementation and operation. We offer methodologies which counter the risks of change.
6 - Business Case Assurance
IT investments are often prepared with inadequate and incomplete business cases. Often the risks are not articulated appropriately through the long time periods of some projects. Processes need to be in place to dynamically assess and revisit risks through the life cycle of the project which may affect the original business case and benefit realisation. We offer extensive experience of business case preparation and management which is delivered independently with a perspective of the wider business sector.
7 - Holistic, Dynamic Strategy Assessment
Many companies do have IT strategies and business strategies, often this are not connected and ongoing revision is often done in isolation without assessing the impacts when considering the strategies from a holistic position. Also the pace of advances in information and communication technologies should be considered included in business strategies to ensure that new business models are embraced rather than reacted to in competition. We have a set of strategy assessment tools which facilitate objective assessment of strategy options by executive teams.
8 - Support to the Service Delivery
Delivery requires broad experience and good judgement from experience of projects that have succeeded and others which have fallen short. Also contract management and legal skills and benchmark information is needed. These services are best provided when the individuals and/or organisation are independent with respect to the major consultants and IT vendors. Where strategy is concerned the technology companies have no motivation to offer a range of options for any business requirement and many large consultancies effectively "sponsor" a particular technology set leading to sub optimal business decisions.