We differ from many consulting organizations in that we focus on all aspects of your information requirements. We don’t support change in technology without identifying specific financial, operational and competitive gains that will be made through system enhancement. We work hard to help our clients align business and technology to maximize their investment in both.
Since we do not sell software or hardware, we remain true “independent consultants”. This complete independence from vendors enables us to provide our clients with unbiased assistance with existing systems ehnancement, incremental technology acquisition and implementation. It also allows us to negotiate the best deals for our clients without being influenced by any financial incentives typically provided to “consulting firms” through “strategic alliances”.
Our focus is on helping your business succeed.
As a client advocate, our goal is to help you identify and align your business goals with supporting organizational infrastructure and related technology. We then identify areas for improvement so we can help you acquire and integrate new technology within your current environment, and most importantly, in synch with your budget.
Strategic Planning and Alignment
We start with a careful review and analysis of your organization, beginning with your Strategic Business Plan, continuing with your marketing strategy, and ultimately solidifying your organizational strategic goals. On the technology side, we start with a review of all software and service contracts, existing systems and applications, business processes, departmental policies and procedures, documentation, resource utilization including your staff and employees, security policies, and technology infrastructure.
We work with you and your team to identify and document critical short term and long term business goals so we can jointly develop a Strategic Technology Plan to meet those goals. This overall plan include strategies for scaleability, sustainability, compliance and growth, but also tactical actions with tangible deliverables, milestones and accountability.
The key to success in this area is to ensure that your overall business plan and strategy is tightly aligned with your technology investments. Your technology investments need to move in lockstep with your business growth. There should be a direct, measurable return on investment from each technology investment and a direct correlation with specific business goal achievement.
Systems and Software Selection
In any economy, software investments should not be taken lightly. Choose the wrong systems and there are hidden costs beyond the price of the software. There are the tangible implementation costs, annual support and maintenance costs, cost of hardware, cost of change management and training,etc. Then there are those costs that are not apparent at first, the cost of lost productivity, the opportunity cost, and the cost of lost business.
We have a proven methodology to help your company select the right systems to meet business needs within budgetary constraints. Our extensive experience and knowledge of the software industry can help you navigate through the noise from all the marketing hype and techno garble. As part of the selection process, we also help you negotiate the best deals with your vendor(s) of choice, saving you time and money, while mitigating the risk of selecting the wrong systems based on incomplete information and inexperience with the process.
Project Management
Communications, discipline and agility are the foundation of our project management philosophy. Our project managers have over 4,000 hours of project management experience. These are hours of leadership, not as just part of the team. We offer certified Project Management Professionals (PMP), trained to tackle a variety of projects, from the most complex sophisticated undertaking, to the simple straight forward assignment.
We realize your business has cycles and sometimes special projects are necessary to meet market demands, solve critical issues, or take advantage of new opportunities. Your organization might have all the right resources to form a special task force or your staff may be too busy with every day operational tasks and issues. Regardless, we can augment your existing team with someone who has an objective perspective to your problems and the experience and training of a professional project manager. Our project manager together with your staff will work to provide real, scaleable solutions that meet your objectives.
Technology Rx Health Check
Many organizations implement technology solutions to “put out fires” or as a result of outside pressures. The result of this approach is a dart board approach to technology selection and a rapid systems implementation based on current requirements. Users and management tend to accept the abbreviated version of the solution. The majority of the core system functionality is almost never configured, implemented or utilized.
We offer a one day on-site systems utilization review resulting in specific recommendations based on specific applications you are using and the technology platform on which they were deployed. We will provide you with recommendations on how to get more from your existing systems (and vendors) without spending any more money on software or systems.
