An operations technology assessment can refocus investments and activities on IT service results.
Organizations over the years have invested in many operations support applications to manage IT services and their underlying technologies. However, most organizations can probably say that they are not realizing their full value. This is due to factors on both the cost and return side of these investments. Costs have accumulated due to tool sprawl through acquisitions, mergers, or implementation of competing visions. Return has not been realized due to silos of data, half completed technology implementations, lack of integration with objectives and process, or slow response to technology advances in the managed environment.
In this situation, sage IT executives take a step back and ask how do we align our IT service actions to business needs and rationalize our investments in operations technology? The answer often does not come easy to an internal “tiger team”, in the face of competing priorities, preference to competing technologies and career-driven agendas. Whether complimentary to this internal team or part of a standalone effort, an assessment by an external firm can overcome these hurdles and arrive at sound answers.
Where Do We Turn?
Beware! External assessments can go wrong if the right experience and focus is not utilized. We have found that four primary factors are critical to ensuring that the right team is deployed to perform an assessment:
- An exclusive priority on your business objectives and not the priority of specific software vendors,
- Thorough understanding of the IT services and supporting technology environment specific to your industry,
- Hands-on, real-world experience with a significant number of the management technologies under evaluation, and
- Access to the management technology and associated vendors to perform custom research and get answers.
As these assessments form a large part of our business, Windward has been committed to these capabilities and priorities in order to deliver the results organizations need. Partnering with a wide range of operations management vendors, we bring both vendor independence and deep knowledge of their technologies. And, focusing on the industries of communications service providers, financial services companies and the federal government, we understand these types of organizations inside and out.
Results You Should Expect
Every successful assessment project that we have been involved with started with several important principles. The first is an understanding that a comprehensive 'boil the ocean' approach will fail.
Given the complexity and scale of the management tasks, only a phased approach that identifies specific goals, expectations and success criteria are successful.
The second principle we follow is to not solve every problem at once; instead, we get through the initial analysis across functional areas so that individual problems are not evaluated on a first come, first serve basis. Rather, they are evaluated in order of relative impact and importance to the overall business.
Another important success factor is sensitivity for groups that feel passionate about their tools. Given that many of these tools have been in use for several years, we need to work to build an environment that provides even greater capabilities and ensure that no one feels that there tools are being forcibly removed from them. This will only create project resentment and adoption will fail.
And finally, collaboration between us, our client, and other engaged integrators is critical to success. As most clients have specific business drivers for their engagement as well as other group performing corresponding project work, we focus on bringing subject matter expertise to ensure that we are part of the overall solution working together with the other parties.
With these ground rules in place, we get down to work using our three phased approach of Discover, Determine and Design. Our work begins with discovering the specific nuances of the client's environment, focusing on objectives, requirements, current tools and capabilities. The next phase results in determining the best of operations management solutions within the client today and comparing that against stated requirements, best practices and overall goals and objectives. Finally, we design an architecture that depicts the end state goal as well as detail the timeframe and roadmap for implementation.
This blueprint combined with our experience has resulted in success for our clients across our focused industries. To contact Windward about a technology assessment, visit our website's Contact Us page or email us at solutions@windwardcg.com.