Case Studies: Strategic IT
Customer: Brand Consultancy
Background:
Our customer, a brand evaluation consultancy, does not employ any internal IT staff and outsources all technical requirements to a 3rd Party. While IT was performing adequately, and the incumbent provider was delivering against in-place service agreements, the board felt that they were falling behind their competitors. After discussing their concerns with their IT provider they felt they needed an independent assessment of their requirements with additional expertise working alongside the existing provider. Ongoing IT spend had been ad hoc and unpredictable and there was a desire to be able to forecast this across the financial year, where possible transitioning IT budgets as much as possible into an OpEx model.
The end user and their IT supplier met with Fractional IT Specialists and we agreed that an IT strategy was required covering back office technology, customer engagement, IT security and compliance.
How we helped:
We undertook a period of discussion with business stake holders to understand their strategic and short-term objectives and matched these against existing IT budgets and financial expectations. We were then able to produce an IT Strategy which not only met the business requirements of today, but also put in place a roadmap to further improve these over a 2-year period.
Once agreed, we produced a technical implementation plan for the incumbent provider who was able to quote for the delivery of the system changes.
Subsequently, we have overseen the delivery of the transformation; at each step measuring the success and where necessary, working with the IT supplier to refine the solution to meet changing business demands.
We continue to support our customer with quarterly meetings to review IT Services and update the IT Strategy as needed. We work with the IT Supplier to ensure they understand the changes to the strategy and manage these changes through to delivery, whilst still ensuring they continue to meet the evolving needs of their business.
TAKE THE FIRST STEP TO FRACTIONAL IT
Customer: Major Sporting Event
Background:
When we first engaged with our customer, an organisation that runs a major sporting event, over 25 years ago, we were initially briefed with establishing an IT strategy for back office IT services. Having established this strategy we were then asked to oversee the implementation of the new technology and manage the delivery of these services on an ongoing basis.
How we helped:
Once the reliable back office IT services were established and running, and following the withdrawal of a sponsor, we were asked to undertake a review of the organisation’s event day technology. Up until this point no one within our customer’s organisation had had any involvement in the event day technology, and consequently there was no documentation or internal understanding of what these services looked like and therefore how the delivery partner could be replaced.
Our review therefore started by establishing a list of parties that were involved in the event with interviews conducted to establish what part each organisation played. Over a period of several weeks we were able to establish a set of technical blueprints and relationships, and through a series of GAP analysis assessments we identified which services the sponsor had provided.
Our review also found a diverse number of suppliers who in some cases were undertaking roles which could be fulfilled by other suppliers which increased the cost and complexity.
During the next edition of the event we oversaw the entire technical delivery and were able to further refine the technical blueprints and better apportion work between the suppliers so as to reduce cost and complexity.