The Issues

For organisations to compete successfully in today’s ever-changing economic circumstances, be it locally, within Europe or in the global market, they must continually review the abilities and possibilities that Information Technology (IT) has to offer in supporting their business plan.

Organisations are striving to control costs, improve customer service, increase revenues, tighten security, keep systems within vendor support cycles, and address demands being made from customers, industry trends and line of business managers. Many are attempting to achieve all this and more, with fewer staff and tighter budgets.

Most organisations are demanding more output from less resource, however, the day to day demand on that resource remains the same or could be increasing. Therefore, planning improvements or transformation to business processes and the related IT changes, inevitably take second place. When less time is available the result is difficulty visualising and planning for strategic change, or for that change taking too long to implement, being postponed or abandoned completely. Such delays or cancellation cause reduced revenues, security breaches, poor customer feedback and reduced staff morale. 

The Way Forward

While companies need to focus on their core business, they must also pay attention to the tools they use in order to make that business work efficiently and effectively. In order to take a more strategic view, one of the options available is to employ an external resource who is not encumbered by the day to day requirements of the current infrastructure and who has the capacity to take a step back and see ‘the wood for the trees’.

To achieve optimum success, it is necessary for an external resource to understand the organisations business and culture. Working with various employees from all areas of the business, relevant information must be collected, collated and investigated. Overall business requirements, specific issues, regulatory restrictions and other unique organisational conflicts must all be considered in determining the options open to move the organisation forward.

Producing a roadmap and plan for change or improvement is only a starting point, it is then necessary to execute that plan to provide the organisation with the proposed benefits. An external resource can drive the projects outlined in the roadmap free from any encumbrance of the daily support and administrative tasks.

There will be times when it becomes necessary to act quickly in order to address specific issues that are causing damage to the organisation. In such instances, an external resource, capable of analysing the problem from an alternative viewpoint, can be instrumental to achieving a fast, effective and robust solution.

The result will be an organisation that has ensured staff has easy and secure access to the right information, improving effectiveness and efficiency whilst at the same time reducing support and management costs, leading to increased revenues and profits.

By making access to the companies’ information systems simpler and pervasive, employees can be enabled to work from places and at times convenient to them and the organisation. Also, if required, relevant access to information can be provided to partners, suppliers and customers. Such access has the capacity for:

• Improving staff productivity

• Improving communications internally and externally

• Reducing travel and accommodation costs

• Reducing the impact of transport problems

• Improving the carbon footprint of the company

• Increasing revenues

• Reducing Costs

Services

My intention is to provide professional advice and expert support to a small number of clients and to develop ongoing, trusting relationships with those clients in order to help them plan, implement and execute against IT plans to boost their businesses.

As each client will have their own unique set of challenges, my expertise will ensure these challenges are pulled together and prioritised, enabling the creation of a focussed and realistic roadmap. This roadmap will define a set of discrete programs or projects of work within a pre-defined time frame. Each project will then be initiated at the appropriate time and delivered to provide the defined services to the business.

This ordered approach to implementation, ensures that the original challenges are dealt with while making sure each change does not impact the existing IT infrastructure. Where necessary, clear support and administration practices will be introduced alongside the technical changes.

A similar, although accelerated, approach can also be applied where the issues are immediate, as in the case of system outage or where system performance is being degraded. By maintaining a logical and calm approach and the serial application of possible solutions, system issues can be resolved more quickly and effectively. By an in-depth analysis, I can then identify options for future improvements that will reduce the risk of re-occurrence.

By ensuring that all technical aspects of a project or problem are taken into consideration, the risks associated with changes to existing systems and processes can be significantly reduced, thereby increasing the likelihood of successfully completing project deliverables or solving a system problem.

Outputs 

The deliverables will take one or more of the following forms:

• Documented roadmap for addressing identified challenges

• Acting as Technical Design Authority or Technical Architect during a project or program of work

• Onsite troubleshooting and problem resolution

• Remote troubleshooting and problem resolution

• High level logical and technical designs to match business requirements

• Assistance in product selection

OpenOffice

If you are considering replacing your office suite with OpenOffice we can help. We have have gained considerable experience in its use since the early version, and in particular in creating Writer  (document) templates.

From installation, through training and to assistance with templating, we can help you to transfer to this free to use office suite as seamlessly and quickly as possible, helping you to save money.