Search Results

The process of vendor selection has the potential to make or break a business as it builds the foundation for its operations. Info-Tech Research Group (ITRG) recommends a seven-phase approach to Vendor Selection. MSS Business Transformation Advisory (MSSBTA) finds that once companies have brought us in to assist with Vendor Selection, some steps of the ITRG approach will have already been completed, while others will require extra emphasis. Accordingly, the ITRG approach has been adapted to a five-phase process that maximizes the value added to our clients. The five phases of vendor selection are: Project Initiation Requirements Definition RFI/RFP Development Solution Evaluation Contract Negotiation Support Phase 1: Project Initiation The Project Initiation phase is where you establish a foundation for successful Vendor Selection. MSSBTA recommends using three pillars of excellence when managing any project: leadership, governance, and accountability—beginning with a project initiation phase which ensures the practice of the same excellence throughout Vendor Selection execution. Some key accomplishments of this initial phase include a detailed project schedule, defined workstreams for process flows and requirements gathering, and identified roles and core team members. Phase 2: Requirements Definition Next is the Requirements Definition phase, where the client establishes and prioritizes what needs vendors will be asked to satisfy in the RFP. After conducting work sessions to understand processes and requirements, MSSBTA finds that documenting current state process flows adds tremendous value to this phase. It allows us to identify gaps and opportunities in the existing processes and gives the client a visual representation of how their business operates day to day. Leadership teams can often be surprised by certain aspects of the current state process flow as most of their attention is focused on bigger-picture issues rather than daily operations. This opens the door for valuable conversations with the client that can significantly impact the perception of current vendors and the prioritization of specific requirements. Some other key accomplishments of this phase are identifying technical, functional, and non-functional requirements, inventory of KPIs, and baseline metrics. The outcome of gathering this information is a list of vendors to be considered. Phase 3: RFI/RFP Development In the third phase, RFI/RFP Development, the first step is a decision if RFIs will be necessary. RFIs allow us to collect information from vendors about their companies/products/services. This can be a useful tool to benchmark the marketplace, but it is not always necessary. MSSBTA can often lean on our experience to understand the vendor landscape for many industries. Clients also need this done first so they can establish budget ranges and can use that to build a business case to be approved before embarking on the RFP process. Once a decision has been made about RFIs, you can shift focus to developing the RFP to which the vendors will reply. MSSBTA works with our clients to create a vendor scorecard and evaluation criteria that align with the RFP. You will see immense value in using a vendor scorecard for evaluation because it allows the client to remove bias in the evaluation process. It takes the qualitative information vendors to provide and allows the client to score the responses quantitatively. Phase 4: Solution Evaluation The Solution Evaluation phase is something MSSBTA added because there is a need to stress the importance of these activities rather than combine them with the activities within RFI/RFP development. In this phase of vendor selection, you evaluate vendor RFP responses, coordinate all necessary vendor demonstrations, and facilitate scoring those demonstrations. The fourth phase culminates with the key deliverable every client is eager to receive from the beginning, MSSBTA’s executive presentation. This presentation summarizes the four completed phases, presents the findings and recommendations of MSSBTA. Phase 5: Contract Negotiation Support It is not always necessary to continue to the fifth phase; however, our approach to contract negotiation begins with a list of vendor finalists, from which negotiations will commence, and finally, vendors will be selected. The most significant value brought in this phase is to help the client ensure the vendor is held to the items committed to in the proposal. It also identifies any missing items crucial for a successful implementation. MSSBTA assists the client in finalizing staffing plans, vendor timelines, deliverables, and KPIs before the contract is signed. To conclude the Vendor Selection process, MSSBTA will work with you to develop an overall project implementation plan. This five-phase vendor selection process is a comprehensive approach to finding the best possible vendor for your needs. By gathering all the necessary information, you can be sure that you are making the best decision for your company. FREE PDF Download: 5 Phases of Vendor Selection

I remember the first time I tried to change a process at work. I was a new manager, full of aspirations and eager to prove myself. Of course, I did not yet know that to implement changes, you need the entire team to accept it. As a new manager, I ordered the changes. It was a fiasco, and those changes did not take more than a few weeks to go back to the old ways. I tried to understand what exactly happened and why I was not successful. Then it hit me. My ideas were good, but not understood. Managers are in charge and we often talk about targets, goals, and visions. Our employees are more concerned with their day-to-day jobs. Managers may have good ideas, but that does not matter until we show our employees that change is good for them, as well as the business. Instead of pushing my own ideas, I decided to talk with the employees one-on-one. Most of them gave me the same answer “We’ve always done it this way.” According to Forbes (1), this is the most dangerous phrase in business. To combat that attitude, I spent a lot of time on the floor talking and working with them and asking questions. Employees started to realize that I cared and was trying to understand what their job was. I realized they were the experts, and I was only a manager. At that time, I decided to experiment with an innovative approach. I brought together a team of employees and told them as experts, I need their input to make the process more efficient. Being with them on the floor more often, they were more willing to talk and give their ideas. They are the ones who have the best ideas if you listen to them. They are doing the job every day and know what is working and what is not. My team brainstormed ideas, we chose the best ones and then decided to implement them. Then I asked for a volunteer to implement these ideas. We had a plan, and everyone was excited to try them. As a condition, we agreed to meet every week to see the progress. After a few weeks, productivity and efficiency were much better, and the employees got the credit for a successful operation. This is where I believe I became not a good manager but a good leader. This is when I understood the phrase “Your employees can make you or break you.” We need to encourage employees to take action to improve performance. That was my first project that led to process improvement. This is when I learned something new. When I understood them, their ideas were better. Thirty years later, I still believe no project can be successful without the Subject Matter Experts (SME) and the employees collaborating on the change. As a consultant, I use the same approach. By understanding what clients are doing and working alongside them, we can create lasting improvements. That has helped me become a better leader and a better consultant. At MSSBTA, we take the time to understand your business and your employees. We work together, collaborating with your employees, to make your company successful. References: 1 Ben Zimmerman, “The Most Dangerous Phrase in Business: We've Always Done It This Way.” Forbes https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbeslacouncil/2019/01/28/the-most-dangerous-phrase-in-business-weve-always-done-it-this-way/?sh=232844a940f7

Experiencing a cyber-attack is not a matter of if, for your organization. It is a matter of when. October is Security Awareness Month . On October 10, 2022, Facebook notified users that up to one million user profiles were compromised. Suppose an organization of that size has difficulty managing cyber-security protocols. How can we expect small to medium organizations to manage the necessary complex and detailed tasks to ensure protection? The smaller organizations usually possess in-house IT skills or a trusted vendor partner to manage, monitor and troubleshoot typical IT issues. Cyber-security is a specialized skill. Executive leadership ensures that cyber-security is fully addressed and how it will be done. The Gartner Group predicted that by 2024, as many as 75% percent of CEOs could be liable for data breaches. If the incidents occurred because the organization did not focus on cyber-security or invest sufficiently in security, and if a security breach or incident led to actual physical consequences. An Information Security audit comprehensively assesses an organization's security position and IT infrastructure. This audit helps organizations find and evaluate vulnerabilities within their IT networks, connected devices, and applications. As part of the organization's risk management strategy, we believe that a cyber-security audit is essential for every organization and should be a regular practice to stay secure and compliant. A cyber-security audit addresses several areas of your business for vulnerabilities and includes: Focuses on what matters most to your organization and understanding critical assets, customer and partner relationships, and your technical interactions with them Assesses cyber risk – know what to look for and how to detect threats, whether currently known and addressed or emerging threats Provides expertise to create a multilayered defense that addresses a combination of protections for your organization, employees, customers, and partners Recommends actions to fortify your organization with a plan to manage and patch defects Ensures that your organization is developing software securely Recommends activities that protect the physical security Prepares for the inevitable by focusing on incident management and simulations to "test your gates" and your system's responses Cybersecurity is a crucial aspect of any organization's operations, and it is important to prioritize and invest in measures to protect against attacks. A cyber-security audit can provide valuable insights and recommendations for strengthening your defenses. Don't wait until it's too late - make sure to address this issue as soon as possible. References: Gartner Predicts 75% of CEOs Will be Personally Liable for Cyber-Physical Security Incidents by 2024 IT Security Audit: Importance, Types, and Methodology https://www2.deloitte.com/za/en/pages/risk/articles/five-essential-steps-to-improve-cyber-security.html

Client Detail: The client is an Arizona state agency that needed to update their legacy licensing system to one that is modern and further enables their growth as a competitive agency. The Challenge: The client had a challenge in front of them; update their legacy system to improve their workflow to provide improved functionality around licensing. The Agency wished to transfer their legacy system into a faster, more efficient eLicensing system. This meant hiring an implementer who would work towards their paperless objective. However, the decommissioning and implementation process faced some delays causing the project to stall. As a result, the client needed to ensure the original business requirements still matched their current needs and objectives. At this point, MSS Business Transformation Advisory (MSSBTA) was engaged to assess the project and determine how to get it back on track. Our Solution: The client requested MSSBTA organize the original project. So, we established a clear project status reporting structure, verified the project’s goals and objectives, and finalized the project work plan. Then, the client requested documentation of current state project performance, including: Requirements Governance Deliverables Risks Issues Staffing, and Project recovery plans MSSBTA immediately conducted a high-level objectives assessment that reflected the client’s current state. Consultants assessed the project by evaluating program structure, IT risks, governance, adoption and deployment strategy, communications, training plans and readiness risks. MSSBTA examined if the business requirements of the original project plan aligned with the client’s current needs. Additionally, they assessed the vendor’s capability of supporting the implementation with limited liability. Through these deep-dive audits, the client could determine if their current path and structure would help them be successful, or if they needed to re-evaluate their course of action. The Results: MSSBTA analyzed the existing system and compared the current and future state requirements. The existing parameters of the implementation project did not cover all parts and pieces needed to support the client’s future state vision. MSSBTA recommended investing time to explore other implementation options. Informed by this high-level assessment, the client was confident to move forward toward a fully executed and successful digital transformation. Deliverables: Leadership Governance Accountability Current State Analysis

Client Detail: The client is a state agency that generates revenue to support higher education, health and human services, environmental conservation, and economic and business development. The mission of the state agency is to generate revenue to support higher education, health and human services, environmental conservation, and economic and business development. Being efficient and effective is critical for the agency to deliver more value to Arizona. The Challenge: The client had developed a pattern of ‘firefighting’ or jumping from one business emergency to another. They were battling tactical obstacles to keep the organization running instead of stepping back and thinking strategically about organizational improvements. Caught in this reactionary cycle, the client was unable to address critical issues: How can we enhance operations to run smoothly? How can we improve as an organization? How can we appropriately retire (end of life) certain outdated hardware to make the move to a more cloud-based infrastructure? They also understood their data and security policies needed to be revised and built out more significantly. The client's major concerns fell into three areas of examination: Information Protection – policies relating to securing sensitive data Infrastructure – hardware, server space, and keeping systems up and running IT Operations Assessment – roles and responsibilities, gaps or overlap, what the IT organization should look like Understanding what needed to be assessed, the client requested a roadmap to outline what changes needed to be implemented, the estimated cost of the initiative(s), and the resource bandwidth it would require from the organization. Our Solution: MSS Business Transformation Advisory (MSSBTA) facilitated the establishment of a baseline of the client’s current state, heavily leveraging Info-Tech Research Group diagnostic tools and techniques. The consulting team began by emailing survey assessments to both the leaders in the organization and the impacted employees to assess their current state, as well as their analysis of the client’s performance in different areas. From the survey results, MSSBTA facilitated a conversation with those key leadership stakeholders to get more detail and validate the results. The outputs provided the client with a good understanding of the current state, areas where improvement opportunities existed, and strengths and weaknesses of the organization. Leveraging the Info-Tech tools, the consulting team was able to identify a best practice IT organization framework and assess the client’s alignment to the different areas provided within the framework. MSSBTA recommended the client embrace an incremental move to the next desired state of maturity. The strategy centered around transitioning vulnerable areas in the organization from a 2s to 3s on the maturity scale. Using the RACI model, MSSBTA posed more direct questions around task ownership, IT strategy, and vendor management. It became clear some areas had two or three people attempting to own the same task and several areas where no one owned a task, causing lack of accountability in these areas. Due to the lack of accountability presented when the Info-Tech analysis and RACI model were applied, the consulting team applied LGA (Leadership, Governance, and Accountability service offering) This gave the client an accurate snapshot of what the organization looked like as well as the parts not being addressed. The Results: MSSBTA built a roadmap of what the client should do and shared timelines to be administered over the course of the next two to three years. The first stage of the roadmap included building a stable foundation of the policies and procedures in place for the organization to mature. The client is currently working on this in-house and is moving forward over the next few years. Deliverables: Establishment of current state baseline Future state roadmap

Client Detail: The client is a world-class supplier of smart infrastructure solutions (SIS) to water, gas, and electric utilities globally, employing more than 1,700 workers. It provides their customers actionable insight with real-time visibility of their distribution networks to optimize operations and engage with their consumers to promote energy efficiency and conservation across electric, gas or water distribution networks. The Challenge: The client’s goal of project management standardization was to establish the foundation for a standardized, measurable, predictable, and repeatable project management practice for the professional services organization. To address these objectives MSS Business Transformation Advisory (MSSBTA) worked alongside the project managers and leadership team to establish a scalable foundation through recommendations strategies, tools development, coaching and mentoring, and processes to improve professional services delivery. Our Solution: MSSBTA performed an initial assessment of the client’s professional services methodology and standards by interviewing project managers, support staff, and leadership team. The figure below represents a summarization of the approach: Project Management Process Flow: The project management methodology was modified to include people, processes, and technology adaptation. The following diagram depicts the process flow that was leveraged into the delivery methodology: The Results: MSSBTA developed and implemented project management standardization with consistent templates and toolkits and provided coaching and training to make program changes fully operational. A portfolio tool was designed and built to capture the capacity for project resources which created visibility and facilitated effective resourcing across the portfolio. MSSBTA also created project, program and portfolio reporting and executive dashboards along with a PMO roadmap for adoption. Deliverables: Portfolio tool with consolidated project listing showing project status, health, schedule, scope, and resources PM toolkit for project management standardization Executive dashboard Reports including Program and Project Status, Portfolio Capacity, Portfolio Schedule, and Resource Allocation Project staffing model PMO roadmap for adoption and maturation of solutions and recommendations

Client Detail: The client is a State IT organization that develops and executes the state-wide information technology strategy, as well as provides capabilities, services, and infrastructure to ensure the continuity of mission critical and essential systems for the State. The Challenge: During an exciting and expansive stage of development, the client needed to build a strategic plan to guide them through their next stage of growth with clearly defined initiatives, action plans, and KPIs to measure progress and success, and be easily utilized across multiple state IT departments. Our Solution: MSS Business Transformation Advisory (MSSBTA) began the 6-week IT Strategic Planning project by meeting with the State CIO and the executive staff to understand where the department was in their preparation for expansive growth, seeking input from a broad range of interested parties including staff and external stakeholders. Project deliverables included the creation of a vision statement, mission statement, and a list of core values. The Results: The State IT organization was set up for success with a 2-year plan that outlined specific goals while providing a focused direction to maximize their effectiveness, better inform decision-makers, and educate technology executives through the State Government. The plan was built around six strategic goals that provided the foundation for execution. The final strategic plan was approved by the Governor and has been implemented throughout the State. Deliverables: IT strategic plan

Client Detail: The client is a higher education institution. For more than seven years MSS Business Transformation Advisory (MSSBTA) has worked with their Information Technology department to support their systems and infrastructure. The Challenge: The client needed to upgrade their Human Capital Management (HCM) Human Resources software system to ensure future maintenance and support from the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software vendor. This system manages HR and payroll functions for all of their locations. The upgrade created an opportunity for the client to dramatically reduce prior software customizations and enhancements made to the HCM platform and to deploy a simplified code base that was significantly easier to maintain and upgrade. This was the intent but the client realized soon after the upgrade implementation they were not getting the desired outcome. Following the upgrade, an issue was discovered after the first payroll run. Incorrect information was sent from the student application system to the payroll system, resulting in payment failures. After MSSBTA investigated the issue, they found it was due to a lack of analysis, rushing the design and implementation, and not spending enough time vetting and testing the new solution. A significant stabilization effort, including manual reconciliation, was needed to address the payroll errors made during the upgrade. Our Solution: MSSBTA provided leadership and oversight of the stabilization and reconciliation effort, and was responsible for project planning, scheduling, resource management, vendor management, communications, user acceptance testing, mock go-live, cutover planning, and implementation. MSSBTA provided ongoing oversight through daily vendor management meetings, escalations, budgeting, contractor management, resource management, and further system testing. Leadership, governance, and accountability practices were introduced to the vendors through a new release management process for the client. MSSBTA also managed steering committee meetings where the priorities were set for the stabilization. Finally, project management processes and oversight were provided to prioritize tasks and ensure stakeholders were responsible for their role in the stabilization. A new optimized release management and change control process describing how the client would manage any future software updates was created with support from MSSBTA. This new process was also implemented during this engagement. Their Results: Leadership, Governance, and Accountability principles were utilized by MSSBTA to help the client successfully stabilize the upgrade and address payroll issues. While the payroll issues were addressed immediately, the actual reconciliation of funds took over a year. With new release management and change control processes in place to ensure software stabilization, the client was able to focus their efforts on enhancing and optimizing the fully operational system. Deliverables: Leadership and Oversight Project Planning Scheduling Resource Management Vendor Management Communications User Acceptance Testing Mock Go-Live Cutover Planning Implementation

Client Detail: The CTO of a higher education organization sought to quickly enhance team performance and build momentum to implement positive change with a team that included new and existing staff members. MSSBTA was engaged to assist in a review of communications and the development of action plans for improvement of communication between Information Technology (IT) departmental executives and their staff. The Challenge: The organization’s industry is experiencing exponential change requiring an organizational transformation. The IT team is at the center of that transformation. The CTO needed to better understand team dynamics, communication, and collaboration. Our Solution: To analyze the current state of the IT team, three facilitated sessions were designed and conducted to accelerate team development and performance. Leadership, Governance, and Accountability principles were applied by MSSBTA to help the client fully understand the current state of communication within the IT team and with the IT executive leadership team. Short assessment surveys were used to gather information on the current communication state between IT leadership and staff. Each assessment was followed by group discussions of the current communication state. Between sessions, a facilitator held one-on-one coaching sessions with the participants to assist in the creation of individual action plans. Survey results and Sociomapping were used to represent easy-to-understand communication results. These results outlined the current state, and the desired state in 3-D graphics to review current organizational relationships, the desired, and the future states. This presentation method allowed the CTO to visually identify improvement opportunities. MSSBTA also provided oversight to the vendor management meetings, leadership escalation, budget, contractor, and resource management for the client. Leadership, Governance, and Accountability practices were introduced to the vendors and staff using the MSSBTA management process. Their Results: Leadership, Governance, and Accountability principles applied by MSSBTA helped the client fully understand the current state of communication in the IT team and with the IT executive leadership team. Sociomapping was used to create an easy-to-understand, 3-D graphical output representing organizational communication methods and identify opportunities for improvement. The images represented the current state and the desired state of communications within the IT team. Using the tool on a periodic basis provides the ability to track progress toward the future state. A certified facilitator worked with the team members to create individual action plans to assist in the transformation of the team. Areas of improvement were identified and documented using the custom graphics. Deliverables: Communication surveys to gather current state information Facilitated group and individual action planning sessions Individual and team improvement action plans Sociomapping survey results provided a clear method to track progress toward the desired future state

The Client The Arizona State Board for Charter Schools (ASBCS) is a charter authorizer responsible for overseeing public charter schools that operate in Arizona. Overseeing more than 500 charter schools, the agency is the largest charter school authorizer in the state and is the second largest authorizer in the nation. The agency’s stated mission is “To improve public education in Arizona by sponsoring charter schools that provide quality educational choices”. Their Challenge ASBCS was finding it increasingly difficult to scale and deliver services effectively, due to an antiquated technology platform that performed poorly and lacked much-needed functionality. The agency staff had developed a significant number of time and resource intensive workarounds to deal with the system’s shortcomings. Over time, this led to poor customer satisfaction and raised questions about the agency’s transparency and competence in delivering on its mandate. Agency leadership, including Mary Ellen Lee (President of the Board) and Ashley Berg (Executive Director), knew they needed to replace or overhaul the system but were unsure on how to articulate their needs and secure the needed investment in a difficult funding environment. Additionally, they had limited insight into what options might be available and what it would cost to replace or overhaul the system. Our Solution MSSBTA first performed a comprehensive and methodical Needs Assessment, utilizing InfoTech’s Elicit / Analyze / Validate approach. During the Elicit phase, MSSBTA used surveys, interviews, and group sessions to capture requirements from ASBCS staff, charter holders, charter associations, members of the public, lobbyists, and other state agencies. In the Analyze phase, MSSBTA categorized, highlighted dependencies, and prioritized the requirements. Finally, in the Validate phase, MSSBTA presented the requirements to key stakeholders for approval. MSSBTA also worked closely with the agency staff to create process maps for 13 primary business processes that the Board staff conducts. Equipped with the requirements document generated from the previous step, MSSBTA then performed a Gap Analysis and Impact Assessment along with agency subject matter experts (SMEs), to identify requirements that could not be fulfilled by the current technology platform. This information helped MSSBTA determine the qualitative and quantitative benefits of replacing the platform. Using the approved requirements and the completed gap and impact assessment, MSSBTA worked with agency leadership and other state stakeholders, to develop a clear roadmap for moving the initiative forward. This roadmap included detailed next steps for obtaining approval and budget to move forward, along with a high-level plan for completing the modernization of the technology platform and achieving the desired business outcomes. In addition to the core activities above, MSSBTA provided appropriate and timely status communications to the agency leadership team and ensured that risks and issues were addressed. Their Results “The direction is even better defined than we had originally anticipated.” – Ashley Berg, Executive Director and Sponsor “Thank you for your guidance and advice throughout this process. We knew we did not have the knowledge nor the resources to put a thorough needs assessment and evaluation together, so thank you!” – Ashley Berg, Executive Director and Daniel Cobin, Assistant Director On a tight timeline, MSSBTA delivered a complete inventory of the agency’s requirements, a gap assessment of the current technology platform, and a proposed modernization roadmap. The outputs from this initial phase are critical and will inform the creation of a Business Case, Vendor Selection, and Implementation of a Replacement Platform. Deliverables Business Requirements Gap Analysis Modernization Roadmap

What are IT Assessments? An IT assessment is simply a health check on a specific area or function of your IT organization. They should evaluate the current state, identify areas for improvement and create a roadmap for implementing high priority improvements. The goal is to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of your IT organization to create value for the overall organization. Why do IT Assessments? With all the effort needed to complete daily operations tasks and fight fires why make time to complete an assessment? Completing assessments just for the sake of doing them is probably not a great use of resources. Completing them at appropriate times can lay the foundation for focused improvements that could make the daily operations tasks more efficient. They may also prevent the fires once thought inevitable. The key is to choose the right assessment, at the right time. Use it to identify the improvements that will drive the best business value for the organization. Types of IT Assessments When it comes to IT assessments there is no shortage of variety. If you were to attempt to complete all of them, you could spend much of your time assessing and very little improving. As with most things in life a little planning and goal setting can make all the difference in leveraging these tools to drive value from your IT organization. The list below is a small sample that are currently popular in the market. Business Alignment – Assesses the Information Technology strategic plan and roadmap to validate the alignment with the business goals and objectives of an organization Business Value – Measures the perceived value that an IT organization delivers through the eyes of business stakeholders IT Governance and Management – Evaluates the quality and comprehensiveness of the IT Governance framework and supporting policies and procedures Information Protection – Evaluates the overall information protection program in place in an organization to safeguard data IT Security – Identifies IT security vulnerabilities and risks Service Management – Determines your current overall service management maturity level, as well as percentage of completeness for individual Service Management processes (InfoTech) IT Staffing – Assesses whether an IT organization has the right number of resources with appropriate skill sets to successfully achieve the goals and objectives of the IT organization Data Quality (DQA) – Scientifically and statistically evaluate data to determine whether they meet the quality required for projects or business processes and are of the right type and quantity to be able to actually support their intended use (Techopedia) Vendor Risk – Identifies risks that exist when using a vendor’s product or service Project Management Office (PMO) – Measures capabilities and maturity level Application Portfolio Rationalization – Strategically identifies business applications across an organization to determine which applications should be kept, replaced, retired, or consolidated (TechTarget) Download 11 Types of IT Assessments PDF Where to Start With all these options (and more) available to choose from, where do you begin? You can spend a lot of time researching, analyzing, and prioritizing all the potential assessments you could undertake. Or, you could take a more practical and efficient approach. Start by identifying any areas where you believe significant risks exist. These are barriers you believe stand in the way of optimizing the value your IT organization is delivering. Identify specific assessments that will drive improvements in these areas. At the same time, it is important to validate the strategic direction of your IT organization. This can be done using Business Value and Business Alignment assessments. These two assessments will tell you if you are effectively leveraging technology to drive business value. They will also tell you whether your business stakeholders are recognizing the value that your IT organization is delivering. Utilizing this approach allows you to quickly identify the most value-added assessments for your IT organization. How to Finish Completed high value assessments should have the information you need to finalize a roadmap. Use the roadmap to address high risk and strategic gaps impacting the ability of your IT organization to optimize the value it provides. Now all you must do is successfully follow it. Still struggling to identify the best place to focus your IT assessment dollars? Our consultants have the experience and tools to work with you. They will identify the most efficient and effective use of assessments to drive business value from targeted improvements. Share This Article:

As the CIO for large and small organizations, the most expensive, time consuming and often problematic areas in my organization were those hardcore IT operations, desk top deployment, telephony, and database administration. With the directive to reduce overall spending in Technology while deploying more business impacting applications in a shorter amount of time, I made the choice to outsource the IT operation functions to Managed Service Providers (MSP). I sought input from my peers as I made the decision what roles should remain in-house. I chose to keep those roles that were closest to the business units and possessed the institutional memory that would be most impactful as we moved forward. They included business analysts, a few development resources to continue support and maintenance of the current applications inventory, and a few experienced project managers. Like all business initiatives, it was necessary to sell the concept to the CEO and my peers. In doing so, the following key points to sell the value of an MSP included: Do What We Do Best As an organization we did some things very well and had identified the core competencies that team members should have. Managing servers and configuring firewalls was not part of the core competency for our manufacturing company. Managed services helped relieve the stress by allowing us to focus on our core business strategies. It provided peace of mind knowing the infrastructure issues were monitored and addressed by experts. Ready Infrastructure Configuring a Cloud infrastructure and managing the current technical environment is a time consuming and expensive exercise. In-house operations staff would take months to configure or upgrade the environments. With a few weeks of study, the MSP was able to assume responsibility for the entire technical infrastructure. Access to the Experts It is critical to have the capability to quickly reach and engage experts in a wide range of technologies and functions. Proactive Support and Quick Response Time My MSPs were specialized and dedicated to the management of our systems. The Help Desk professionals assigned to us provided quick, professional, and personable service to our users. They monitored all systems and offered timely support when a performance drop or system failure was indicated. Cost Saving and Easier Budgeting It is expensive to employ competent IT personnel to run the IT operations (hardware needs, security requirements, database management, web infrastructure, etc.) Outsourcing those services reduced overall costs and provided a predictable monthly cost for the entire service. Outsourcing IT operations to Managed Service Providers was one of the best decisions I have made as a CIO. The process to choose an MSP was long and detailed, but worth the effort every time. It allowed me to focus on my core business and freed up valuable resources that I could then redeploy to more strategic initiatives. I highly recommend this approach for any CIO looking to reduce spending while deploying more applications in a shorter amount of time.