IT Efficacy
Improving the overall efficacy or effectiveness of the IT function
The IT function at some organizations struggles to deliver the services the company requires. In market research we’ve conducted, we discovered that these issues typically fall into two categories: technology issues or people and process issues. In speaking with senior executives at these businesses, we frequently encountered situations such as:
Technology issues:
- Operating infrastructure, systems, and applications fail or simply do not support users the way they need to be supported.
- Technology environments are unreliable or under-performing.
- Legacy environments are not current and operationally functional.
People and Process issues:
- IT people are not asking the right questions to define the right business processes that support operational need.
- Business operations staff define processes in isolation and then turn them over to IT to build.
- Business operations people think IT staff may never provide services and specific functions they require and so seek their own remedy.
- Work-flow or processes embedded into applications do not reflect the actual operational requirements of the business.
- The process for rolling out a new application or technology may not work for a business.
- The process of defining requirements and approving investments may not satisfy the needs of the business.
The Cogentes solution
Cogentes addresses these issues by providing expert analysis, creative problem solving, and solutions implementation from our senior consultants. Our approach is to understand how an organization has leveraged its people, process and technology to create value. Specifically, we will:
- Interview key executive and operations staff first and gain a working sense of the business plan objectives.
- Interview IT leaders and understand the IT operations model they have put in place and the history of success of that model.
- Understand the history of investments in people, process and technology to see what the money path tells us about culture, values, and decision-making strategy.
- Analyze everything we learn from the discovery process and uncover where the fundamental disconnects lie between business objectives and the actual operating model.
- Rationalize the best possible approach for closing the gap between the intended results and the actual results of the operating model.
- Create an implementation plan to substantially narrow the gap between intended and actual results by developing new approaches to leveraging people, process and technology.
- Work with our clients to implement the plan we’ve developed.
- Make adjustments to the plan based on actual business operating conditions.
- Monitor the success of the plan over time and continue to refine it as necessary.
