Information Technology (IT) Services

 

The Challenge – How to increase the business value of IT while continuing to improve operational efficiency (cost)

Whether it be a consequence of a difficult economic and business environment or a belief that IT is nothing more than an operational expense, many companies’ IT departments have focused solely on reducing the cost of delivering IT services, sometimes at the expense of service quality and reliability. As a result many value added activities and initiatives have halted or been forgotten. This need not, and should not be the case.

The Solution – At Westport Business Solutions we can demonstrate that IT service cost reduction and the improvement in service quality can be achieved together.

Specifically, we offer a range of services that can often further reduce your overall IT costs while: 

• Generating greater flexibility and speed to service your businesses needs
• Enhancing service quality and reliability
• Improving governance processes to optimize the value of your investments
• Ultimately moving the IT organization from an order taker and cost center to a valued business partner whose contributions can be directly traced the business’ top and bottom line

Our approach is to temporarily augment your team to develop the necessary technology plans, deploy the management processes and establish the necessary infrastructure to allow your team to focus on the execution of high value IT initiatives with their business counterparts, developed as part of a business focused IT strategy.

We will help you focus on the following 4 key areas: 

Strategy & Planning

- Technical decisions are made every day and need to be made within the context of a business aligned plan. Our team will help you define what you want from IT and build a set of high-level transitional states to guide you. Depending on your specific needs this will include: 

• Definitions of services offered by IT (service catalog)
• End state technology architecture
• A set of transition plans to move you there in practical stages
• Staffing and sourcing model
• Required investments and operational budgets

This will be delivered in the form of a 1, 3 or 5 year plan. We will then work with you to periodically refresh the strategy to ensure it stays aligned with the changes and evolution of your business, identifying new opportunities to contribute as they occur. 

Governance

– investments in IT may be viewed as a portfolio. As with any portfolio there will be a mix of short, medium and long term investments that will comprise of different levels of risk and projected returns. Some initiatives may be considered strategic while others opportunistic and tactical. We will work with your organization to: 

• Analyze and assess how current IT resources and investments are allocated and how they fit with your organization’s short and long term goals
• Recommend improvements that will fit with your company’s business structure, corporate culture and risk tolerance
• Manage the implementation process to ensure the expected benefits are achieved 

Cost Reduction & Service Level Improvement

– as stated above, cost reduction and improvement of IT services can go together. Use of recent technology innovations such as virtualization and cloud computing enable drastic cost reduction in IT delivery cost while improving time to market, performance and reliability of the IT infrastructure itself. When combined with our extensive experience in process improvement and sourcing, the result will be a more agile, responsive and cost efficient IT infrastructure. 

Distressed Project Assessments & Remediation

– sometimes projects do not perform as anticipated with the resulting problems becoming deep-rooted and entrenched. At this point it is often very difficult for an internal team to be objective and develop the solutions necessary. In such cases our mandate is not to seek to apportion blame. Rather, our professionals specialize in identifying the root cause of the problem and providing a swift, clean and actionable plan to effectively remediate the situation while helping you take full advantage of opportunities to derive incremental improvements along the way. 

In each of these 4 key areas our approach is to assess your current challenges and needs, then to develop a strategy and a specific action plan to address them.

Most importantly, we are always committed to partnering with you, or being available to you, through the execution of the plan, in whatever form it takes.

For example, if there is a need for effective

Interim Management

. Perhaps through attrition or a life event you experience a temporary leadership gap in your organization. We have experienced managers that can be deployed quickly to close that gap, as well as be available to lead your organization in a time of transition (for instance outsourcing). 

Contact us to learn more about any or all of these services. We can help you improve the performance of your IT organization while managing costs and increasing its overall relevance and contribution to your business.

Information Technology Services Practice Leaders - Paul Weston & José Ignacio Sordo