Technology Tune-up Service

Technology Tune-up

Overview

Are your systems and infrastructure fulfilling their potential? Are you satisfied with their contribution to your business strategy and competitive edge? If your answer is "No" or "I'm unsure", then you may benefit from a Technology Tune-up - and you are not alone.

Executive dissatisfaction and concerns with technology are commonplace. A recent survey shows that "IT issues were the number one reason given by chief executives for loss of sleep". CIOs were gloomier than CEOs, believing "that a systems failure will cost their business five times the amount of money their chief executive would estimate".

Also common is the complaint that the nature and priority of technology issues are unclear to senior management. Frequently, the opportunity to explore and communicate these issues is lost due to daily operational needs and lean staffing of technology professionals. When specialized consultants are engaged, often the result is a targeted, to-do list (i.e., 47 authentication enhancements) that fails to assist senior management with leadership decisions. It's hard to address issues you can't clearly articulate.

The Technology Tune-up addresses these common concerns and provides executive leadership with a meaningful technology assessment and roadmap.

What is the Technology Tune-up?

The Technology Tune-up is an assessment and recommendation. It is intended for use by direction-setting executives who have a responsibility or agenda for their company's technology.

In general, the Tune-up examines your systems and infrastructure from the dual perspective of a subject matter expert and a senior technology executive. Issues and opportunities are identified, and the benefits and costs of addressing them are quantified in business terms (such as: cost, revenue, margin, risk, competitiveness, compliance, turnaround time, and customer satisfaction). Recommendations are offered regarding prioritization, timing, and approach.

The scope and content of each Tune-up, however, is unique. It is customized to precisely meet your objectives by identifying the subject areas that are most likely to yield benefits. The Tune-up is not a boilerplate list of questions presented by a junior consultant; it is a penetrating and searching assessment performed by seasoned professionals - professionals knowledgeable in both the subject area and in business operations.

A completed Technology Tune-up becomes a starting point for your organization, from which you can depart with greater clarity and direction. And, a Tune-up typically pays for itself quickly by identifying achievable opportunities for cost reduction and efficiency.

Key Benefits

A successful Tune-up can transform your approach to technology tactics and strategy by:

	Increasing your (and your management team's) grasp - through clear use of the language of business - of the issues and opportunities present in your infrastructure and systems. An accurate and shared understanding provides the foundation for effective and strategic leadership, while its absence inhibits tactical and strategic success.
	Identifying and prioritizing positive ROI initiatives to pursue. Typically, a Tune-up identifies opportunities to reduce costs and increase profits. The Tune-up not only provides a starting point for future projects, it also increases the likelihood of successful completion by providing the clarity and business rationale to garner support throughout the implementation process.
	Providing guidance on an achievable timeline and process to complete these initiatives.

What does this mean for your business? Clarity. A higher return on investment (ROI). Lower costs and higher margins. Improved competitiveness. Improved alignment and morale of your technology team. Confidence.

The Process

A typical Technology Tune-up has the following steps:

Definition

The scope and content for the Tune-up is established.

Data Collection

Our consultants will gain a meaningful understanding of your business, infrastructure, and systems. Some of the typical data collection activities are:

	Gaining an understanding of your business strategies and plans.
	Reviewing existing technical architecture documents and diagrams, and possibly sketching several additional diagrams.
	Reviewing your technical implementation plans.
	Reviewing your project plans.
	Reviewing your current and planned technology organization structures.
	Touring the physical sites of your development and production environments.
	Gathering information about the user community.
	Reviewing policies and procedures, and/or the plans to develop and maintain these materials.
	Understanding the scope and intent of your development initiatives and technical operations activities.
	Selecting relevant projects, devices, services, etc. for a more detailed review. For example, infrastructural devices might be examined from an architectural/service perspective to see how well key information protection activities are being performed ((i.e., authentication, access control, audit trails, monitoring, encryption).

Analysis

The objective of this step is to identify issues and opportunities, and make actionable recommendations. Typical activities include:

	Organizing and summarizing the information discovered during data collection.
	Upon reflection, verifying what has been learned and digging deeper.
	Identifying trends, issues and opportunities.
	Making comparisons with best practices.
	Preparing models, diagrams, and perspectives to effectively present what has been learned.
	Making rough estimates of time, effort, and materials
	Performing quantitative financial analysis
	Formulating recommendations and action items

Presentation

Finally, time must be spent discussing the results of the Tune-up and determining next steps. How the Tune-up is presented can be tailored to meet the needs and style of your organization - our goal is to ensure the value and effectiveness of the Tune-up.

Examples

Each Technology Tune-up is crafted to the needs and environment of our clients. Nonetheless, there are several focus areas which tend to discover "low hanging fruit" - readily achievable opportunities to improve performance. Here are some focus areas that can form a promising foundation for a Tune-up:

	Project Portfolio
	Application Readiness
	Service Level
	Information Protection
	Telecommunications

Project Portfolio Focus

At most companies, most projects fail. Many of the barriers to project success can be overcome by applying better project management processes. Accordingly, this focus applies the following questions to your portfolio of projects:

	What projects are underway, on hold, and/or under consideration?
	To what extent does each project have a valid business case?
	Is each project properly organized? Who is the project manager, sponsor, owner, etc.
	Are projects adequately resourced? How many projects per available resource are there?
	Are the relative priorities of projects known? If so, is there a reasonable spread from high to low priority (or are all projects top priority)?
	Is project status being properly and efficiently communicated across the enterprise? What is the status and trendline for projects? Is status being reported accurately?
	How are projects performing to budget and timing?
	Do projects have clear requirements and expectations?
	Are effective project management processes being performed?
	Is there a healthy mix of projects being undertaken?
	How well does senior management allocate resources and priorities across the portfolio of projects?

Application Readiness focus

This focus area targets the readiness and development quality of an application by examining the following success factors:

	Business case
	Requirements definition
	Understanding of the target user community
	Technical architecture
	Project and risk management
	Design and specification
	Development and quality assurance methodologies
	Acceptance criteria
	Change control
	Defect tracking and reporting
	Procedures and support documentation
	Implementation planning

Service Level Focus

The service level focus looks at what you expect from your technology and evaluates how well it is performing. This tune-up looks at key service level attributes (i.e., integrity, reliability, availability, redundancy, performance, scalability, flexibility, etc.) and seeks answers to these questions:

	Are service level expectations defined and commonly held?
	Do the expectations align with the company strategy?
	What measurements are regularly made regarding service levels?
	How well does the infrastructure perform to expectations?
	How can it be improved?

Information Protection Focus

The information protection focus considers how well you are protecting and ensuring the quality of your data. It is oriented around the following concepts:

	Authentication and identification (Who are you and how do you prove it)
	Access control (Who can access what, and who decides)
	Privacy, confidentiality, and encryption (For your eyes only)
	Non-repudiation (when our records say you authorized a transaction, we can prove it)
	Audit trails and monitoring (who did what and when; acquire information for both security and marketing purposes)
	Trust relationships (Who do I trust and what information from them do I trust)
	Accuracy / Integrity (We get the data right and it doesn't get tampered with)
	Change control and maintenance concerns (How well is the production environment protected and can we reasonably change it)
	Backup and restore, disaster recovery (How we, and our customers, recover when bad things happen)
	Separation of duties (Internal controls to avoid fraud or asking too much of an individual)
	Policies, procedures and training (Have we captured how to properly do things and do people know what is expected of them)

Telecommunications Focus

Recently, there have been rapid changes in the marketplace and technology for telecommunications. Costs for telecommunication services have been falling and we are seeing significant convergence of voice and data traffic. If you haven't examined your telecommunications infrastructure and service contracts in the last 18 months, then you probably could save some money and simultaneously benefit from greater functionality. This Tune-up examines:

	Existing telecommunications and telephone company services and costs.
	Alternative carrier solutions for local and long distance voice services as well as WAN data communications.
	The potential benefits and costs of an integrated WAN infrastructure for voice and data.
	Opportunities for improved productivity and more flexible network/telecommunications infrastructure.
	Cost, benefits, and risks of existing telecommunication services, such as: Internet access, remote access services (RAS), virtual private networking (VPN), video conferencing, voice over IP (VoIP), and private networks.