Theme: Business Strategy
Location: West Midlands
One Midlands-based client, providing professional financial independent advice, not only challenges convention and innovation in the design and delivery of its financial solutions but also extends this approach to business operations.
Tek-nology Solutions was approached by this Midlands-based company, providing professional independent financial advice, to review its IT Strategy. As is typical of many organisations with their own IT department, the focus of IT personnel was on day-to-day activities, which left little time to take a step back and review the context of IT at a strategic level. Decisions were based very much at a technology level, with IT falling under the Operations Manager’s remit. Time was absorbed, working hard, reacting to day-to-day situations, solving problems, and rolling out software, applications and hardware.
Tek-nology Solutions worked with the company on a project basis, over a period of months, providing IT representation at board level, as part of its ‘Virtual IT Director’ service. Tek-nology Solutions questioned how IT was contributing to the ambitious growth plans of the organisation. Understanding business needs and establishing what current IT infrastructure and systems were in place enabled Tek-nology Solutions to define a solid IT strategy that supported the needs of the business.
Tek-nology Solutions undertook a full review of the organisation, meeting with senior managers and directors from the different departments to explore their drivers and needs – establishing how IT was contributing to their wider business goals.
From an IT perspective, the stability of key business applications was explored, including the amount of downtime that could be withstood. A review of the IT infrastructure – including server systems – enabled Tek-nology Solutions to align the dependencies of departments and users, including their business applications, right down to the specific individual components of their network and server systems. Performance and reliability needs could therefore be linked to the physical infrastructure, enabling Tek-nology Solutions to propose recommendations for improvements.
At the time of the review, the organisation’s growth plans included acquisitions, resulting in an increase in the number of remote office sites. Tek-nology Solutions presented the advantages and disadvantages of building a separate server-based network at each site versus one centralised platform with remote access for all office locations and home-working.
Tek-nology Solutions helped the Midlands-based company define an IT strategy that was akin to the needs of the business and its growth plans. Individual departments’ requirements were considered which fed into recommendations moving forward. The company acknowledged the benefits to be gained from Tek-nology Solutions’ approach and, as a consequence of proposals, the server platform/ network was developed to more effectively meet their business needs moving forward.
