Technology Strategy

Challenge

CEO: " I want it now. It needs to be twice as good as the competition. The budget can't change."

If this type of request is frequent or surprising, then your company's Technology Strategy is not providing the value it should to the organization and is not aligned with the company's business strategy.

There are are other warning signs. Would you answer, "Yes" to all of these questions about your company's Technology Strategy? Is it:

Entirely about providing bottom-line value?

Measured with business-level value metrics, similar to any other business unit?

Embedded in the all of the company's business units?

Perfectly aligned with both strategic and tactical business operations?

Technologically agile via implementation of adaptive infrastructure?

Focused on evolving business transaction functionality to modern, "Webified" systems?

Comprised of crisp, clear, simple, integrated and automated processes?

If you answered, "No", "Unsure", or "Unknown", to any of these questions, then your Technology Strategy needs a tune-up, or possibly a complete overhaul.

Solution

Using our Technology Strategy service we work with our clients on their toughest technology issues, ensuring that their technology decisions help them meet their companies’ strategic, operational, and economic goals. The essence of our approach is to help clients solve business problems through the use of information technology; we don't solve technology problems in isolation from other business concerns.

We help leading companies implement winning strategies, improve their operations, strengthen the value of their customer relationships, and craft innovative approaches to technology architecture and technology management. We address a wide range of business and technology issues including:

Technology-driven strategies - e-commerce, CRM, globalization

Organizational challenges - business-technology alignment, e-business building

Operational issues - technology investment, ERP, architecture, post-merger management

We partner with our clients to develop a Technology Strategy that:

Produces the highest-performing technology organization

Fully integrates into both strategic and tactical aspects of the business

Drives concomitant levels of business value with speed and agility

Creates competitive advantage

Success Story

Challenge

A global B2B (Business to Business) eProcurement and eServices company was struggling with two critical issues:

Automating and integrating their supply chain, customers, and distribution channel partners

Creating a technology infrastructure that was flexible, scaleable, and reliable

Although most of their suppliers and customers used leading-edge technologies, very few of their distribution channel partners had advanced beyond phone-based order entry, simple databases, and "brochure-ware" web sites. Additionally, the company's Global 1000 customers demanded that all of their strategic vendors utilize sophisticated and reliable technology infrastructures that could scale to meet their transaction volumes.

Solution

While it was tempting for the company to try and create a bleeding-edge technology solution that acted as a "jack of all trades, master of none", they instead chose to develop a Technology Strategy that addressed both the complex requirements of their suppliers and customers, and the pragmatic constraints of their distribution channel partners. The major components of their Technology Strategy were:

Contact Center - phone and fax communications with their distribution channel partners

Technology Integration - XML, EDI, HTML Automation, CTI, Vignette, Remedy ARS

Technology Infrastructure - Sun, Oracle, J2EE, BEA WebLogic, Apache, EMC, Cisco