Collaborative Consulting

Through its work with major organizations, IT Leaders has developed structured processes to solve a number of the performance problems faced by IT organizations. Typical assignments include developing strategy, improving operational efficiency, enhancing (customer) service to the business and managing vendor quality and price. Rather than solve the complete problem ourselves, we work with your team and adapt our leading-design templates to meet your specific needs. The benefits are clear, giving you better results for a lower cost. But it also gives your in-house team the opportunity to work on new assignments, often away from their normal domain as well as retaining the knowledge in-house.

Some examples of the collaborative consulting include:

The IT Manual

We bring a template that enables clients to quickly build their own IT manual, documenting all the information that the organization needs to be effective. Examples chapters include:

• Introduction to the IT organization – mission and goals

• IT strategy documents (summary level)

• Policies and standards

• In-house systems and architecture

• Operational processes (and document templates)

• Project management processes (and document templates)

• HR processes – evaluations, recruitment etc

• Governance and reporting

This is a valuable tool for new employees to the organization. We have also used it to provide a common understanding when handling audits. The information can be published in your own branded handbook and / or published on the intranet. We also provide the training material and assist with delivery where required.

IT Strategy Development

IT Leaders are pioneers in helping organizations develop practical and robust strategy. With the strategy development assignment, we work closely with the IT management team and co-ordinate the strategy development process. The first steps are to agree the framework and start the situation analysis. IT Leaders assists with the collection of the key information during this process to ensure that strategy is based on ‘unshakeable’ facts and data. The stages of the IT Leaders strategy process are as follows:

• Define strategic frameworks and objectives

• Situation analysis - understanding the starting point

• Defining the vision and end goals

• Developing strategic plans

• Communicating to the organization

Contract Evaluation and Cost Savings

IT Leaders has pioneered a method for IT organizations to review their support and operational contract portfolio. We follow a 7-step process, working with the client to keep knowledge in-house and maximise improvement opportunities.

1. Assessment of scope of work

2. Review of contract documentation

3. Technical assessment of actual usage

4. Uploading of data and source documents to the contract management database

5. Analysis of results and benchmarking

6. Production of detailed and summary reports

7. Readout to senior executives

We review the following areas:

1. Contract and ownership, structure & usage

2. Governance and reporting

3. Pricing and payment

4. Technical conditions of use