Transformation of the IT organization from tactical focus to strategic vision is critical to the success of a data-driven enterprise. Given the fact that success in a global, innovation driven economy is linked directly to a firm’s ability to operate strategically, DATASKILL offers a broad portfolio of five distinct services within the realm of Transformation Planning:
Planning. DATASKILL has developed an effective, repeatable approach for successfully planning out an IT transformation before any development work is done.
Resources. Equally important is the analysis and evaluation to the resources levels for implementation and support. This includes an assessment of the needed roles and responsibilities, the current capabilities and the need staffing to meet the goals.
Systems Retirement and Consolidation. DATASKILL’s analysts, with the aid of state-of-the-art automation tools, scrutinize how application technology resources are utilized, and identify consolidation points, license reduction opportunities and documentation for future support.
Manage enterprise and global IT consolidation projects.
Integrate IT and business systems during M&A activities.
Understand how recent IT vendor mergers will impact your business.
Ensure compliance with Sarbanes Oxley, HIPAA and other regulatory mandates and related issues.
Change Management. It’s no secret that in most companies, line of business and IT executives have dramatically different views of the organization. Similarly, they have different goals and critical success factors. To help ensure the success of a mission-critical or transformational project, stakeholders have to do three things:
Understand the differences that exist between line of business and IT.
Decide how to harmonize and prioritize the collective goals of stakeholders.
Agree on the path needed to attain an organization’s goals.
DATASKILL helps clients objectively consider the impact of change upon the organization, and design an appropriate set of change management procedures.
For a business strategy to be effective in creating a sustainable competitive advantage, technology needs to be leveraged. Most organizations are nowhere near achieving this goal, with IT and management operating with different objectives.
Service-Oriented Architectures enable firms to respond more effectively to change and to reduce integration project and maintenance costs through the reuse of service components. Getting started requires a deeper understanding of SOA standards, principles and best practices.
An architecture assessment from DATASKILL typically involves an evaluation of all critical aspects of your IT environment including:
Processes for gaps between existing performance and desired performance.
Organization for gaps around structure, roles, responsibilities, skills, certifications, and capacity.
Technology environment for performance issues, security issues, consolidation opportunities, and means to leverage new technologies in support of your business. The technology review can include hardware, software, and core business applications.
Spend (high-level) benchmark against industry peers or other appropriate criteria.
Once a DATASKILL analyst and the stakeholders in your organization understand the current architecture, in many cases it makes sense to move incrementally toward a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA). DATASKILL uses the Business Value Assessment (BVA) methodology to help guide our clients’ enterprise business integration strategy. A Business Value Assessment for SOA from DATASKILL can help provide the high-level direction needed to create a vision, and:
Provides with the information you need to make the correct SOA investment decision for your company.
Aligns line-of-business (LOB) and IT management toward a common vision for your solution and associated deployment initiatives.
Gives a high-level cost and benefit analysis to define the value of a SOA solution in financial terms.
Provides the information needed to justify launching a SOA initiative in the organization.
If the adoption of SOA makes sense for your organization, DATASKILL will help prepare a SOA readiness assessment, develop SOA awareness throughout the organization, and formulate the right SOA approach. In some cases, we help clients adopt an SOA within a single business unit – in others, the initiative is enterprise-wide – or even throughout an organization’s supply chain.
Corporate governance places unprecedented demands on today’s enterprises. Whether demands are driven by government mandate, shareholders, or executives committed to operational excellence, DATASKILL has the expertise to help you exceed these demands while driving business value throughout the enterprise.
Effectively managing corporate governance requires a structured, flexible approach designed to withstand the tests of time. Often, it makes sense to integrate a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) with your governance initiative, as both SOA and corporate governance can increase the value of the other initiative when used together correctly.
