Welcome to the seventh edition of BUSINESSBOOST — the latest in a series of business briefings from Blue Stone Business Solutions, a specialist and independent information technology consultancy business.

The topic covered in this issue is IS operations review.

In the last issue we looked at project management, and how best to ensure that a new information system is implemented in a way that secures the maximum benefit to the organisation. Here we consider reviewing an existing system, perhaps one that has been in place for some time, but which perhaps needs a thorough overview. The counter-argument is of course ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’, but unless you review the system, how will you know?

So let’s look at how an IS operations review can lead to often significant cost and efficiency savings.

In considering IS operations review we have come full circle in terms of an organisation’s information systems: that is, you review your needs, define a system to meet those needs, identify a specific solution, acquire then implement it. And having run with it for a period, you now need to establish that you are managing to extract every last ounce of performance from your hardware, software and, of course, ‘brainware’ ie. people!

So while in the current economic environment you may have put your information systems development projects on hold until the future looks clearer, this does not mean that you should not be doing everything to improve the performance or effectiveness of the information systems you currently operate. An IS operations review could be a very effective way to reduce costs or provide improved IS performance, and the benefits could be delivered very quickly.

There are numerous issues to be considered, including:

• IT staff costs; are your IT staff costs comparable with your competitors? If not, why not? Are there opportunities to reduce costs and release cash into the organisation?
• maintenance costs; are there opportunities to reduce these, since they are not necessarily as fixed as you might think? You may be paying maintenance for software that is little-used or not business-critical, or there may be opportunities to re-negotiate maintenance costs with suppliers who would rather have some income than a cancelled contract.
• IT organisation structure; is your IT organisation structured to give you the best possible service? Was it first set up many years ago when information technology and costs were very different to today?
• system reliability; do you get pressure from your users about the reliability of your systems? Have you carried out a down-time analysis? Are there some underlying (but fixable) issues that have not been identified?
• IS supplier contracts; are all your IS supplier contracts giving you the best value or are there opportunities to reduce costs and improve performance?

A comprehensive IS operations review may help your organisation to reduce IS costs without compromising performance or may identify ways of bringing added benefits without going to the expense and effort of replacing core business systems. On the other hand if you believe that your costs and performance are good it may allow you to demonstrate, in these times when costs are under pressure, that your IS organisation is effective and that indiscriminate cost-cutting in this vital area may be detrimental to the business.

We all hope that the economic climate will improve in the near future. When it does, the pressure will be on to deliver the developments that may have been put on hold. Before then, if you want to find ways of improving costs and/or performance or make sure that your IT operations are on the right track, now could be a very good time to carry out a comprehensive IS operations review.

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making sure your systems deliver the goods

A major UK logistics company, our client had a large centralised IT function which developed and supported a number of sophisticated logistics software applications. How an IT function is structured tends to fashion the processes within it, which in turn help to shape its culture. And in this case, while the service provided to users was generally seen as good, the Company’s new Chief Information Officer wanted to change the culture by making the IT function more proactive and service-focused, while at the same time reducing its cost to the business.

Such major culture changes can be difficult to drive from within established organisations because of the personal investment that the staff have in the existing structure, processes and culture. However, given the size of the organisation it seemed an intractable problem for the CIO to drive the detailed changes required without an external input. Which is where Blue Stone came in.

Our reading of the situation was that a combination of interim IT management and strategic IT consultancy was needed both to manage the operation on a day-to-day basis on the one hand, and to provide the high level organisational and cultural shaping that our client needed on the other.

We started by developing a new service level agreement between the IT function and the user community at large. This clearly signalled the intended change of approach and put some basic processes into place. Because our team have all worked in management and operational roles in companies of this type, we were able quickly to win the trust and support of the staff and senior management.

Next, we interviewed the key managers within the IT function to gain an understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the organisation and their own interests and strengths. This, together with the CIO’s vision of future organisation, gave us the information we needed to start shaping the new IT function. We created the overall structure that would be required to support the culture change and new service targets.

We then developed job descriptions for all the key management roles. As part of this, we introduced the concept of super-users to the company.

Finally, we made recommendations to the CIO as to roles that the existing managers could play in the new structure. Our recommendations were accepted and the Company was able to put them into action through its HR department.

This type of culture and organisational change can be difficult and painful for many companies and carries with it the risk of the loss of staff support which can leave companies worse off than when they started. With our combination of management experience and clear strategic thinking Blue Stone is well-placed to help companies avoid these pitfalls and drive change that succeeds.

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If you feel you could benefit from an initial discussion with Blue Stone now, then please let me know, either by phone, e-mail or by clicking here. I look forward to hearing from you.

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