Business & IT Strategic Services

Business and IT Alignment

Technology is a key enabler of business. When IT requirements are aligned with the core business objectives an organisation can improve financial performance and maintain a competitive advantage.

The alignment of IT and business strategy is vital to enduring success. We gain an understanding of your core business requirements and design an aligned technology strategy.

To gain an accurate understanding of core business requirements to align your IT infrastructure we:

  • Identify business drivers

  • Assess your business process

  • Identify current pain-points being experienced

  • Define your short term and long term business strategy

We design a roadmap to ensure that the short-term and long-term goals of your business are articulated in clear stages that show how your organisation will achieve those goals with your IT infrastructure aligned to compliment the business requirements.

Capacity Planning

We gain a detailed understanding of current available capacity, and define a response strategy for projected growth. Calculating expected workloads we then plan for the usage of future systems and plan adjustments to accommodate varying demands upon the systems.

Capacity Planning allows your organisation to:

  • Predict when your infrastructure will no longer be able to meet your business and accreditation requirements

  • Identify which infrastructure components will become future performance bottlenecks

  • Compare cost, performance, scalability, flexibility and security of public cloud vs private cloud and hybrid cloud

  • Discover and repurpose under-utilised IT infrastructure

  • Determine efficiencies for shared workloads stored on hardware

  • Accurately predict performance for different VM densities 

We design a solution to mitigate the risk of capacity bottlenecks before it becomes an issue; maintaining a balance between cost and performance.

Based on your business requirements, capacity planning can be applied using one of these strategies:

  • Lead strategy:- adds capacity in accordance with predicted increase in demand

  • Lag strategy:- adds capacity after demand has increased beyond existing capacity

  • Match strategy:- adds capacity incrementally in response to changes in demand 

  • Adjustment strategy:- adding or reducing capacity in small or large amounts in response to demand, or, due to major changes to system architecture

Business Continuity Planning

We help you design a Business Continuity Plan for your organisation to be prepared for, and continue to operate after an incident or crisis.

A business continuity plan will help you to:

  • Identify risks and prevent data loss

  • Protect your crucial data against damage

  • Respond and recover data when incident or crisis occurs.

We design a plan that protects your organisation from a range of incidents including natural disasters, technical problems, and loss of staff.

To get the most out of a business continuity plan, it should be updated regularly, making sure you take into account any changes to your business, your industry, or the location you operate in.

Technical Audits

In a technical audit we analyze and review your IT infrastructure, taking into account the needs of your organisation, resources and efficiency of process to determine compliance with legal regulations.

We prepare a cost-benefit, return-on-investment and risk assessment report; detailing recommended solutions to problems uncovered by the audit  

Technical audits can cover a broad range of areas depending on your organisation's requirements and can include:

  • IT operations audit

  • External Service Provider operations audit

  • IT infrastructure audit

  • IT governance and compliance audit

  • IT risk audit

  • Business/IT alignment audit

We provide you with a report that identifies any areas of concern, considers industry benchmarks and outlines recommendations in terms of 'actionable advice' on how measurable improvements can be made. 

The audit is designed to suit your organisation’s individual needs and concerns, common areas of concern include:

  • IT skills

  • Process maturity

  • Documentation

  • Software licensing and hardware lifecycle management

  • Helpdesk service levels

  • Project benefit realisation

  • Technology and operational efficiency

  • Infrastructure performance & vulnerabilities

  • Proactive and preventative maintenance

  • Recoverability and data integrity

  • Failure point identification

  • Governance effectiveness

  • Policy compliance

  • Security risks

  • Financial & budget management issues

  • Operational risk & sustainability

Software Licensing Management

We can manage your software licensing to ensure continuous compliance with software license agreements and optimise your software spend—often realising savings of 5-30%.

Many organisations spend too much on software licenses they don’t need and not enough on the licenses they do need.

We can help reduce your licensing costs, eliminate compliance risks and simplify your ongoing compliance management responsibilities. Companies may also find themselves exposed to the risk of heavy fines. Over one-third of business software is used illegally, often inadvertently through the mismanagement of network infrastructure and the desktop. 

We review your software ownership and establish an audit trail of license documentation. We help manage the terms of your software licensing agreements more effectively and avoid common pitfalls, such as over-installing products or altering server configurations that may affect usage.

We can help you optimise your software licensing contracts and investments so that they align with strategic objectives. They need to take into account new licensing scenarios as a result of virtualisation, data center and cloud services.

We will define, align, and deliver a licensing strategy that meets the business objectives and operational processes unique to your organisation regardless of where you are at in the lifecycle of your licensing project.

Solution benefits:

  • Simplify procurement and management of software license agreements

  • Increase visibility and control over your software procurement lifecycle

  • Mitigate compliance risk by avoiding under or over licensing

  • Improve budget forecasting and control over asset expenditure

  • Minimise total cost of ownership over the life of your software assets

  • Enhance business productivity and performance.

As your business grows, so does the need for the right software to underpin your IT environment and help drive business productivity and efficiency.

We help you navigate your full software lifecycle, from consultation and procurement through to renewals and compliance. We can manage your software assets, whether on-premises or as part of a cloud-based solution.

The end result is full visibility and control over your software procurement lifecycle, including licensing agreements, budget forecasting, compliance and asset renewals.

By keeping on top of compliance issues, optimising licensing agreements and planning license procurement, your software investments will bring all the productivity benefits without excessive costs or management headaches.