Situation

• Our client was the CIO of a major retailer; the IS organization included several hundred employees as well as some outsourced services
• IS had been focusing on reducing costs for several years and its clients were now demanding more responsiveness, specifically in delivering new technology solutions
• IS realized they needed a strategy and plan to better support their business
• They specifically wanted the strategy to focus on improving IT governance and application development effectiveness as well as address some specific operational improvement needs identified through a recent benchmarking study

Solution

• Through working with the business executives to understand their needs and the IS executives to assess the current state of the organization, we developed a new IS strategy which included:
• Shifting the IS strategic focus from low-cost client intimacy, with implications on organizational structure, people and processes
• Clarifying the IS service catalog and establishing priorities with the business based on each service
• Implementing a set of IT principles to improve the IS/business relationship
• Establishing governance processes and mechanisms to better manage demand
• Reorganizing the multiple applications development groups into one pool of resources
• Creating a new business systems planning group to manage demand •Implementing career paths and development programs for IS employees
• The recommendations were brought together in an actionable plan, which included timing, dependencies, resources and costs for a multi-project IT transformation program

Benefits

• Client clearly understood and communicated their strategy and plan within their organization and to the business
• Demand management has improved through the governance mechanisms put in place as a result of the IS Strategy
• IS clients have expressed their satisfaction with the improvements made following the completion of the IS strategy
• Specific follow-on initiatives continue to capture the benefits and Pariveda is involved in some of these initiatives