Objectives First!
At DigitalDose, we pride ourselves in putting the customer’s objectives on top
of the list when designing solutions. What does that mean? It means that many IT
companies are too focused on technical parameters and features instead of trying
to determine the best alternative for a given situation. A given functionality
of a particular piece of software might be a “must-have” for one organization,
but another might have no use for it at all.
Whereas technical parameters are important when designing a solution – such as
in-house know how, installed systems or standardization issues - IT Systems are
always and must be justified through business objectives, therefore they must be
defined by these and not by subjective preferences for platform, vendor or
other.
The key success indicators for any solution design are to investigate and
recommend:
- An architectural design for the business objective
- Identify potential financial benefits and potential for technical optimization
- Provide management with a solid foundation for a strategic decision
Our goal is to help Customers to find the best solution for a specific problem
through
- A consultative approach
- vendor independency
- Comprehensible analysis
- Solutions based on business and technical requirements
Various solutions might be available that comply with the customer’s key
requirements. The relative strengths and weaknesses must be evaluated with
regards to the customer’s prioritization of technical and operational
requirements, the implementation risk as well as various soft factors such as
in-house supportability or user knowledge level.
Our approach follows a structured methodology to ensure our recommendation
represents the best solution available.
- Define Objectives
- Gather technical information
A detailed As-Is analysis provides the necessary foundation to make a
recommendation. The analysis also includes operational/functional criteria to
gather detailed non-technical information relevant to the evaluation of possible
solutions. This includes, but is not limited to, aspects such as:
- Technical and operational policies
- legal or regulatory requirements
- Backup/restore and disaster recovery requirements
- Offsite vaulting or replication requirements
- Performance and ease of use
- Integration in internal processes and procedures
- User and administrator skill level
- Accounting/billing or workflow requirements
- Operational/functional and technical requirements are identified, weighted
and evaluated against the features offered by the different vendors. The result
is offset against implementation risk and cost to identify the particular
solution scenario.
The weighting and evaluation described in step three above is of particular
importance. The purpose of the weighting is to identify the criteria’s relative
importance to the customer. Using the information gathered during the As-Is
analysis, and weighing and evaluating this information against key indicators,
potential solution scenarios can be designed. These can be then directly
compared to each other, to the "as-is" situation and to a 100% ideal scenario,
thereby in essence providing a gap analysis of each solution.
This will not result in an infinite number of scenarios as some products or architectures will disqualify
themselves due to lack of features or because they do not comply with the customer’s requirements. The goal is to
compare three to five scenarios that have the greatest potential.
All solution designs will be presented including the supporting documentation as well as an implementation plan
with the associated risk, cost, ROI calculations and target dates.
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