• Clients
• Track Record
• IT Strategy and Roadmap Development
• IT Operations Review
• M&A Integration Strategy and Planning
• Systems Selection and Procurement
• Project Implementation Support
• Interim IT Management
• Programme and Project Management
• IT Recruitment & Support

The Requirement
All businesses develop and change over time as do their requirements for IT support, or the way in which that support might best be provided.  Such change often leads to situations where a company is concerned about a particular aspect of its IT or the IT operation overall.

In such situations the company may not have the relevant experience or expertise to assess the problem and hence an independent expert opinion on how to improve the IT operation is often needed..

Service Description
The IT Operations Review is a bespoke service whereby the scope of each assignment is agreed with the client prior to commencement. We focus on independently assessing key areas of the IT operation and on providing expert opinion, advice and guidance. Although this is a bespoke service we would typically focus on several core areas of importance:

• IT governance and leadership practices, including management reporting
• Capabilities of the IT team
• IT budgets
• Fitness for purpose (resilience, scalability, performance, usability etc.) of core business and administration systems, and of the IT infrastructure
• Third party relationships
• Data management and security practices, including disaster recovery

All assignments focus on identifying the strengths, weaknesses and risks associated with the IT operations and on making pragmatic recommendations for improvement and risk mitigation.

Our Approach
The approach which we adopt for an IT Operations Review is similar to, and modelled on, our due diligence work.

We engage a CTO/IT Director-level consultant to conduct a high level but expert analysis of the IT operation. To do this we review relevant documentation, we meet with senior stakeholders and key personnel (including third parties if appropriate) and we request a walk-through of core business systems. We adopt a “holistic” approach and leverage our tried and tested best practice frameworks and our sector and technical experience. Throughout the assignment we provide management updates and de-briefs to ensure the management team are aware of key findings.

Deliverables
The key deliverable is a concise report summarised in terms of clearly identified strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and risks. Critically, attention is paid to the provision of practical, pragmatic advice and recommendations for performance improvements which in turn will deliver operational benefits. We prioritise our recommendations and include indicative costs and resource estimates in our report.