OVERVIEW

Definitions of the word ‘strategy’ abound. To us it is an elaborate and systematic plan of action to achieve a certain, well-defined purpose. Many good ideas flounder because of poor development and execution. People find out that taking shortcuts and governing by rules-of-thumb do not quite work in all instances.

It is said that production and operation problems that arise from a poor design is inversely proportional to the time spent on design. Spending less time on conceptualization and design implies that you will spend more time fixing the many problems that are bound to surface in the wake of this error. We have heard the adage, “Think before you leap.”

Cambridge’s Strategic Consulting unit helps clients in thinking through elaborate and systematic plans of action in a practical, meaningful manner. Our strategic consulting is, however, limited to only those projects that have a direct or indirect services or IT component. We work with partners to deliver “blue skies” strategic projects while our own professionals provide the following:

• Technology roadmaps
• Migration/transition roadmaps
• Post-acquisition/merger IT rationalization plans
• Selection of tools, processes; evaluation of IT solution options
• High-level systems design and architecture
• Business process re-engineering – in Banking, Financial Services, Insurance, Manufacturing, Logistics and Government verticals
• Technical due diligence studies
• ‘Make-or-buy’ option studies
• Build, Operate and Transfer (BOT) evaluations
• Conceptualizing, creating and launching brands/products/services on the web

Business Consulting
Cambridge’s services may involve assistance in policy formulation, re-investment decisions, external/internal resource decisions, integration of sources of IT within the enterprise and developing architectures), economics (value analysis, contribution and productivity analysis, financial tools and alternative funding and charging mechanisms, plus research into budgets and spending patterns), organization (the development of business models and management processes), planning (structuring the IT organization of an enterprise to increase alignment and to better identify business opportunities, also management implications of emerging IT technological issues, addressing of disaster recovery strategies), learning (processes for adoption of appropriate best practices, contracting and relationship management and the various means to add skills to an IT organization), and effective use of the IT function (business unit managers' responsibilities for IT, the management of external service providers and the marketing of IT services within the enterprise).

Capability Portfolio Alignment
Businesses need to be dynamic and move quickly on market opportunities. It is therefore vital that IT’s capability portfolio contains an existing set of solutions or platforms which have already been aligned with business needs and objectives. Cambridge understands that business change can sometimes mean re-inventing existing capabilities and acquiring new platforms, the key point being that a capability portfolio should be iterative and evolving with an open review channel to ensure continual alignment.

Vendor Performance Management & Rationalization
Vendor Management is critical to ensure that the maximum value is derived from vendor engagements and relationships. Metrics should be used to measure financial performance as well as performance in other areas such as contribution, benefits realization, cost saving, and individual resource or platform performance. This set of metrics or key performance indicators should be presented as an executive dashboard to allow IT personnel to make critical and timely decisions about the nature of their relationships with vendors. Cambridge provides organizations with the expertise and ability to profile and measure its vendor portfolio to conduct this level of performance management as well as make decisions to rationalize engagements with vendors where it makes sense. Of course rationalizing vendors also means reducing the effort and cost involved in managing these relationships!

Offshore Outsourcing Strategy
For many years now, organizations have been leveraging a globally distributed talent pool to deliver significant cost savings in both IT and other shared services functions. This also usually means that organizations are investing in either their own captive centers in less costly locations such as India and China or in IT vendor partnerships or engagements being serviced from similar locations. Either way, an offshore strategy needs to be carefully thought through, commercially viable by allowing organizations to build equity in their investments, and applied to the right opportunities in the right order. Cambridge has been assisting its clients for many years their offshore outsourcing strategies with a proven track record for allowing the cost arbitrage business case to become a reality.

IT Delivery Process
When an organization recognizes an opportunity to leverage technology capabilities, the request is usually to deliver that capability as soon as possible and as cost effectively as possible. The process of delivering these capabilities is usually quite similar regardless of the type of project or technology involved and people commonly refer to this as ‘project management’. However, how do you prioritize one project against another to determine where you are going to apply your resources? How do you ensure that you are not taking on too much and overloading your resources? How do you ensure that your projects are executed on time and on budget? These questions and many others can be answered through Cambridge’s IT Delivery Process which is a customizable methodology that organizations can adopt to ensure the most efficient deployment of projects right from the concept stage right through to measuring and realizing the benefits. A well defined IT Delivery Process also helps tie your Professional Services Automation (PSA) Tools such as Microsoft Project Central, Niku, Planview and others to address real IT planning and management challenges.