Competitive Edge
The CIO is appointed for one purpose – to provide the business with a competitive edge. The CIO charges the IT department with objectives to support this aim: do more for less; do it better; enable revenue; keep things running. These are all set in the pursuit of reducing costs, managing risk, and improving services to the business and its customers. The CIO’s set objectives are all about what needs to be done whilst the pursuits, or results, are all about why something should be done.
Business Focus
All that needs then to be agreed is how to achieve these, and this is where Projects are born. Unfortunately these Projects (e.g. server virtualisation, storage consolidation, WAN optimisation, information lifecycle management) very quickly and wrongly become IT’s objectives. As a result, the justification for these projects becomes technology focused and not business focused, and as a consequence they rarely translate into robust business cases that mean something to the Board. The knock-on effect is that they fail to get approved and in most cases never form a complete picture. The real aims and objectives of the business are missed and opportunity is lost.
Logical Strategy Development
Union has a unique approach we call Competitive Edge. We strip away the technology myopia and get back to the business basics. We take a holistic view of the projects and sequence them into milestones that form a long-term strategy. This strategy takes you, the customer, from where you are to where you want to be, always conscious of the need to reduce cost, manage risk, or improve service. No single project is undertaken without a sound business case and cohesion with other projects which should support the same objectives.
Transformation Program
The Competitive Edge Program takes you through a Feasibility Stage to determine if a business case for change might exist, a Development Stage that builds the business case using Union’s unique Destiny process, and a Delivery Stage comprising of well defined Phases such as Planning, Build, and Migration, supported by a suite of jointly developed Work Packages with clear deliverables.
Measurable Success
The Competitive Edge Program establishes your credibility with the business whilst minimising project risk through service alignment and robust project management process. Business measurables are set from the outset that enable you to measure success and demonstrate value to your customers whilst delivering projects on time and within budget.