IT Advisory

In today’s dynamic business and technology environments, many IT leaders are looking for ways to better align their operating strategy with the enterprise’s goals and provide increasingly higher levels of service to the business. In some cases, young IT organizations struggle to meet the demands of a growing business, while others find their established capabilities and practices are no longer in harmony with evolving business needs. In both cases, IT leaders are challenged to balance the competitive priorities of the business with the realities of running an effective and efficient IT operation.

Our IT Advisory Services specialists offer the following services, which are tailored to the unique needs of the enterprise and challenges at hand:

We help identify and prioritize your technology-related options, focus on those that drive measurable business outcomes, and develop a roadmap of the activities needed to realize the full power of your IT strategy. HarpData Connections approaches IT strategy and planning in a uniquely dynamic manner that allows for continuous assessment and adjustment as new opportunities arise and market conditions change. We tackle IT strategic planning from three vantage points:

  • Business and IT alignment – Collaborating with business partners to create new business value.
  • IT transformation – Taking an internal view of the IT organization to identify opportunities to increase operational effectiveness and efficiency.
  • Innovation Feasibility Analysis – Helping organizations analyze the viability of implementing new technologies to be able to reap the potential benefits of innovation.
  • IT Due Diligence – Engaging organizations and relevant stakeholders at all levels to guarantee transparency and accountability to determine the strengths and weaknesses of potential IT investments and therefore determine the value of the business with a focus on sustainability, maintenance cost, integration, ramp-up, scalability and evolution capabilities
  • IT Lifecycle – We help you optimize the full lifecycle of your technology, from planning and implementation, to management of your assets all the way to your next refresh. A customized asset management strategy helps to align the management of your IT infrastructure with your business needs.

Leading an IT organization of any size presents a range of unique challenges. Successful IT organizations are an effective blend of people, processes, tools and techniques. When IT organizations have to change – whether to better align with enterprise strategy, meet internal goals, or respond to external factors – IT leaders must identify opportunities for improvement and develop effective plans for change. HarpData Connection’s IT Management and Governance offerings make IT leaders more effective by providing the guidance and expertise to help IT organizations change. We provide:

  • CIO/CTO Advisory-Virtual/On-Demand *(as-a-service) – HarpData Connection’s experienced IT leaders can provide interim leadership and guidance through organizational transitions or manage through short-term resource challenges.
  • IT Project Management – We help our clients implement IT strategies and initiatives with a keen focus on avoiding the many pitfalls of strategy execution. Through all steps from orchestration to delivering changes and business benefits, we ensure success – also as interim project managers. We steer clients successfully through establishment of structures, processes, culture and competencies needed to deliver changes and ultimately to realize the business benefits.
  • Governance and Risk Management – We help clients plan their governance and risk management programs and rectify identified deficiencies.

To create real innovation and growth, an enterprise must continually evaluate the demand, cost, quality and value of its IT resources to gain a true understanding of technology and service consumption, performance, and future needs. HarpData Connections leverages the power of an innovative new discipline — Technology Business Management (TBM) — to help enterprises understand the true cost and value of IT and run it like a business. Powered by our unrivaled data, operational insights, and strategic consulting expertise, together with tools like Apptio’s market-leading TBM SaaS applications, HarpData Connections can help you reduce costs, gain end-to-end transparency, increase agility and optimize the business value of your IT investment.

HarpData Connection’s TBMaaS facilitates faster TBM adoption by delivering transparency to the cost, quality and consumption of IT services. These services help sustain your TBM model by embedding governance and controls into your trusted data sources.

  • Application Rationalization – Helping create transparency about the business value, cost, and health of existing applications, enabling technology leaders and business leaders to shift resources away from tactical modernization activity and toward projects that better support the enterprise’s strategic business goals.
  • Value Chain Optimization – Helping organizations provide IT value chain transparency from applications to infrastructure and across run and build to realize efficiencies by managing and adjusting qualities and capacities.
  • Project Portfolio Streamlining – Working with our clients to free up run costs to fund innovation and support growth by assessing your projects with respect to regulatory needs, business value and strategy alignment. HarpData Connections helps demonstrate portfolio value and its future impact on your run costs.
  • Vendor Decision Framework Management – Create transparency on service performance, consumption, costs and your vendor invoices. (Re-) Negotiate your contracts based on fact-based insights by understanding your vendor prices compared to the market
  • IT Service and Cost Transparency – Defining IT by speaking “services” – the language your business partners understand to help understand your value chain: infrastructure, applications and services across multiple providers. Manage with steering metrics from integrated financial and technology data (e.g. capacity, utilization, consumption, Total Cost of Ownership TCO). Find areas for IT productivity and demonstrate improvements over time.