By Joe DeSiena, President Consulting Services
IT Planning and Development solutions should be flexible and tailored to your specific business problems. Who you hire should work with you as part of a team. They should be technology and software agnostic and only recommend solutions that meet your requirements.
Solutions may require a combination of process, data, software or technical changes, and your team should have the breadth and depth of experience to integrate the efforts. They should be able to walk that thin line between your IT and business staff and ensure that expectations and priorities are met on-time and within budget.
The team you hire should lead or assist in project planning and applying technology to business and data solutions. They should work closely with your business community to define user needs and collaborate with your technical personnel to ensure that the technology meets the user requirements. The team should understand and have experience with both business and IT functions.
Hiring a company that is a development shop with generic offerings is probably not a good idea. You need someone with experience developing functional and systems requirements for custom applications in asset management, data movement and reconciliation, financial accounting, and revenue recovery among others. You will need software engineers who can assist in the development of either customized or packaged solutions using either rapid deployment techniques or the classical life cycle model.
IT Planning and Development efforts may entail single or multiple roles in the classical systems development life cycle. The team approach should emphasize joint business user and IT involvement and that is centered on the following five-step IT Planning process:
1. Identify Information Needs/Requirements
2. Review/Assess Existing Systems
3. Design Information/Data Architecture
4. Design Technical Architecture for Hardware and Software
5. Develop Implementation Plan
Bardess can assimilate into your development efforts with leading systems integrators
At Bardess, we have worked on teams with most major systems integrators in both in-house and outsourced efforts. Our team can lead your efforts or follow existing project plans with defined roles. Bardess consultants have considerable experience with the major packaged ERP, CRM, MRP, BI and other solutions utilizing Oracle, SQL, and other databases. We also work to develop key systems interfaces and web portals as needed.
Contact us now for more information and a free consultation.
About the Author
Joe DeSiena is President of Consulting Services at Bardess Group, Ltd., a Management Consulting firm specializing in data revitalization, business process design, and information technology for services-related businesses. He is currently a board member of the Society for Information Management in New Jersey.
He is an experienced management consultant with over 20 years of professional experience assisting Fortune 500 clients in resolving business issues related to the Triangle Relationship between business data, processes and systems functions for services and sales organizations. More specifically, he has directed engagements in services marketing and delivery, business planning, data revitalization, data migration, process design and reengineering among others. He has shared his experience and insights in presentations before numerous senior client and association groups.
Joe DeSiena’s industry exposure includes data networking, telecommunications, manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, financial services, utilities, travel and entertainment among others. He has corporate management experience in major companies such as American Express, Chase, Bristol Meyers-Squibb, Coopers & Lybrand (PWC), Deloitte Touche, and Pan Am. Joe DeSiena is a graduate of the Stern School of Business at NYU with an MBA in Finance. He received his B.A. in Mathematics and Economics from the State University of New York at Stony Brook graduating Magna Cum Laude with Phi Beta Kappa honors.
