Executive Summary
Archistry focuses on helping organizations utilize technology to deliver improved business productivity and performance. These improvements can take many forms, but the common element is our commitment to working with our clients to achieve their business goals. We can only be successful if our clients are successful.
Our approach is to help our clients find the right ways to employ the right technologies to deliver their business objectives. We have an extremely diverse background in both mature and emerging technologies, and we use this experience to help our clients cut through the hype to determine what solutions and initiatives are right for them.
To achieve these objectives, we work with organizations to ensure that IT leaders and business leaders can effectively communicate with each other, establishing a common language and shared understanding of how technology enables the business's tactical and strategic goals. We know from experience that the more this level of understanding is present within the senior executive team, the more effectively the organization can achieve its goals.
Service Offerings
The following are examples of some of the types of services we provide to our clients in helping them realize alignment between business and IT. Achievement of IT and business alignment requires effort at all levels of the organization, so our service offerings reflect this need. We realize that your organization is unique, and we would be happy to discuss your specific needs with you at your convenience.
IT Strategic Planning
More and more organizations are realizing that the only way to deliver business agility is through taking a cross-enterprise view of how IT supports the day-to-day operations of the business. We believe that using a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) approach is the best way to ensure that the technology investments fit the business organization. We work with business and technology leaders to demystify SOA and understand why SOA is the first approach to deliver IT solutions that can actually reflect the way you do business. We then work with business and IT leadership to identify the key strategic business objectives and what investments in people, processes and technology will be required to ensure IT is positioned to deliver these objectives and be prepared for any likely changes of direction.
Organizational, Governance & Policy Design
Taking an enterprise view of IT also means there are more visible challenges to how IT and technology fits into the organizational structure. Regardless if an organization has chosen SOA as an strategy, many of the key issues around IT project delivery can be tied back to areas of the organization and governance structure in need of improvement. We work with the executive management team and IT leadership to identify areas where IT is perceived to be holding back the business and help revise the organizational structure, governance mechanisms and policies to address these problem areas and ensure that IT can better meet the expectations of the business.
SOA Planning and Implementation
Successfully implementing SOA within an organization requires the business to think differently about what it should expect from IT, and it requires IT to think differently about how they deliver, operate and support their systems. We understand not only the technologies enabling SOA, but we also understand how to help organizations conceptualize and make these changes successfully. We work with both business and technology leaders as well as the delivery and implementation teams to ensure the SOA initiative is a success and delivers measurable business value to the organization.
Technology Evaluation & Selection
Our breadth and depth of experience with technologies, solutions and architectural techniques can assist organizations in making sure the solutions they are considering or have designed will deliver the business objectives in accordance with the organization's strategic direction. We provide assistance and recommendations during project definition to ensure that the RFI and RFP include the information necessary for a complete response. Once the responses have been received, we provide objective assessments to help the organization make the right investment choices.
Identity Management Strategy Definition
The way individuals access an organization's information is controlled by the way identities are assigned and managed. It is critical that organizations have the right identity management policies and procedures in place to ensure both the privacy of their customers and the integrity of business data is maintained. We provide assistance in defining an appropriate identity management strategy to meet the organization's needs for assigning identities and proving that the actual person is who they claim to be. Once defined, we work with business and technical stakeholders to ensure that the strategy is implemented effectively within the organization.
Delivery Capability Assessment & Improvement
The best technology strategy in the world will not deliver value to the organization without having an appropriate delivery capability in place to execute it. We have extensive experience in all stages of the software delivery lifecycle and provide organizations with an assessment of their current delivery capability and how well it is positioned to execute our clients' strategic goals. Once the assessment is complete, we work with the techical stakeholders to address areas in need of improvement to align the delivery capability with the business strategy.
Process Optimization
Operating more efficiently is one concrete way to reduce costs, but in many cases it is difficult for an organization to effectively assess specific improvements to increase the efficiency of a particular process. We provide an external perspective and work with process participants to make recommendations for how to more efficiently execute and monitor existing processes, directly reducing bottom-line costs to the organization.
Solution Optimization
If a particular system or solution is not performing as expected or is difficult to operate and manage, we work with the business and IT stakeholders to understand the root causes and determine what needs to be done to address it. Once the optimizations and enhancements have been identified, we work with the delivery team to ensure that the problem is solved and any considerations for avoiding similar issues in future systems are distilled and shared within the organization to the relevant parties.
Privacy & Data Protection Compliance
Any organization holding customer information where that customer is a resident of the European Union (EU) must comply with both EU and national Data Protection and Privacy legislation. We work with organizations to help them understand their roles and responsibilities for Data Protection compliance across the organization as well as ensure they have the proper auditing and accountability processes and procedures in place to effectively respond to "right to access" requests from their customers.
Security Awareness Workshops
Many times individuals within an organization do not fully appreciate the sensitivity of the information they manipulate on a day-to-day basis. Every year, articles appear in the press showing how many people are willing to give up passwords for a chocolate bar or gourmet coffee. We provide a set of security awareness workshops tailored to the specific needs of an organization to help individuals understand how they can ensure the confidentiality and integrity of the information they use.
Key Technical Resource Selection
Some organizations identify a need for a key technology resource but have difficulty ensuring that they will choose someone who really has the talents the organization needs. We assist these organizations in assessing the capabilities and qualifications of these key technical resources to ensure that the individual they select can help take the organization where they want to go.