While many companies have a sizable investment in IT, few have reaped the full potential of their investments, and e-business can greatly assist in meeting this goal. Many companies are still underutilizing their IT capabilities, and have many applications with redundant and/or duplicate processes, as well as hardware utilization averaging 20% or less. This results in IT solutions not being able to deliver on their intended results and benefits. We address all these factors and more in our E-Business Rapid Review Assessment service.

This affordable, fixed-price offering provides clients who are transitioning to an e-business strategy the valuable guidelines and critical success factors for achieving the benefits they are seeking and staying within budget. Too many times we find companies have greatly increased their IT complexity over the years, and now need to move to a more streamlined state to handle the daily demands of e-business. For example, many companies have to increase the capacity of their web servers on a weekly basis, not to mention how they are handling e-mail management, social media integration, and the growth of online marketing from an IT management perspective. However, it’s not uncommon for business leaders to lose sight of these issues, due in many cases to their business-siloed approach to IT. Our goal is to assist our clients in understanding these issues, and then recommend the best approach to move from their current environment to an e-business environment. All of our recommendations are based on sound business practices and benefits to the overall organization.

Description

Our E-Business Rapid Review Assessment provides a fast and efficient evaluation of your current IT environment, and business and IT alignment, which covers the following:

• A high level assessment and evaluation of your current IT application and infrastructure environment (both in-house and purchased applications), capabilities, and alignment to e-business requirements.
• The assessment and evaluation includes three key elements of e-business:
  • Search engine optimization (SEO) of existing web site(s)
  • Search engine marketing (SEM) of key on-line campaigns
  • Social media optimization (SMO) of customer service integration
• A gap analysis comparing your IT solutions and policies to e-business best practices.

Our Experts have experience in working with both large and small businesses to achieve the maximum benefits of their IT organization. We have assisted our clients in building business cases for implementation changes/improvements as well as for outsourcing or in-sourcing their e-business support and maintenance. Our team also has experience in performing SEO, SEM and SMO assessments, developing actionable e-business strategies and plans, and improving the overall business and IT performance.

We partner with our clients to develop the assessment based on their goals and business requirements, and educate their team in the process. We feel this is important so our clients can take ownership for the recommendations, and are capable of making continual adjustments to the recommended roadmap as rapidly changing e-business needs require. We stress that this is not just a report, but a process that positively impacts and positions how IT delivers value to the business and most importantly how the overall organization is effected by e-business.

Deliverables

Standard

Our offering delivers the following results:

• An assessment and evaluation of the current e-business environment, and its related supporting applications and IT infrastructure.
  • We review people, process, and IT solutions to provide a view of IT with respect to supporting e-business.
• A gap analysis comparing your current IT solutions and policies to e-business best practices.
• An e-business overview of key IT applications that achieves the improvement opportunities, as prioritized by the client, including:
  • E-business architecture — how e-business and supporting solutions can best integrate into the existing and planned solutions, and best support the business requirements.
  • Data management — the impact of data management, and its support and integration, with the applications and business requirements for e-business.

Our Experts deliver a detailed report which includes the above deliverables, and present our findings to our client’s management.

Work effort is conducted as follows:

• TAC Expert can be on-site or off-site to gather information.
• Work effort is limited to two days; client has readily available inventory, (applications, servers, etc. and documentation (policies and procedures)) of all areas, or will send to TAC within two business days upon request.
  • Should information not be readily available, delays will occur.
• TAC will present findings and recommendations within seven business days after receipt of all information from the client, and present to the client’s senior management team.

Optional

In addition to the deliverables listed above, we can assist clients in a more detailed full IT e-business assessment, and help to implement the approved initiatives.

Target Audience

CIO, COO, CFO

IT executives and senior management who are responsible for IT strategy and core application systems across the enterprise. This assessment will enable them to be assured that their IT investments yield the expected benefits. It will also improve alignment between the IT function and the business.

About The Advisory Council

Founded in 2002, The Advisory Council provides IT organizations with enterprise-wide access to objective, actionable advice for resolving IT challenges and issues. Through its suite of services, products and workshops, TAC helps IT organizations make decisions more quickly and cost effectively. TAC’s Expert Decision Support Network consists of more than 200 Experts, covering 97% of all IT practice areas. Clients include Fortune 1000 and midsize companies, government, and educational institutions.