Operational Excellence in IT

IT organizations have often grown historically, and both the system landscape and processes are complex and unclear. This has a direct impact on IT performance. Inefficiencies, unclear responsibilities and dependencies, and a lack of alignment with the needs of the business reduce the performance of the IT organization. With a structured approach, IT performance management identifies the processes and competencies that have a direct impact on the business result, so-called core IT services, on the provision and improvement of which a special focus should be placed. At the same time, the IT service structure must be viewed holistically and its efficiency and effectiveness increased through systematic IT service management (ITSM). For this purpose, the entire portfolio of processes and services is analyzed with regard to their degree of documentation, their actual implementation and possible classification in a standardized framework (e.g. ITIL). Based on this, a higher-level management model must be established that maps the entire IT service portfolio with its SLAs and OLAs.

After years of excessive increases in IT budgets, usually with double-digit growth rates, many IT organizations are under considerable pressure to justify their costs to the business. However, IT organizations are often poorly prepared to provide detailed information regarding cost causation and service origination. In addition, significant financial resources are tied up in IT infrastructure and run activities, resulting in a lack of funds for necessary, forward-looking innovation projects. In order to create transparency about the cost situation, to obtain an assessment of the cost-effectiveness of internally provided IT services, and to ensure efficient management, it is necessary to design a structured and holistic IT cost management system. This includes not only the creation of clear transparency of current and future costs and the sustainable reduction of IT costs, but also the ongoing adjustment and improvement of existing key figures, as well as the continuous monitoring and reporting of the most important key performance indicators. In this way, IT cost management is the key to successful and continuous improvement of performance, quality and costs in your IT.

In many organizations, internal IT does not have the best reputation. Many services do not function according to the expectations of internal customers, or disruptions even prevent the efficient use of services, causing significant damage to the business through lost productivity or missed business. With the Zero-Defect-Approach you can significantly increase the performance of your IT and your customer satisfaction. Based on a strategic analysis and evaluation of the service portfolio, those services are identified that are of strategic importance to the business, as well as those where the business suffers the most pain due to frequent or serious errors. For the identified TOP services, measures including implementation time and costs are derived using the zero-defect approach. In co-ordination with the business unit, a joint implementation roadmap and a concept for continuous quality improvement of the services are then drawn up.

If a central system or a central service fails, this often has an impact on the entire organization and causes considerable economic as well as reputational damage for the entire organization. We offer you a top management cockpit with all relevant control dimensions and key figures. The management cockpit can be used in a warroom with monitors or in an app. Screens such as "Delivery", "Projects" or "Budget" give you a real-time overview of disruptions, relevant information about your top IT projects and current budget figures. In this way, the IT management team is fully informed at all times and IT risks can be identified and mitigated at an early stage. We support you in defining the key figures relevant to your IT organization and in deriving and creating an action roadmap to avert IT risks.

The omnipresence of mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets, the networking of devices and systems, especially in the context of the Internet of Things and cloud computing, make cyber security a very important but often neglected topic in IT organizations. Possible consequences include the loss of competition-relevant corporate secrets, the interruption of value-added processes, or significant image damage, e.g., due to the theft of customer data. In order to protect networks, computer systems, cyber-physical systems, data and the entire organization from attacks of this kind, vulnerabilities in the entire IT organization must be identified and consistently eliminated. A strategic analysis of your IT blueprint and network infrastructure provides insight into the risky areas of IT. Building on the results of the analysis, we work with you to derive an action plan and tracking to eliminate the identified vulnerabilities with appropriate solutions. In order to protect your IT from external threats in the long term, we support you in the design and implementation of processes for continuous risk mitigation and improvement of your structural/operational organization.

IT risk management is an essential component of every IT organization and the basis for the secure operation of IT services in the company. In our experience, the difficulty in implementing IT risk management usually lies in embedding the required processes deep within the entire IT organization. For this, it is fundamentally necessary to consider all relevant interface areas, such as IT governance, the service portfolio and the infrastructure. It has been shown that only complete integration of the required processes into the entire IT organization leads to sustainable success and also meets the requirements of the certification standards.

Societies and companies are repeatedly confronted with crises that demand the utmost from you and can represent an existential risk. With our IT stability check approach, we analyze and evaluate your IT organization for its crisis resistance, adaptability and risk management. In this way, areas for action are identified and measures are derived to establish a more resilient IT organization. In times of pandemics such as COVID-19, the IT organization assessment focuses on evaluating and enabling business continuity and risk management for your own service portfolio as well as for the IT supply chain. Continuation of operations has priority here, which is why remote working capabilities (incl. communication and collaboration concepts/tools; degree of digitization of internal processes, networks, etc.) are also of particular importance.

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Over and over again, large IT projects go wrong. Costs explode, goals are missed or timelines are negelcted. To prevent this from happening, we support you in creating all the prerequisites for a successful project in advance. This includes a consistent alignment with the strategy, the definition of the business case, the set-up of the project organization including control mechanisms, a clear requirements management and the selection of the right service provider. If there are already difficulties on a project, it can also be brought back on track. We support you in achieving the turnaround of your IT projects. For the project turnaround, we analyze the factors and backgrounds that led to the crisis situation in the project with you. Based on this, we evaluate costs, progress and personnel resources in order to develop and implement a sustainable stabilization and turnaround plan. This way your project will be led back to success.