Consulting and Experience

The challenges of competing in today's dynamic global market, the need for accurate factual information to respond to changing marketing conditions, decision-making, and a rapid response to maintain competitive position drives most businesses. Given the number of factors that a business has to consider many organizations spend little time planning and considering different alternatives to their decision-making. 

 

General Dwight D. Eisenhower cited "In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable".  An opposite but much used adage, "If You Fail to Plan, You Plan to Fail" seems a very appropriate scenario in today's environment due to the rapid response needed to survive.  An organization who fails to plan equates to cost overruns, extended time-to-market, incomplete or inadequate processes, or lacks customer-valued services.

IBD asks the basic question, "Why do any planning"?  Like General Eisenhower's response, IBD has various management and planning experiences in the areas shown above.  With our knowledge, experience and expertise, IBD can assist your organization to meet some of the planning challenges .

To learn more about the roles that a CIO performs .

What can a CIO do for your business?

Information technology (IT) is at the heart of every significant business process and is critical to innovation and business success. Yet seeing, understanding and acting on the IT ‘big picture’ seldom occurs in many businesses. Vision is short-term and focused on daily operations.Existing IT staff are pressed to keep the business running and have little time, inclination, motivation or capability to focus on long-term planning (strategic planning). Consequently, businesses operate inefficiently, at competitive risk and sometimes on the brink of failure.

Learn more about CIO responsibilities.

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How do you formulate and execute strategic plans that are aligned with your Business Strategies?

Answer: By providing your management team with training and mentoring to execute up their business' IT direction.

The purpose of this training is to provide an understanding of the relationship of your business strategy and the implications of that strategy on your information technology (IT) staff. To be successful, you must align your IT's strategic plan with the business' strategy so the business accomplishes its goals and objectives. IT's capabilities and execution of key projects is critically important to maintaining and expanding the business. This training will provide your staff with:

Understanding the strategic IT planning framework and methods to document the IT strategic plan. Developing an approach to formulate strategic IT programs and initiatives linked to business direction. Gaining a greater understanding of your organization's IT capabilities and defining its future direction. Learning how to progress from business and organization analysis to the identification of IT opportunities. Using techniques to identify IT opportunities to create new or enhanced business services. Planning the linkage with other strategic resources to achieve and sustain leadership. Positioning IT initiatives, applications and technologies to support business-driven justification of IT investments.

In conjunction with our business partner, Knowledge Consultants, Inc., IBD can provide a training program to help your business develop the IT strategic plan that addresses your business strategies. It addresses who, what, where, when, how, and why your IT organization will expend various resources to meet the goals and objectives your business seeks.

IBD can work with you to develop an IT strategic plan and mentor your staff that ensures you address the IT alignment gap. To learn more about using this training and approach to IT planning, Click click here .

Business Keys in your Management Approach

The performance and health of your business is critical to your success. Creatively looking a ways to to improve efficiency, reduce costs, increase customer satisfaction, and expand into new markets is a way to gain competitive advantage through:

Mentoring Leadership Data Management Reining in Chaos Technology Assessments Web Delivery systems

Transitioning to a Service-Oriented Business (SOA)

Many businesses today are faced with a significant challenge: transitioning to a service business. Specifically, many of the software packages have started to use a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA)approach. Having a database and the administrative staff to support that tranistion will help them meet this challenge. Refer to our presentation at Data Management Association (DAMA) in Chicago offering a way to make that transition from a business strategy to a data management approach bridging to an effective SOA strategy.

Creative Value-Generating Data Reuse

Effectively examining existing data can help determine how it can be used to support new projects. It was an opportunity for Cabelas' Sporting Goods who significantly increase their customers satisfaction by offering discounts on products on the Internet. Can you do the same?

Effectively using data in your databases and improving its quality reduces operating costs, customer dissatisfaction, and improves the effectiveness of your business processes.

Use your second most valued asset - Customer Information

Most businesses today depend upon the knowledge of their customer, what they buy, when they need the products and services offered, and what interactions have occurred with the customer. Capturing this data and information in a way that is useful to your organization really provides value-added services. Applications known as, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) have become a major service for most organizations. How do you capture information about your customers, what is the value of that information, how is it used within your organization, what decisions are made about your customers and is the information timely, accurate, and up-to-date? Underlying the implementation of CRM is known as Master Data Management (MDM)which predicated on having a "single" view of the particular information for an organization to access and use. This provides a much more efficient operation than consistency in improving quality while reducing operating costs, customer dissatisfaction, and improves the effectiveness of your business processes.

Read More to learn about other Cloud-based Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solutions!