IT Strategy and Management Consulting for your Future IT
PASS IT Management Consulting: How to increase productivity and the quality of all IT-centered business processes
Strategic IT is the engine that drives quality
Most businesses can considerably improve their cost and quality situation by taking the path less traveled by and saying goodbye to expensive, proprietary IT platforms and solutions. Over the last two years, our IT management consulting has succeeded in saving our customers over EUR 50 million in IT costs! Yet companies are still hesitant to abandon established products and therefore what they assume to be a safe path, and thus do not try out new courses of action such as an IT strategy with open, scalable and cost-effective platforms. The fear of making bad investments is formidable. Thanks to our Future IT approach, we identify optimization potential and minimize implementation risks on the client end. We safeguard opportunities. Several successful projects have shown that this concept works.
A HOMOGENEOUS IT LANDSCAPE
Resources are automatically used more efficiently wherever convergent systems are in use. In addition to many other positive effects, this provides for greater flexibility and reusability.
INNOVATION
Wherever new ideas are implemented faster and more simply and the time-to-market is greatly shortened, the path is clear for a company's creativity and innovation. This is one of the main keys to success.
COST SAVINGS
Open, interoperable architectures harbor enormous potential for savings: More specifically, testing and development costs are reduced thanks to the high level of reusability and convergence.
FASTER ROI
For many projects, we have been able to demonstrate that investing in a Future IT project pays off relatively quickly: To date, the ROI has ranged from five to eleven months. A proof of concept from the start provides clarity.
PROJECT MANAGEMENT OPTIMIZATION
Working more efficiently by using standards and templates, coupled with a high level of system convergence, results in low friction losses, reduces training effort, saves time and increases team power.
TRANSPARENCY AND CLARITY
Clearly defined structures and convergent technologies provide clarity. Defined standards and processes always clear the view for new optimization potential. The IT infrastructure gets mapped and can be navigated.
Future IT: Integral, comprehensive optimization of your IT shop
Our Future IT strategy consulting approach is a set of methods and technologies for performing a comprehensive analysis of your IT shop and carrying out optimization processes. This involves taking into consideration the IT infrastructure, application landscape and architecture along with IT management and business processes. In the case of Future IT, we examine the IT shop in its entirety or focus on certain key areas. After performing the analysis, we prototype, implement and verify the course of action for cutting costs and making IT architectures more open, flexible, interoperable and future-ready. This is comprehensive IT strategy consulting with an expert perspective.
How is your IT shop doing in terms of sustainability?
The FIT-Check provides you with a first indication on where you are today in terms of equipping your IT for the future: your answers to specific questions regarding architecture, implementation, software maintenance and testing, quality management, project management, etc. will show you which areas have the greatest potential for optimization.
Please answer the questions in order to get a first indication on your future IT fitness. In the preview of the evaluation ("heatmap"), you can see immediately how each individual question affects the various Key Performance Areas (KPAs). For the FIT-Check, we selected sample questions from the areas of Core Business, Vertical Business and IT Management. The KPAs to be evaluated vary from customer to customer and are compiled specifically from the PASS IT Base Reference Model.
Future IT helps the CIO avoid making the wrong decisions
The stress under which CIOs have to make decisions is characterized by many pairs of opposites
- Service performance vs. the need for change
- Standardization vs. customization
- Owner operated/proprietary development vs. outsourcing (make or buy)
- Stability vs. openness
- Application robustness vs. flexibility
- Responsiveness (traditional time-to-market) vs. desired quality
- Modularization and reuse vs. performance and component autonomy
- Convergence of technologies vs. opportunities with new technologies
- Technology independence vs. maintenance efficiency
- Additional automation requirements vs. reducing costs
Our Future IT strategy approach delivers real solution methods for finding a common ground between these seemingly opposing aspects. We are happy to help!
A HOLISTIC LOOK AT YOUR IT INFRASTRUCTURE
Over the course of six phases, we analyze, prototype, implement and verify courses of action – throughout your entire IT infrastructure – that cut costs and make IT architectures more open, interoperable and future-ready.
ACHIEVING SEEMINGLY CONFLICTING OBJECTIVES IN BUSINESS IT
Der Anspruch an die Unternehmens-IT steigt kontinuierlich. Insofern scheint es ein festgeschriebenes Gesetz zu sein, dass die Budgets mit den Anforderungen wachsen. Diesen Zusammenhang will PASS aufbrechen. Unser Ziel ist es, zu zeigen, dass selbst bei steigenden Anforderungen die IT-Kosten sinken können.
MORE PREDICTABLE ROI WITH OUR FUTURE IT STRATEGY
We would be happy to set up a one-on-one appointment with you to discuss real, practical cases in which our IT consulting resulted in ROIs ranging from 5 to 11 months as well as savings of 80 % or more compared with the initial situation for medium-sized and large customers.
SAVINGS POTENTIAL
Saying goodbye to expensive, proprietary IT platforms and solutions can help businesses considerably improve their cost and quality situation. In the past two years, our IT consulting strategy was able to save our customers over EUR 50 million.
“Our guiding principles are objectivity and neutrality. We are not bound to any specific product whatsoever.”
Hans Jörg von Schönfeldt
Head of Business Development Digital Solutions, PASS Consulting Group
- Holistic approach: analysis and implementation
- Experience: 33 years of project experience in the optimization of IT infrastructures
- Tried and tested in practice: The applied technologies and processes have been developed or undergo ongoing development, implementation and operation by PASS (plan, build, run)
- In-house research and development department (Budget: 65 % of EBITDA)
- In-house studies and benchmarks to verify statements
- Interdisciplinary teams of experts who possess technological and industry know-how
Future IT analysis phase: Recognize opportunities, identify strategies
During the opportunities analysis (phase 1), our IT strategy consulting examines the IT costs, quality and productivity (key performance indicators or KPIs) of various areas such as application specification, IT architecture, etc. (key performance areas or KPAs) and compares them with experiential and measured values and benchmarks.
Smartfield analysis: Quick wins and recognizing opportunities
During the next step of our IT management consulting (phase 2), a Smartfield Analysis is performed to determine which KPAs have the greatest impact on the KPI (cost, quality, productivity). The results illustrate the initial opportunities for improving your IT strategy – in other words: the quick wins.
This is followed by phase 3: the detailed KPA analysis involving a detailed audit of the major (or all) key performance areas, including the application specification, system operations and professional services. The results from this phase include a catalogue of measures to be taken, simulations for running through possible courses of action and cost indications for implementing optimization measures.
Future IT implementation phase: Feasibility study, optimization, and verification
The starting point for the implementation phase (phase 4) is the feasibility study or “proof of concept” (PoC). The goal here is to safeguard the opportunities identified during the Future IT analysis.
The second part is the actual implementation of the plans of action based on the PoC (phase 5). The core competence of PASS is the automation of analytics, software development, migration and testing as reflected in our various "factories". Through the purposeful, well-orchestrated use of these technologies in conjunction with our experts, the idea is to ensure efficient and high-quality implementation of the requirements detailed in the plan of action.
Verification of measures
At appropriate intervals following the project phase, PASS analyzes the current situation (phase 6). What is the impact of the measures taken during our IT strategy consulting? The key figures collected during the Smartfield Analysis are measured again for the purposes of carrying out an objective assessment of the optimization that has been achieved.
Project examples from our customers
Successfully completed projects in the sphere of our IT strategy consulting
Our Future IT approach has already been successfully applied in a variety of projects. In the context of its Smartfield Analysis phase 2, PASS has analyzed, documented, identified optimization approaches and suggested options for action in the aforementioned Key Performance Areas (KPAs).
Tourism company
- Application specification
- Application architecture
- Implementation
- Project management
- Quality management
- Professional services
2,5 months
- Migration of an application
- UI development based on the PASS Software Factory
- Interface integration
- Website integration
- Data interaction point analysis (function-oriented scope metric)
Car company
- Application software and its users
- Basic software
- Data management
- Hardware and components
1 month
- Performance optimization
- Infrastructure support
- Introduction of a customer information system
Investment bank
- Application specification
- Application architecture
- Implementation
- Project management
- Quality management
- Professional services
1,5 months
- Project Management Office (PMO)
- Cross-project program and test management
- Support in application specification
- Various advisory services
Private trading house
- Application software
- Test management
- Data management
4 days
- Test automation of the application
- Introduction of a data warehouse (DWH)
We support customers in the strategy process as well as during implementation. We analyze the actual state, survey optimization measures, set out a strategy together with the customer and implement it, for example in the form of outsourcing, IT modernization, or software development projects.
As a full service provider, we have the same demands as our customers: Our solutions must be developed and integrated taking into account a certain time-to-market, and we have a complete IT stack in-house. For that reason we must regularly improve our processes and, if need be, adjust our strategy. What we recommend to our customers we have ourselves tried out for some time in-house.
Since PASS is and will remain a neutral software company, the measures drawn up in the framework of our IT strategy consulting are usually implemented by other companies. In some cases, however, we can also carry out the implementation – for migration and outsourcing projects, for example, or with the help of our automated software development procedures.
To get started, we examine the cost, quality and productivity aspects with the help of a questionnaire which we give to the customer. After evaluating it, we present it in a one-day workshop. Beyond that, we are engaged in specific areas in which the customer suspects optimization potential, but we also investigate the customer’s entire IT infrastructure based on questionnaires. In a kick-off meeting we finally develop further optimization potential in so-called interview workshops. Together with the customer we fine-tune the resulting outcome document, on the basis of which we develop the initial action alternatives, which we present to the customer personally.
The optimization potential identified by us in the consultation will contain different levels of savings, depending on the company and the existing approaches in that company. For example, the effort expended on user interface development can be reduced from 13 to 4 person-days by using the PASS Software Factory. Millions in operating and maintenance costs can be saved by migrating legacy applications to state-of-the-art technologies. And material and process costs can be drastically reduced by moving to the electronic processing of invoices.
That depends on the specific application scenario. After completing the investigation phase we suggest various measures to the customer – especially those known as “quick wins” that are associated with zero or minimal expenditure but bring high returns. Experience has shown that the business case that we calculate jointly with the customer pays for itself after about a year.