Strategic Technology Optimization
TSI has worked with dozens of leadership teams to answer several key questions:
1. Given the assortment of disparate technologies in place, what technology strategies and tactics should be pursued to improve the value of the investment in technology?
2. What are the risks to change as well as to remain status quo?
3. What strategies are being pursued by the business side and how should the use of technology align and enable the business strategies?
4. What technology governance, organization structure/roles and processes should be changed to address the "People, Process and Technology" elements holistically?
TSI’s Role
TSI
takes a unique approach by understanding an organization's business
strategy and business context as a precursor to determining how to
establish an improved technology foundation upon which the organization
can grow. Often, projects of this nature are part assessment
and
part technology strategic planning. In both cases, TSI takes
a
vendor agnostic approach to projects that will ultimately enable an
organization to extract information from dozens, if not hundreds of
disparate systems and volumes of data, often reducing their costs of
maintenance and support.
TSI has worked with most major software packages in a wide range of
technical environments and hence can quickly assess:
- How to create a common operating platform?
- What strategy should we deploy to develop a "single source of truth"?
- Is there is an application within the portfolio that will meet the organization's needs going forward?
TSI's Experience
TSI’s consultants have experience in many industries to develop creative technology strategies with validated recommendations that allow our clients to move forward towards a more cohesive, business-oriented technology strategy. These projects enable our clients to utilize their current software more extensively and/or evaluate improved software vendors and products including on-premises, software as a service (SAAS) and OpenSource solutions.
As
TSI has no financial relationship with any software vendors, TSI can
assist with the recommendations within our strategies are
generally involved with 5-10 projects like this each year.
Technology strategy projects may also result in the need how IT operates and TSI has been involved with :
- Insourcing and outsourcing components of IT - based on the desired end results of the organization (but not merely based on "what others are doing")
- Aligning IT's business analysis and project management functions and roles with that of its internal business customers
- Improving the number of disparate vendors IT works with
- Defining key IT performance metrics and aligning compensation with these targets
- Educating the business side of the complexities surrounding technology development.
- Managing a major financial system implementation involving Oracle Rel 12
- Managing a CRM implementation of Salesforce.com
- Designing optimal DDL (Data Definition Language) and DML (Data Modeling/Manipulation Language) through tools like C/A ERwin and Embarcadero ER/Studio
- Managing a major MicroSoft Financial implementation involving Dynamics
- Efficiently coding ETL (Extract/Transform/Load) stored procedures.
- Managing a major MicroSoft Financial implementation involving Dynamics AX
- Extracting data from the various data partners and homogenizing the results (e.g. standardize product coding across data partners, aligning periodicity, and creating product and geographic hierarchies).
TSI’s specialty is optimizing the integration of data from a variety of sources including POS feeds, warehouse data, and item and customer masters. This includes creating cross-coding schemas, data quality checks, data hierarchy rollups, and data projections (if needed). We have experience in a variety of EDI (Electronic Data Interface) formats including: 110, 204, 210, 214, 820, 846, 856, 888, 940, 943, 944, 945, 947. TSI also has experience in WMS (Warehouse Management Software - e.g. RedPrairie) and TMS (Transportation Management Software - e.g. Manugistics) with a special emphasis on loading data into and extracting data out of these applications.
In the past 5 years, TSI’s consultants have been involved with lengthy SAP engagements including large Foods and Pharmaceutical companies. These SAP engagements have been related to Supply-Chain applications involving the collection, cleansing, and integration of data from various sources, transformation via ETL tools to/from various SAP modules especially related to Material Management (MM), Vendor (LFA/LFB), AP/GL, and FICO related transactions. TSI’s consultants have also been involved in creating SAP ABAP program specifications for specific customized transformations and worked with off-shore SAP programming staff.
From our experience listed above, TSI is also well qualified to assist in report optimization especially across different platforms. Deployment examples include Crystal Reports Server, MicroStrategy, and Microsoft Reporting Services via Sharepoint Services.
Examples
Client: Mid-sized Fitness Equipment Manufacturer and Distributor
Project Challenge: This organization needed help implementing Oracle 11i Financials, Order Management modules. They needed assistance developing efficient process from which to use as the basis for the configuration of the module.
TSI’s Role: TSI helped design and facilitate the design of many key processes. TSI also played a co-project management role for this implementation and helped drive resolving complex flaws caused by Oracle’s release of software that was not fully tested.
Client: Mid-sized Durable Goods Manufacturer and Distributor
Project Challenge: This organization needed help adapting to two important changes: significant growth and inefficient processes caused by a poor Oracle implementation. As a result, the organization had trouble with innovation, profitability, quality and customer service.
TSI’s Role: We worked with the Executive team to understand and clarify the organization's direction. Then, with an operational team, we analyzed and improved its current processes, defined operational and technology recommendations, and implemented the recommendations with the highest ROI. We recommended a mid-tier ERP/Financial system implementation, and assisted with the requirements evaluation, vendor selection, contract negotiation and project management of the implementation. We also created a data warehouse and assisted with the data extraction and cleanup to make this warehouse useful.