Getting to the delivery stage for a large-scale project requires a great deal of up-front work.

By the time it gets to the point where a delivery team comes into play, a company could have spent one million dollars over the course of a year. Whether it is a consulting company or an internal organization, the effects of what the delivery organization produces will determine if the project was successful. This could be a highly technical software project or a business process development project. If you do not deliver what was agreed to in the timeframe expected, the chances for additional business is remote. That is why the delivery organization has to be in sync with the sales group or internal organization requesting the work on the front end and the support team on the back end. If the support team has difficulty maintaining the product, costs will increase, personnel will get frustrated and leave, and the client will be quite upset. 

So what does the profile look like for a delivery director? Look for it in my next blog entry. 

What is Delivery Management?

Delivery Management is a much broader scale of project management. It is the organization, administration, and supervision of the people, processes, and technologies, which when combined into a comprehensive plan, provides the business and technical functions needed to successfully achieve what a client expects to receive. The person responsible for this type of work is referred to as the delivery manager, delivery director, delivery vice president, or account manager depending on the organization. For purposes of this blog, the term delivery director will be used. 

There are many likenesses between a project manager and delivery director. Whereas the project manager will get into more of the details, the delivery director oversees what is going on at a higher level and across more areas of responsibility. The delivery director is typically a more experienced individual that gets assigned to the larger, more visible projects. This individual also has more direct involvement with management at a higher level such as with the client, third party vendors, executive steering committees, board of directors, etc. The delivery director anticipates the actions, thoughts, and directions of the client, and manages the client without them really knowing it. 

Let's begin by understanding what delivery is all about. There are many stages in the business cycle such as getting a lead, turning the lead into a prospect, working towards the sale, closing the sale, and then making the magic happen - delivering what was promised. Now some of the readers may say they do not have to worry about this cycle because they work in a company where they get a request to do the work and their management tells them what to do. In some cases it may be that simple, for example, very small projects such as those under a work-month. However, if you look a little closer, you will see there is a lot of internal selling going on at various levels. 

Below is an example of a scenario of what may occur behind the scenes. As you will see, there is a great deal of work that has to be done before it gets to the delivery stage. 

- Don, the VP of Finance for Southwest Vending was having lunch with an old friend (Lori) who heads up a Finance department in another company. 

- Lori explained to Don that they just implemented a new application that allows the customers to review their records via the web, which has saved Lori's company thousands of dollars. 

- Don believed that his company would benefit from a similar application. After lunch, Don called in his department heads to tell them that he wants the same type of application that Lori has, but better. 

- To get the project started, Don assigned Randy to serve as the Project Sponsor. In this role, Randy has to figure out what is needed to make this happen so he calls his friend Mark, the Chief Information Officer (CIO) in the Information Technology (IT) department. 

- Randy and Mark discuss the situation so that Mark can get a better understanding of what Randy and his boss are looking for from a business perspective and also determine how much of an impact it would be to the IT area. Mark tells Randy that this is something his department can handle but to get this officially started, Randy will have to fill out a request for services so that the project can be estimated and approved by upper management. 

- Randy is not familiar with this process so Mark has him work with Kristin, his Application Manager in charge of financial computer systems.

Whether it is a third party or internal organization, many of the same steps occur in advance of the development. Depending on the actual need for the application, the funds available, and the degree of politics that take place in the company, it could take a year before the development actually starts. 

Cloud Advisory and Infrastructure in High tree Consulting

Designed and delivered well, Information Technology (IT) contributes to growth, profit and competitive advantage. Designed or implemented badly, it can burden and constrain an organisation.

We make a difference to our clients by combining deep industry knowledge and technology expertise to develop and implement strategies that deliver real business value from IT assets.

Our Technology advisory practice helps our clients to realise the business value from IT by addressing a range of challenges including:

IT strategy and alignment
Enterprise architecture
Cloud Advisory and Infrastructure
IT sourcing advisory
IT performance and cost improvement
Client side project management

How to utilize the Digital utility transformation

“From grid management to customer relations, an effective digital strategy can revolutionize all areas of the power and utility business. It’s at the heart of the energy transformation challenge.”

Digital transformation is at the top of companies agendas and key digital technologies such as data mining and mobile customer engagement are strategically important for power and utility companies. But successful capture of the benefits of digitization has been tough for many organizations.

Digital is affecting not just the way companies face their customers or the changing dynamics of that relationship but is also bringing deep changes in the core operational activities of utilities. It’s important that power and utilities companies ask hard questions about their digital strategies.

More than 80 senior executives and experts from 12 different countries gathered for PwC’s round table discussion on the digital utility of the future and the strategies that companies are implementing to get there.

Read our summary to find out more:

making moves along the digital transformation road
digital promise and reality
different customer expectations in a digital world
delivering digital securely
digital in the world of the ‘internet of things’

Understanding your business needs to find solutions to your business and technology problems

Business analysis is the foundation for good IT design, planning and business-IT alignment. Lacking an understanding of the business need, it is virtually impossible to craft an appropriate solution.

Our team of business analysts can articulate your requirements in variety of contexts including a request for proposal (RFP), an internal software development, a business processes re-engineering project, or a broader effort to align project scopes with the business’s objectives.

How PwC can help
PwC can help you to better understand your requirements to make cost-effective and business aligned business and technology changes. The team at High tree consulting can help with:

RFP development, management and evaluation support: We can provide support through the entire procurement lifecycle. Using our ALIGN™ framework, we can accelerate your procurement by developing the business requirements and RFP requirements at the same time. And, through the use of our RFP templates, service catalogues and evaluation tools, we can help you set up a fair, and transparent vendor evaluation process.
Managing requirements throughout the systems development lifecycle: We help you to implement the governance, processes and tools required to successfully manage requirements for a systems development and implementation including initial requirements capture, requirements change management and traceability to testing and delivered functionality.
Project business alignment and scope review: With an understanding of your requirements, we can help you to understand how a project aligns with your overall business objectives and what capabilities are mandatory or optional to achieve your goals. We can help you better understand and capture the needs of your stakeholders to support system selection, business case development, business decisions and IT strategy development.
Business process modeling: Our trained business process modeling advisors can facilitate the timely and accurate capture of your current and future state business processes in the context of a business process automation, or business process re-engineering project leveraging industry process modeling standards such as UML or BPMN.
Business analysis training: We can help you improve the effectiveness of your organization’s business analysis capabilities. Our business analysis advisors can work with you to deliver a customized training program including hands-on application to an existing project. We can also coach your team on leading practices in light of recent trends. For instance, owing to mergers and a search for internal cost savings, many organizations are moving to consolidate and centralized their services -- a situation that often gives rise to competing and conflicting requirements. How to resolve such conflicts in the context of building a service oriented / web services architecture is the topic of a recent course taught by PwC professionals.

Improving the effectiveness of your IT operations with High tree Consulting

High tree consulting can help you mature your IT operations from a reactive (“firefighting”) mode of management to a proactive orientation that can improve IT service delivery, cost efficiency and customer satisfaction.

We can help structure your organization with the right skills, capacity, processes and governance to proactively manage the day-to-day IT operations in support of your overall business priorities.

Our team can also assist you to categorize and understand your IT spending, to benchmark your spending against comparable and leading organizations and to identify opportunities for cost reduction and service improvement.

How PwC can help

High Tree Consulting provides greater strategic value from your IT investments in the following ways:

Service management improvement. Using industry standards such as ITIL and COBIT and PwC’s Tiered Services Management approach, we can assess your service delivery, service management proficiency, and workforce to assess gaps between the current IT function and leading industry practices. We can then work with you to design and implement new processes to address identified gaps and provide training to improve your organizations capability maturity.
IT spend analysis. We can benchmark your organization against comparable and leading organizations to understand if your investment in IT is yielding appropriate results. Using our IT Comparative Analysis and Total Spend Analysis™ (TSA) tools, IT Service Catalogue, IT Chart of Accounts and industry benchmarks, we can help quantify your IT spending and rate it according to impact on business objectives and risk. Our team can assist you to categorize and understand your IT spending and to identify opportunities for cost reduction and service improvement.

Helping your programs and projects succeed

The information technology (IT) project and portfolio management team at high tree consulting can assist you in implementing proven methods to help your business meet its goals.

How PwC can help

Our experienced team combines industry knowledge with competencies in a variety of areas such as risk and controls, information technology, regulatory standards, and process improvement..

We can help your business with:

Program and portfolio management
Program governance/capability coaching
PMO execution
Project recovery/remediation
Project and program risk reviews/maturity assessments
Contact us and find out how we can help you coordinate your projects and align them with your overall business goals.

Process Involving Technology Advisory

Technology is one of the largest expenditures for most organizations. It is a critical component of today's business infrastructure and at the core of many customer service, productivity, risk management and cost reduction initiatives.

But technology spending is often questioned and with good reason. Research reveals that 10% to 20% of a typical company's technology budget is wasted or used unwisely and just 32% of projects are delivered on time, on budget, and with the required features.

While executives are uncomfortable with the current situation, many are unsure what to do because of the lack of relevant information needed to evaluate technology decisions, or to measure technology spending and performance.

How PwC can help

PricewaterhouseCoopers is a leader in technology advisory services. We provide the following four core services:

Strategy

Our multi-disciplinary professionals understand the business, technology and industry drivers that are critical to making strategic decisions.

Whether your organization is merging with another organization or is seeking a longer term strategic plan, we can help you develop a blueprint and roadmap that aligns your technology investments with your business priorities while managing related risks and compliance issues. We do this through our expertise in:

IT Strategy and Governance
Enterprise Architecture
IT Merger Integration

Best Technology Advisory in Chennai

Here at High tree consulting , we know how hard running a small business can be.  That is why we offer technology related business consultation services as part of our service to your company.  It is not good enough to just provide support for your technology.  Helping you to make the strategic decisions about what technology your company should or could be using will keep your business efficient and profitable.  We will work with you to strategically plan and keep your business’s technology on the right track from our first meeting.

We will assign a dedicated Virtual Chief Information Officer (VCIO) to work with you to plan, select and implement the right technology in your business.  We’ll help you choose the correct software, customer and vendor interfaces, security and privacy policies, disaster recovery plans and internal systems to improve employee and business productivity.  We guide you on all technology issues and help you stay on target with your business goals.  We provide the knowledge to keep you focused on your business and not stressing about technology.

Some examples of accomplishments of our VCIO services are:

Improvement to order receipt through EDI transactions and implementation of order processing workflow for a jewelry business
Customized and automated order processing for a local restaurant’s Holiday bakery purchasing program
Development of disaster preparedness and recovery policy for medical practice
Implementation of HIPAA survey and implementation of privacy policy for medical practice
Migration to Cloud based infrastructure to enhance mobility and remote access for all employees
Expansion of the use of existing software application to improve efficiency of mobile technicians

Process management Consultants

Business process redesign (BPR) examines the efficiency and effectiveness of a company's most critical processes. It is a key enabler to deliver the highest-quality of service, in the most productive way, at the most competitive cost and time to output.

Bain works with each client to prioritize key processes based on the value at stake. For each priority process we develop a view of the current state based on operational data, using detailed process maps and analysis to help identify major gaps. We then work together with a cross-functional client team to define a series of principles that will guide the solution generation phase, and create a vision of the future state of each process from the ground up, along with the roadmap to achieve the near and long term results.

We work very closely with our clients in this type of project, enlisting a team from all the functional areas impacted at the leadership and the solution generation level. This allows us to eliminate waste, unnecessary wait times, reports, handovers and sign-offs, while ensuring the integrity of the process.