Recently I was commissioned to work with a well-established New Zealand organisation that provides professional services into the C-Suite and mid-level management layers of New Zealand's largest and medium-sized organisations.
Without having to mention who they are, it is safe to say that they reflect a profile that is similar to organisations of their size that struggle to address what they know to be the proverbial "low hanging [systems and processes] fruit".
The Initial Brief
The initial brief was to help them get one of their more pressing projects over the line. They had been trying over the last three years to implement a core business system to replace their ailing and dangerously unsupported legacy system.
I remember the CEO saying to me as an addition to my tasks "... but Rob, we also want you to take a long hard look at how the business currently operates and suggest any improvements we can make." The assignment was signed up for a year.
Having made the move to Cloud-based infrastructure and applications, the CEO had already helped the organisation move toward the "any time, anywhere" paradigm. The problem now lay in how their team was using these tools and the business processes which lay underneath. Inconsistency and some confusion existed.
G-Suite had been deployed primarily as a mail and calendar management tool set. They were also using an unrelated Cloud-based service to store significant amounts of their documentation and organisational artefacts. Locating them effectively was another thing altogether however. Consolidation of some of the systems and platforms was first on the agenda.
What They Found
What we also found was that, with a little imagination, and a few extra free-to-use cloud-based applications - including those they were already paying for in their G-Suite environment; we could provide a seamless, business-wide tool set that supported collaboration, efficiency and getting the job done. And mostly for free.
By employing techniques such as Design Thinking and the Ideation process, we were able to deploy working solutions that were easily adopted and relatively inexpensive to implement. Our biggest challenge? Containing some of the enthusiasm that started growing as the "lights went on" when people started appreciating the possibilities that were opening up to them.
There are a surprising number of affordable and capable tools out there. As described above, with a little imagination and experience; some pretty elegant solutions can be assembled which are secure, stable and which "hit the nail on the head". All this without either breaking the bank or leaving large portions of functionality unused and -- as a result -- wasted.
IT Can Be Easier Than You Think
As we progressed through the "What problem are we trying to solve now?" process, we regularly discovered a suitable and affordable answer to what will solve it. As long as it was:
Reputable;
Easy to acquire;
Easy to learn;
Easy to use;
Able to interact with what was already in place;
Available as a cloud-based offering; and
Ideally for free.
We were interested. Eventually, as we looked back at what had been deployed, and the problems that had been solved; we acknowledged the simplicity and pragmatism with which these solutions arrived. And they live on - being used by the team as if they had always been there.
Operating costs? Having used a combination of subscription-based and free offerings, each solution that entered the operations of the business -- were all appropriately sized. We paid for what we needed. Nothing (including functionality) was wasted or left unused. Right-sizing solutions - not people.
One can be amazed at how simple, but effective, a combination of all these solutions ended up becoming 'Sub-systems Synergy'.
If you would like to find out more about how we went about delivering such an outcome, please get in touch.
