Skillsets

• Business process engineering
• Facilitation
• Coaching & Mentoring

Technologies

Avaya, Cisco, IPC, Verizon, AT&T, BT, COLT, Sprint, PCCW, Telstra, China Telecom, Tandberg, Intercall

Technology Briefings

Case Study

Background

A major storage purchase was needed and the head of the IT infrastructure group challenged his staff and vendors to “be creative and take a longer-term view” as it related to architecture, procurement strategies, and vendors. Any significant change in architecture or vendors would need to be reviewed with the CIO and his staff. It was early December and the purchase had to be made by the end of the year.

What We Did

Given the tight timeframe, the purchase was decomposed into three parallel initiatives. The first was an architectural review of the current environment and options for an envisioned environment. The second was to source vendor proposals, and the third project was educating the CIO and his staff so they were prepared to make quick decisions.

Storage SMEs (Subject Matter Experts) were engaged for the architectural review. The engagement was timeboxed with one week for analysis and one week for brainstorming with internal staff and vendors.

Vendor proposals were made to the head of the IT Infrastructure group, his senior management team, and the server and storage teams. Through this process, the senior management of the Infrastructure group received a crash course in storage architectures and purchases.

The senior management of the IT Infrastructure group participated in creating a tutorial for the CIO and his staff. Their understanding of the opportunity helped translate techno-jargon into business-speak.

What We Achieved

Within 2 weeks all internal and external participants were engaged, excited, and contributing. Ideas were surfaced, evaluated, and quickly approved or rejected. The final procurement decision was well informed and well negotiated. The vendors were not in control of the sale and recognized the process was resulting in multiple options and possibly multiple vendors. A 78% discount was achieved.

Educating the CIO and his staff prior to the purchase recommendation resulted in a 2 day decision process with the focus shifting from understanding the problem to getting the most leverage from the solution.

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Summary