Typical Challenges
Problem – without vCIO software
As a small-mid size (SMB) company you are facing the following IT problems (often solved with a vCIO in city):
Insatiable Demand
The requests for IT are overloading what your team can realistically deliver. There is no central prioritization process and IT projects are started (and stopped) randomly versus strategically.
Wasteful Duplication
Dedicated software applications for each group (sales, marketing, HR, support, engineering, accounting, etc.) often have overlapping features, service the same processes (HR needs employee data—but it’s in the accounting app already) and maintains the same data (sales and customer service but each has a different system). Each system is EXPENSIVE—but they could be combined.
No Coordination
Each department has its unique system needs and each is treated like an island. Little centralized planning is done that identifies common BUSINESS problems which require similar IT solutions. It takes an “informed” vCIO leader who can identify and coordinate the common critical needs.
No Investment Insights
IT often doesn’t know what systems are being purchased. Renegade departments start IT projects and purchase non-budgeted SaaS products on their own. Often, they abandoned the project, but the company in City keeps paying for the SaaS—ouch.
Alternatives
Meeting about your Meetings
You could continue to attend dozens of “the same different meetings” to coordinate mountains of tech requests.
Remain Stuck in Excel Hell
You could try to use multiple manually created spreadsheets to track applications, projects, and costs. Unfortunately, they are seldom updated, not shared and error-prone.
Use “Sophisticated” Project Management
Of course, IT has project management software – but it takes a master’s degree to understand. You need something simple, on the ground, in real-time.
The Big Question
So, how can you shape demands for IT in city, reduce costly duplication, easily coordinate between teams, and know all the planned and unplanned investments, without “mo meetings,” being stuck in Excel Hell, or relying on tools that require a master’s degree to run?
Perhaps you should consider Virtual CIO (vCIO) Management Software.
Solution
There are four main reasons to consider vCIO Management Software
- Prioritizes demand
- Stops duplication
- Helps coordination
- Provides data-driven insights
Let’s consider each of these in detail
1. Prioritizes demand
Make the best technology investments using real-time data. Stop the never-ending text, emails, phone calls, and endless contentious meetings to reach a decision.
Maintain Demand Register
Maintains a central register of all ideas and requests for technology. Provides a repeatable process to capture all stakeholders’ ideas (demands) for changes to the IT environment and enables demand assessment.
Perform Demand Assessments
Links ideas to the strategies they impact and the business processes and capabilities they affect. Enables management to see the “big picture.” Evaluate the impact of requests early in the process and identify the business owners, and the approval process and capture the anticipated benefits.
Generate Impact Analysis
Visualizes the request for change by graphically displaying the people, capabilities, processes, applications, technologies, and information impacted by the proposed change. Enables management to assess each request for technology using trade-off analysis and make investment choices based on pre-established criteria.
2. Stops Duplication
Stops the wasteful duplication of applications, technology, and IT systems. Optimizes your technology portfolio that performs the same or similar functions to save money, reduce IT complexity and streamline processes.
Business Application Inventory
Track all key business application attributes including contacts, life cycle, risk, value, and alignment. Determine gaps in the application, focuses investment dollars on the applications with the maximum return.
Administer Target Retirement Candidates
Administer the utility of technology using a lifecycle that tracks the stages of the technology (tolerate, invest, migrate, eliminate). Retire duplicate and unused applications to save money, reduce complexity and streamline processes.
Aligns Projects with Programs
Links individual projects to a business initiative (i.e., reduce paper waste, etc.) so management can monitor which projects are contributing the most to a program’s progress.
Monitor Inflight Projects
Maintains a central project inventory that monitors the health and status of projects. Includes instant reporting on project status, state, and health –enables easy coordination of resources assigned to projects.
3. Easy Coordination
vCIO software improves technology trade-off discussions using a repeatable and disciplined process to make better-informed decisions, remove roadblocks and assess business value before the money is spent.
Aligns Business Drivers with Programs
Maintains a central program inventory that links Business Drivers with Programs (business initiatives), highlighting which programs are delivering the most business value.
4. Data-Driven Insights
Maintains a unified view of your entire technology landscape. vCIO software includes real-time dashboard data enable the right decision to be made on the spot. Increases productivity while reducing risk by using simple “what-if” data analytics.
Real-time IT Health Dashboard
Visualization of the most current data using graphs and charts. Uses Gartner’s TIME lifecycle rankings (Tolerate, Invest, Migrate, Eliminate) to identify emerging trends, monitor efficiency, and eliminate redundancies while maximizing reuse.
Export data to Excel
Exports data to spreadsheets format for easy sharing and offline analysis.
Generate Detailed Asset Investment Report
Financial reports that detail the true cost of the entire technology landscape that is reported to management enabling simple investment rebalancing and asset management.
Now you’ve seen the general advantages of the Virtual CIO Management software. Unfortunately, not all vCIO management software is the same…
Challenges – Some vCIO Software is NOT the Same
Some alternatives have serious challenges…
Some don’t include business strategy
When aligning technology with the business strategy some systems cannot link the relevant components automatically–forcing you to maintain it manually.
Missing program and project vitals
Many don’t have detailed project data & analytics, so you have no visibility into overall project health. You’re left in the dark without a way to improve.
No Portfolios
Few have an application portfolio management inventory or a service catalog, making it is impossible to link technical infrastructure to the business applications that it supports.
No Business Intelligence
Most systems lack customizable dashboards or a facility to modify or add unique dashboard panels.
Too Hard to Use
Most vCIO software is difficult to use and requires deep technical modeling knowledge to operate (steep learning curve).
OK – What Next?
So, how do you ensure your vCIO software
- Includes your business strategy
- Isn’t missing program and project vitals
- Includes portfolio management
- Has easy-to-see dashboards to leverage business intelligence
- All within an easy-to-use platform that is extremely easy to learn?
Perhaps you should consider…
Five Main Reasons to Buy in City
These are the 5 main reasons to consider GetInSync for SMB:
- BEST Strategy Execution Management
- BEST Program and Project Portfolio Management
- BEST Application & Technology Portfolio Management
- BEST Business Intelligence & Reporting
- EASIEST to use for SMBs
These are some bold claims–let’s look at each of these in detail…
1. BEST Strategy Execution Management
Includes common features like demand management and impact analysis which helps small and medium-sized businesses determine the right IT strategy. Unlike alternatives that focus on speeds and feeds using geek speak, GetInSync produces strategy using business language and manages technology as a business investment.
Document Strategic Business Drivers
Simply put, business drivers form the criteria that test investment decisions focusing scarce resources on what matters most. GetInSync maintains key business drivers ensuring that technology planning is aligned with what matters most.
Business-IT Strategic Planning
Business and IT alignment leverages information technology effectively to achieve the desired business strategy. GetInSync helps small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) cut through the noise and invest in the highest value companywide improvements.
IT Financial Management
Enables team members to maintain key financial metrics and record the annual investment for the entire IT spend, which puts you in control by using plain business language and dollars and cents.
High-level Project Planning
Track project by linking all the critical interrelationships between programs, project, applications, IT Services, People, and processes. Avoids unexpected consequences, removes risk, and eliminates disruption to operations.
Program and Project Vitals
Track programs and their projects, status, budget, schedule, scope, and resources. Everyone in the organization can quickly see potential problems and quickly react so projects stay on course.
2. BEST Program and Project Portfolio Management
Includes common features like tracking project stages, project objectives and project timelines which are all needed to help small and medium-sized businesses prioritize their investments. However, unlike alternative applications that overcomplicate the management of programs and projects, GetInSync simplifies the process.
Programs & Project Repository
Programs, projects and their related objectives and key performance indicators are maintained in one, online, single database. Enabling anyone in City with the need-to-know to have real-time read access to their respective managerial data.
3. BEST Application & Technology Portfolio Management
Includes common features like technology inventory and service catalog which are needed to help small and medium-size businesses manage the critical technical infrastructure. Unlike alternatives, GetInSync ties business applications to processes – enabling owners to spot opportunities to tackle process challenges.
Maintain Processes Supported by Application
Links processes to the business applications using a standard process reference framework. Direct investments to the highest value improvements.
Application Integration Data Flow
Tracks key data exchanged between applications. Documents where important information is stored, promotes data sharing, and streamline operations.
4. BEST Business Intelligence & Reporting
Includes common features like exporting data to MS Excel and dashboard which help small and medium-sized businesses collaborate and coordinate activities. Unlike alternatives, GetInSync provides user-customizable dashboards enabling drill-down to instantly shift from an overview of data to a more detailed and granular view.
Multimatrix Report View
Enables “What-if” scenario planning using pivot tables and offline data analytics. Easily share data with others and collaborate, spot potential opportunities and connections among and between investments.
Real-time IT Health Dashboard
Visualize relationships between the business score, technology score and the criticality of applications, programs, and projects. Quickly assess where misalignment between the business and IT occurs using easy-to-read bubble charts and business over IT factors.
Generate Detailed Asset Investment Report
Track and measure the dependencies, constraints, and support for each investment in the portfolio. Enables business owners to rank investment factors using money as the common denominator.
5. EASIEST for SMBs
There are numerous vCIO programs for multi-billion-dollar organizations in city, but they are too expensive, overly complicated, and require courses to learn, or a fleet of consultants—way overkill for the small companies that need the same information.
Easiest Onboarding
The GetInSync method uses a learn-by-doing approach walks you through every step of the framework and implements the method along the way, saving time and money.
Easiest to Learn
The web-based design is (really) simple to use with no learning curve.
Easiest to Buy
Simple monthly payment terms. Cancel anytime, no long-term contract.
What’s holding you back?
Now that you can see some of the advantages of GetInSync what’s holding you back? The following are common questions:
How Do We Get the Data?
Using a combination of discovery agents, imports, and data entry we pull data in within days versus weeks and months.
How Long Does it Take?
GetInSync is completed in four phases over 12 weeks. Everything is documented.
How Do We Get Training?
Using a case study approach, we provide one-on-one workshops that prepare.
What if We Don’t Have Anyone That Can Do This?
Existing resources almost always exist–we’ll show you how to find them.
How Does It Compare?
Please click HERE to see a comparative matrix.
Old life – Dilbert
Grumpy finance sends a “friendly” reminder that payroll is supposed to be upgraded next week. Your stomach churns when you realize the payroll upgrade never made it on your project whiteboard.
Your IT business analyst just reminded you that she’ll be on maturity leave for the next two months—starting tomorrow.
Your CFO sends you ANOTHER email reminding you that IT budget forecast is due before the end of the week. You read the email on your cell—while trying to fix the fan on a VP’s laptop.
Just as a text shows up asking why the CEO’s screen is asking for a “ransom payment”
And somebody just walked by your door to remind you of the MANDATORY diversity training meeting at 8 am sharp… you’re at the end of your rope!!
Your life SUCKS!
New life
You’re out of the server room (stopped putting out today’s fires) and into the board room. You now have GetInSync, and a 360-degree view of your business is on the big screen, and everything is there!
You confidently collaborate and prioritize business programs and the IT projects driving them. All the projects, requests, and budgets are visible–and everyone is talking!
The data tells the truth, the redundancies and issues are self-evident (and cancel the $50k app that’s clearly already covered).
The team can see in real-time “real” costs and forecast the shortfall. Ahh haa. The CEO requested finance increase the budget to cover it.
All smiles, all happy—your credibility is retained. Life is good!!
Contact Me Please
Please complete the information below and we will contact you soon to answer any questions, give a demo, or a quote. Thank you!
