Information Technology Advisory Service
DATA ANALYTICS IMPLEMENTATION
With continuous access to data and trends, your business can make quick, informed decisions that accelerate your goals. But legacy analytics processes can’t handle large volumes of data effectively and economically. To keep up with new and evolving business objectives, you need technologies that make valuable information accessible faster, across your organization.
CACS supports businesses on their data analytics journeys by preparing the data and the environment, as well as applying different types of analytics to provide businesses with actionable insights.
CACS’s team sets up a data governance strategy and develops rules and policies to ensure high data quality and proper master data and metadata management. We extract traditional and big data from multiple external and internal sources and clean it to create a solid foundation for future insights.
Applied to various business areas, an analytics solution contributes to fact-based decision-making.
helps to understand customers’ preferences, measure their response to promotions, as well as to price and product combinations.
helps to measure the success of marketing activities, identify market trends, benchmark against competitors, and analyze a product portfolio.
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helps to check accounts by type and country, latest opportunities and wins, product performance and more.
helps to conduct a complete customer analysis: segmentation, engagement with products, basket analysis, customer journey analysis, forecast customer demand, analyze the performance of categories, brands and SKUs, implement ‘you-may-also-like-it’ functionality.
helps to conduct plan/actual analysis, monitor strategic, departmental and individual metrics and always be up-to-date with the progress achieved.
helps to solve specific financial tasks like effective cash flow and working capital management, as well as contribute to establishing a true partnership between business managers and CFOs.
helps to measure staff turnover, identify the ways of fostering engagement and improve employee productivity, conduct recruiting analysis from different perspectives, as well as enable talent management analytics.
helps to improve business processes, assess supplier- and vendor-related risks, forecast demand and optimize inventory.
helps to optimize production, assure product quality, monitor equipment utilization and foster predictive maintenance.
helps to produce audit exception reports based on internal control policies. In this instance, Analytics equates the Computer Assisted Audit Technique (CAAT)
helps to validate the completeness and accuracy of various revenue lines.
IT DUE DILIGENCE REVIEW
IT is today an important driver within the company and in the age of digitalisation is increasingly becoming a key to success. IT due diligence is designed to identify opportunities and risks and make preparations to enable decision-makers to derive measures. A due diligence assessment of an organization’s IT function is often required by investors, as part of a merger or acquisition. Technical due diligence may also be required from time to time by the owners of a business, to ensure a better understanding of the opportunities, costs, and risks involved in the IT function. In either case, there are benefits to having a specialized and independent third party perform the technical assessment.
In the case of acquisitions or mergers, investors often treat technical due diligence as part of the general activities performed by the accounting team. Although there is independence, this can be a mistake if the professionals involved do not have in-depth knowledge of IT or routine experience conducting IT-specific due diligence.
In the case of an internal assessment, the business owners may assign the job to the IT organization or to consultants who work with the IT group on a day-to-day basis. Although this approach involves IT specialists, they are not independent due diligence consultants and have a vested interest in the outcome of the IT assessment.
Clearly then, the responsibility for technical due diligence should be assigned to an IT consulting firm that has both the specialized expertise as well as the independence to ensure that the job is done right.
Our IT due diligence consulting service evaluates the current state of the organization’s IT systems, IT infrastructure, people and processes, identifies opportunities for cost savings, assesses risks, and outlines scenarios for future systems.
IT PROJECT MANAGEMENT
Complex IT projects can fall victim to substantial risk. Unclear focus on milestones can trigger missed deadlines. Unforeseen technical glitches can cause a solution to fall short of user expectations. Even minor implementation gaps can impact your organization’s core business and bottom line.
Whether you’re implementing new technical solutions, migrating from one platform to another or conducting security audits and assessments, outsourced IT project management delivers the technical support and project leadership you need, when you need it. This is most critical if your organization lacks a project management office or requires additional bench strength for specific initiatives.
Our customized approach to IT project management ensures that your IT project aligns with your organization’s overall vision, mission, priorities, goals and culture. With expertise and skill gained from years of technical experience, our certified professionals quickly and accurately establish project scope, milestones, timing and roles.With the CACS team in your corner, rest easy knowing your organization’s critical IT projects will be successfully completed, on time and on budget.
Features of IT project management
- Proactive risk monitoring and contingency planning
- Flexible engagement model with project management and technical consulting resources available on a one-time or limited-duration basis
- Experts in agile and traditional Project Management Institute methodologies
- Diverse staffing options to meet your specific business challenges
Benefits of IT project management
- Focus on strategic initiatives rather than project management
- Implement IT projects on time and on budget
- Accelerate deployment of new products and services
- Ensure your critical initiatives stay on track and on budget with proactive risk monitoring and contingency planning
- Empower IT staff to perform ongoing production support via systematic knowledge transfer
SOFTWARE SELECTION AND VENDOR EVALUATION
Enterprise systems such as enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), supply chain management (SCM), and HR/human capital management (HCM) have promised great benefits. Few companies today can remain competitive without implementing enterprise software functionality and capabilities.
For most applications, organizations no longer need to build large custom systems. Commercial software is now available for horizontal applications, such as accounting systems, ERP systems, CRM systems, and also for industry-specific systems in nearly every industry sector.
Challenges in System Selection
However, evaluating, selecting, and implementing a new enterprise system is becoming more and more difficult. The underlying technologies are changing. Some systems look good on the surface but may not be the best fit for specific industries. Others may not provide flexibility for the future. Still others may be overkill for small and midsize businesses. Vendor viability, software reliability, and ease of implementation must also be considered.
Finally, there have been many mergers and acquisitions among enterprise software vendors since the turn of the millennium, and it is not always clear whether a particular system is really part of the surviving vendor’s product road map for the future. This is especially the case when evaluating solutions from vendors that have done major acquisitions, such as Oracle, SAP, Infor, Microsoft Dynamics, Sage, Epicor, and others.
Cloud-based systems add another level of complexity to the decision. Is the vendor’s cloud ERP offering really software as a service (SaaS)? Or is it merely the vendor’s traditional on-premises ERP now offered in a hosted data center as a managed service? And, does it matter? How do cloud solutions, such as Salesforce.com, Workday, Oracle NetSuite, Plex, FinancialForce, Sage Intacct, Acumatica, and others, compare with traditional vendors offering cloud-versions of their solutions?
Choosing the right enterprise system requires an organized approach: assessing business processes, building the business case, analyzing key requirements, screening vendors, and organizing demonstrations.
Computer Audit Control and Security Associates LTD is the right choice for independent consulting in enterprise software selection and vendor evaluation.
Our methodology is focused and effective according to the following principles.
The new system should not just replicate old ways of doing business. Our approach begins with business process framing to assess current business processes, comparing them to better business practices, understanding how the business is changing, what the new system must do to support the future business.
In understanding your business, our software selection consultants focus on differentiators: the things that make your organization different from others and things that make enterprise software vendors different from one another. We structure these into a concise Request for Information (RFI) to use in our initial vendor qualification. The Request for Proposal (RFP) comes near the end of the process, after you’ve determined the finalist
Many buyers make the mistake of starting their software selection projects by talking to vendors. Our software selection consultants, on the other hand, shorten the list of candidate vendors in a three-step qualification funnel that gets you to the right solution without taking up inordinate amounts of time from your project team.
Too many software projects fail, not because the customer chooses the wrong system but because the implementation consulting firm is not qualified. Our vendor introduction and reference-checking phases ensure that you not only have the right system but the right system implementation consultants as well.
Because we do not sell software or partner with technology vendors for implementation services, our software selection consultants have the independence and objectivity necessary to give unbiased advice. We sit on your side of the table only.
Nearly all of the free “software evaluation tools” are marketing websites in disguise. They make their money by selling your contact information to vendors as sales leads. In contrast, CACS Associates LTD only provides management consulting services. We are not in the business of generating leads for vendors.
IT IMPLEMENTATION PROJECT QUALITY ASSURANCE
Quality has long been a concern of businesses, as it should be for systems analysts in the analysis and design of information systems. The user of the information system is the single most important factor in establishing and evaluating its quality. It is far less costly to correct problems in their early stages than it is to wait until a problem is articulated through user complaints or crises. The three approaches to quality assurance through software engineering are (1) securing total quality assurance by designing systems and software with a top-down, modular approach; (2) documenting software with appropriate tools; and (3) testing, maintaining, and auditing software
The process of ensuring that the information system is operational and then allowing users to take over its operation for use and evaluation is called implementation. Implementation concerns moving computer power to individual users by shifting computer power and responsibility to groups and individuals throughout the business with the help of distributed computing, cloud computing, and service-oriented architecture; training users and making sure that each user understands any new roles they must take on because of the new information system; choosing a conversion strategy; providing proper security, privacy, and disaster plans; and evaluating the new or modified information system.
IT POLICY DEVELOPMENT AND GOVERNANCE
Many IT teams struggle with the organizational and management aspects of their operations. Differences in departmental goals and cultures can impede the potential for IT to fully contribute to the company’s business or mission objectives. Fully actualizing an effective IT department requires much more than understanding and managing the technology layer – but a focus on IT strategy may be eclipsed by the many day-to-day needs and requirements of IT resources. Most often, the disconnect is the result of failure to establish clear, cohesive guidelines for how to use and manage your IT resources. Comprehensive IT policies are an essential component to realizing the full value of IT for your business. Developing, maintaining and enforcing such policies doesn’t have to be difficult or complex if you have a knowledgeable partner to guide the way. That’s why companies like yours call on Computer Audit Control and Security Associates LTD to help create policy and procedure documents, establish IT governance and build a data governance framework. In addition to deep technical proficiency, our professionals bring you world-class expertise in IT organizational management. This combination of skills provides strong leadership to help you transform your IT organization and ensure alignment with strategic business goals.
Features of Our IT policy development and governance
- In-depth evaluation of existing governance processes and procedures
- Comprehensive policy map illustrating exposures and protection mechanisms
- Catalog all required policy elements
- Creation of policy documents for system and network administrators
- Documentation of IT end-user policies setting out norms of use and IT service expectations
- Standardized, repeatable processes and procedures
Benefits of IT policy development and governance
- Elevate recognition of your IT organization’s relevance and value
- Eliminate cultural barriers and improve IT alignment with your business
- Apply industry best practices for IT governance; support compliance
- Improve IT management structure with clear lines of staff accountability
IT STRATEGY
Information technology today is a critical function in the enterprise. IT is not only a supporting function, helping to automate routine tasks and promoting process efficiency: It has also become integrated into the products and services of many industries. Even organizations that do not consider themselves “high-tech” are increasingly leveraging IT for digital transformation and as a core element of their emerging business models.Yet, in many companies, business leaders only manage IT as a technical function. The IT systems, IT organization, and IT processes may be designed well from a technical perspective but poorly aligned from a business perspective. This can be the result of changes in business direction, sudden or long-term growth, acquisitions, or competitive disruption that create dissonance between what the business needs and what IT is providing.With expertise in both business and technology, our IT strategy consultants can facilitate development of an integrated IT strategy for the organization. Our approach to IT strategy is a focused engagement that includes the following activities:
We begin with a review of the mission, vision, goals, and strategy of the business, so that we can derive the implications for IT–what IT needs to be and do in order to support the business strategy and deliver business value. Conversely, what capabilities can IT implement that can form the basis for new business models.
Here we conduct an assessment of the current IT environment, including the organization’s data centers, networks, equipment, documentation, and use of cloud computing. We also assess the health of the current IT applications portfolio, with a combination of online user surveys and in-person interviews, ranking each major business system in terms of its importance to the organization, its actual management value, and its technical quality. This gives us an early indication concerning which systems are the highest priority candidates for nurturing, replacement, or upgrading. Using metrics provided by our sister IT research firm, Computer Economics, we also benchmark IT spending and staffing levels, the use of outsourcing and outside IT service providers, and the state of IT management best practices. We also look at what new IT initiatives are already planned for the future.
This is the visioning stage of IT strategy, envisioning a future state where IT systems, technology, people, and processes are fully aligned with the business strategy. This stage can also include “art of the possible” workshops, where our IT strategy consultants explore what new and innovative technologies have most relevance to your business, and which you should consider for adoption. After painting this picture, we then compare it to the current state and conduct a gap analysis.
This is the formulation stage, where we define the individual initiatives of the IT roadmap and weave them into a strategic narrative: a story of where you are going and how you’ll get there. The final deliverable is a strategic IT road map for the enterprise that defines the desired future state, the major initiatives, and the priorities for implementation. It also includes summary descriptions and budgetary estimates for each of the major initiatives of the IT roadmap. Strategic initiatives can include new business application systems and IT capabilities, upgrades, IT infrastructure improvements, IT organizational changes or restructuring, IT process improvements, IT governance structures, and risk management programs.