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Solution Review
Today's strategic and most
successful suppliers have certainly evolved from product to solution
focussed sales activities. Arguably with a reasonable network of
colleagues and peers it was easier to review a product and therefore
a potentially commoditized sales proposal, when compared with
today's more encompassing enterprise wide strategic solution
proposals. Therefore this has generated an increased reliance upon
market research form Industry Analysts, but as a supplier has a bias
toward their products, Industry Analysts don't necessarily have
up-to-date implementation and delivery skills...
At Value-4IT we "walk the walk" as well as "talk the talk" and we
find this is the only way we can have visibility for end-to-end
solution delivery competence, from the embryonic stages of project
initiation via business requirements definition, through to project
fulfilment via implementation and management activities. Therefore
it's not unusual for our client base to first engage us for
reviewing solution designs, both from a business and technical
resource viewpoint. Typically the costs associated with such
activities are minimal, as Value-4IT offer guidance, mentoring and
quality assurance reviews, therefore providing cost efficient,
unbiased and timely input, as and when required.
Ultimately most business models have been in operation for many
years if not decades; so which came first, the business model or the
IT solution? Clearly this is not a rhetorical question and so the
business requirements are the primary driver for all IT initiatives.
Therefore it follows that any IT solution implemented should always
meet business requirements, which from an IT supplier viewpoint,
might sometimes be difficult, but if their prospective client
doesn't highlight or reinforce such requirements; well, the rest as
they say is history! Clearly initiatives and methodologies such as
Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) provide functionality to
maintain legacy applications while deploying the latest platforms
and programming techniques, but let's safeguard that we never lose
sight of the fundamental underlying business model!
Whatever creativity is, it is in part a solution to a problem. |
There's an assumption by many partners that no matter what happens
to their business, they'll be partners forever.
David
Gibbs |
