Our Advisory Consulting Service Offerings

1. IT Strategy Blueprint

If these are some of the questions which are posing as roadblocks for your organizational growth, then Kasper Consulting can help. We can prepare the most fitting IT Strategy Blueprint that has potential to make your IT a driver and strategic partner for organizational growth. The IT Strategy Blueprint will leverage your current IT assets to the best extent. The IT Strategy Blueprint, when implemented, will become an enabler to the business to help meet its present as well as future business goals.

Once we have prepared your IT Strategy Blueprint, we would have identified all the Solutions that would need to be deployed in order to reach the desired "to-be" state. From our experience, it is usually not possible to implement all the Solutions at the same time because of the "doability factor" - i.e. how much change can an organization take up at a time. So, we will prepare the Implementation Roadmap that will state which Solutions should be deployed in the immediate time horizon - and the ones that should be taken up later. We will do this keeping in consideration the Business Priority and Effort Estimate for each of the Solutions.

With this, you will know what is the desired "to-be" state, what Solutions need to be implemented to reach this desired state and what is the IT Strategy Implementation Roadmap to follow to deploy these Solutions.

We can then even help you manage the execution of the IT Strategy Implementation Roadmap.


2. Selection of an IT Application (using Kasper’s K-SELECT Framework)

We help you derive an answer to these questions and make sure that the system you procure aligns with your business goals & needs as well as with your IT goals &needs.Kasper does not sell any software or hardware product nor provide bespoke system development, and hence we are in a position to provide neutral and unbiased analysis.We can also help in managing the implementation and in measuring the benefits accrued, ensuring that the organization’s investment is not at risk due to lack of diligent deployment.

We use our K-SELECT framework to help you select the IT Application. This framework does a comprehensive evaluation across the six dimensions that are typically used for an IT Application selection.

Dimension
Brief Explanation
Functional An evaluation of the features, functionality and usability of the IT Application.
Information Technology & Security The evaluation of the technical features, such as configurability, information security, audit trails & logs, error handling, integration with existing applications, hardware requirements, etc.
Implementation& Post-Implementation Support The evaluation of features, such as project team structure, project approach & tasks, project timelines, documentation support, training support, testing support, future releases, post-implementation support process, etc.
Vendor Assessment The evaluation of vendor’s company structure & stability, management strength, domain expertise, geographical presence, governance, etc. Also, an evaluation of the vendor’s focus on its product – the product roadmap, installations, etc.
Reference Checks Onsite reference checks, telephonic reference checks, research of publicly available data for reference checks, etc.
Commercials and Contractual Evaluation of commercials, such as capital expenditure, operating expenditure, TCO, etc. Also, evaluation of the contractual terms.
We have several years of experience in dealing and negotiating with IT vendors. From our experience, we have seen that companies focus on commercial negotiations with the IT vendors – and not on the contractual terms in the contract. Whereas, it is these contractual terms that haunt the relationship between the company and IT vendor once the contract is signed. This is especially true for IT contracts since these contracts tend to be ‘technical’ in nature and of duration spanning many years.

Kasper can, if required by you, negotiate with the vendors on your behalf. The final outcome of this exercise will not only include the negotiated price, delivery and dispatch terms, but will also spell out, in clear terms, vendor responsibilities and commitments with regards to quality, warranty and installation support. In case of multi-vendor installations, each vendor’s role in the installation will be clearly articulated, along with dependencies, impact of any failure in executing to the committed milestones, and penalties, where applicable.

Once your IT Application has been procured, we can then even help you manage the implementation by helping yousetup and operate a Project/Program Management Office. We create a benefit monitoring framework having metrics and measurement tools/processes, as well as a calendar of benefit accrual. As part of Project/Program Management operations, the benefit calendar will be used to measure real achievements against planned ones.
3. IT Application Deployment Assessment and Roadmap for Higher Adoption of the IT Application (using Kasper’s K-IDEAS Framework)

We use our K-IDEAS framework to do the assessment of the deployment of the IT Application. This framework does a holistic assessment across six dimensions that typically influence how well an IT Application is used by the Business Users.

System Functionality
Application Functionality is assessed by determining the organization’s current and future needs and comparing it with the existing functional capabilities of the system.

System Performance & Reliability
This dimension assesses the performance & reliability of the application from end user perspective

System Usability
System usability is assessed by understanding the efficiency,effectiveness and the user experience of the IT Application

Process Workflow
This dimension assesses the alignment of the IT Application workflows with the Business Process Workflows.

Change Management
This dimension refers to the change management processes in the organization to ensureadoption of IT Application.

IT Support
This dimension assesses the processes and quality of IT Support provided to the end users to be able to use the IT Application effectively.

With the assessment, we identify the Solutions to increase the adoption of the IT Application by the Business Users. For each of the Solutions, we will mention the Business Priority and the high level Effort Estimate required to implement them. From our experience, it is usually not possible to implement all the Solutions at the same time because of the "doability factor" - i.e. how much change can an organization take up at a time. So, we will prepare the Deployment Roadmap that will state which Solutions should be deployed in the immediate time horizon - and the ones that should be taken up later. We will do this keeping in consideration the Business Priority and Effort Estimate for each of the Solutions.

With this, you will know what Solutions need to be implemented for your Business Users to effectively use the IT Application – and what is the Deployment Roadmap to follow to deploy these Solutions.

We can then even help you manage the deployment of the Solutions as per the Deployment Roadmap.

4. Business Process Reengineering (BPR)

Kasper Consulting can help you reengineer your business processes to drastically improve them. We will define the “to-be” business processes that are cost-efficient and can effectively service your customers.

We will identify the Solutions that would need to be implemented in order to reach the desired "to-be" state from the “as-is” state. We will also mention the Business Priority and the high level Effort Estimate for each of these solutions. From our experience, it is usually not possible to implement all the Solutions at the same time because of the "doability factor" - i.e. how much change can an organization take up at a time. So, we will prepare the Implementation Roadmap that will state which Solutions should be implemented in the immediate time horizon - and the ones that should be taken up later.

We will do this keeping in consideration the business priority and effort estimate for each of the solutions. With this you will know what is the desired "to-be" state, what Solutions need to be implemented to reach this desired state and what is the Implementation Roadmap to follow to implement these Solutions.

We can then even help you manage the deployment of the Solutions as per the Implementation Roadmap.









Our Execution Management Service Offerings

5. Program and Project Management

In today’s competitive environment, corporate executives are under intense pressure to ensure that they manage complex project portfolios, efficiently co-ordinate resources, business applications and business activities - all while improving performance metrics and reporting. To ensure successful implementation of projects, a strong Program Governance Model needs be setup to drive and monitor these projects.

Kasper provides a focused set of Program Management services to address operating and delivery issues and helps its clients achieve business objectives.Our services help you manage cost and delivery timelines of your strategic initiatives without compromising on delivery quality. We ensure that you have the most effective PMO governance model to drive your project’s success and achieve business results.










6. Techno-Functional Business Analyst Services

From our experience, we have seen that there is usually an understanding gap between the Business End Users and IT. Neither understands each other's domain. The Business End Users are expected to perform tasks that they have little experience on - tasks, such as preparing the business requirements document, or evaluating IT applications, or preparing user acceptance test plans, or doing the user acceptance test. They are also usually busy in their day-to-day tasks and therefore are not able to devote quality time to the IT projects. IT, in turn, usually does not understand the business. This gap can be bridged with the help of Techno-functional Business Analysts who are more 'functional' than 'techno'.

Our Techno-Functional Business Analysts work as a liaison among stakeholders in order to elicit, analyze, communicate and validate requirements for changes to business processes, policies and information systems. We gather requirements by carrying on end user discussion and analyzing existing Business and IT processes. We act as Business User representatives to document and communicate the business requirements to IT.We provide knowledge transfer to the business users through various training sessions. Our Techno-Functional Business Analysts help organizations in bridging the gap between IT and Business.

Depending upon the project complexity and size, our Techno-Functional Business Analyst may be able to double up for the Project Manager.



7. Data Migration Management

Often the most neglected and the most ignored task in the implementation of any IT Application, Data Migration comes to haunt when the new IT Application goes live!

Our Consultants can manage your Data Migration project. We will prepare the Data Migration Strategy and coordinate with all stakeholders – Business Users, IT Team,vendor of the new IT Application and vendor of the current IT Application – to ensure that the data is properly migrated to the new IT Application.














8. IT Application Implementation

We can help you with the implementation of your IT Application. We will bring in our team of Project Manager and Techno-functional Business Analysts to assist you for all tasks, such as the following, that are typically required in a large system deployment.

  1. Business Requirement Document (BRD) preparation with the “to-be” process workflows
  2. Gap Study and Gap Development coordination
  3. IT Application integration with other systems
  4. Configuration of the IT Application
  5. SOP Document preparation
  6. Data Migration Coordination
  7. User Training
  8. User Acceptance Test plans and coordination
  9. Implementation Rollout planning and coordination
  10. Post Implementation Support
  11. Coordination with all stakeholders – Business Users, IT Team, external IT vendors, etc.
  12. Project Management
Our CIO-on-Tap Service Offering

9. CIO-on-Tap

We bring our CIO-on-Tap service offering from our years of practical CIO experience working in the corporate sector. As part of this service offering, Kasper Consulting will place one of its Principal Consultants at 25-50% time engagement (along with a full time Consultant, if needed), as your CIO. During the period of this engagement, the team from Kasper Consulting will perform all the responsibilities of a CIO - and will work with your business stakeholders, your internal IT Team and the external IT suppliers to deliver as per the business priorities.

An important focus area for our team would be to develop and strengthen your internal IT Team by coaching and mentoring them. The objective would be that over time, the engagement of our team should taper down with your internal IT Team taking over the management of the day-to-day function. The assigned Principal Consultant from Kasper could also white-label himself as your CIO during the period of engagement.

Our CIO-on-Tap service offering is beneficial for growing organizations who have a need for an experienced CIO for short duration and do not need one on a full-time basis.