Case Study - IT Renovation

A $500M not-for-profit was struggling with many IT-related concerns: The firm’s infrastructure was outdated and unstable, the application development team was unable to provide short-term results to maintain existing applications and longer term results by introducing g much-needed new functionality through new programs, the portfolio of IT services was not aligned with the business and “shadow IT” (or unsanctioned IT initiatives implemented by the business) was rampant.

Iron Key Group performed an initial assessment of the firm’s systems, applications and IT organization. Using our proven methodology for measuring the maturity of a firm’s IT operations and its overall effectiveness, the Iron Key Group team analyzed all aspects of the customer’s IT function and assigned real-world, business-impacting risk to each functional area. 

We were able to work collaboratively with this customer to make actionable recommendations that were prioritized to address the most critical and impactful areas first. All aspects surrounding the technology needs, budget constraints, company culture and change management were considered throughout the entire assessment and recommendations process.

A number of transparent and measurable solutions were derived from the assessment process that the customer and Iron Key Group partnership shared equal responsibility for delivering:   

• A comprehensive infrastructure remediation program to address the aging and unstable technologies: hardware refresh, best practice configuration standards, virtualization and consolidation. The customer’s IT team took the lead  with Iron Key Group providing guidance and quality assurance services.
• A detailed IT support and operations standard that relied on consistent, efficient, best-practice processes and procedures based upon the ITIL service framework that saw Iron Key Group take the lead to manage Help Desk, Desktop Support, System  Monitoring and Preventative Maintenance services.
• A Development as a Service (DaaS) program that allowed Iron Key Group to help the customer outsource all production support and bug-fix duties; freeing up the customer ‘s in-house developers to focus on new projects to grow the business.
• An Advisory Services program that partnered an Iron Key Group management consultant  with the customer’s IT executive to develop a comprehensive 3-year IT plan that aligned with the firm’s detailed business development goals, a      zero-based IT budget to understand how each IT dollar was being spent, and a marketing/collaboration strategy to socialize the IT function with the rest of the business.

The customer is the beneficiary of a more stable and secure infrastructure that has experienced no unplanned downtime in more than a calendar year. The end-user community, while increasing staff by 10%, has realized an 18% reduction in reported support incidents to the Help Desk. 

The outsourced application development team has cleaned up more than eight months’ worth of backlogged production support and bug-fix requests, allowing that team to supplement the customer’s internal development team to move other strategic initiatives forward, such as a new company website and the firm’s business intelligence platform.

The customer’s shadow IT problem has been virtually eliminated, whereby the IT group is consulted as a trusted business collaborator to address strategic business initiatives, and not viewed only as a support or utility service.

The customer has the requisite IT-related policies, procedures and practices in place to ensure control over the IT operating environment and is now passing their IT-related audits with the relevant documented evidence in place to support those claims.