Open for Business

Its only been a few days and I'm still finding my feet at IPP Consulting, but I'm determined to hit the ground the running. That's right, I'm open for business and if you would like to learn more about how IPP might be able help your organisation with independent IT advice, please get in touch with either Brian Bailey or myself.

In fact, one of the conversations on my first day was about our elevator pitch to describe the kind of business technology consulting services we are providing along side IPP's established IT project, recruitment, relocations and infrastructure (e.g. data centres) consulting services. We're still fine tuning that elevator pitch, but a phrase we zeroed in on was "Technology Alignment". But, really, what does this mean in practice?

One focus area we have is what I call the "information workplace" - thinking of the physical environment of your workplace and all the different services, infrastructure and tools that exist to help people work, the information workplace consists of all the information systems that people need to work. This of course includes the new wave of social media tools (Wikis, Blogs, etc) and Web 2.0 service models, but also traditional technologies like enterprise content management (e.g. EMC Documentum), business intelligence (e.g. Cognos) and portals (e.g. Microsoft SharePoint). Today of course, unlike the physical workplace, the information workplace can also extend well beyond the firewall and we are seeing system convergence - e.g. unified communications.

Technology Alignment in this context is about providing an independent viewpoint to help ensure the right information, business process, communication and collaboration technologies are selected, designed, implemented, improved and sustained. And in the process of achieving technology alignment we look holistically at the business, people and technology issues. Simple right? But speaking to a vendor recently they admitted they didn't do change management very well but acknowledge it was a major risk to a successful outcome when they implemented their software.

So, maybe my elevator pitch is that IPP Consulting provides independent consulting to help make your information workplace successful. We are experienced business technology consultants who can help you to develop and manage your information workplace by addressing the alignment of business, people and technology. We can help you by simply providing another pair of eyes or we can manage a project from beginning to end.

What do you think?

As I've already hinted at, I think one of IPP Consulting's key points of difference is this independent view point. Vendor neutrality at IPP Consulting means the firm has no financial or other relationship with hardware or software vendors. However this doesn't mean we don't want to talk to vendors! A few years ago I started a series of industry update posts about different content and collaboration solutions and I would like to start that series again - so if you're a big or small vendor or have ambitions in the enterprise information workplace space, I'd like to hear from you... Remember, if I don't know about your product then I can't help clients to consider it as a possible solution.I'm looking forward to hearing from you.

IPP Consulting Technology Alignment Technology in the Workplace Information Workplace Consulting Services Vendor Neutral