A Quarter IT is a London based IT consultancy; we were recently asked to develop an innovative, high-level IT strategy for a UK based charity. The full background story can be found at aquarterit.com

1. IT Strategy | Case Study
By A QUARTER IT – a London based IT consultancy
email: info@aquarterit.com | phone: +44 203 7000832 | web: www.aquarterit.com

2. The Setting!
• A Quarter IT was asked to create and present an IT strategy for a London-
based charity to the CEO and COO
• The information provided were rather high level; the goal was to show
innovation rather than developing a 100% accurate strategy
• A Quarter IT assessed the provided information and presented a strategy which
would:
– optimise available resources (both human and financial)
– prepare the charity for expansion (planned growth from 300 to 600
employees)
– ensure they are leveraging latest technological advances

3. “If you're solving someone else's
problem, you're constantly stabbing
in the dark. When you solve your
own problem, the light comes on.”
Jason Fried

4. Index!
• Current State!
– General observations
– Operations/Architecture
– Processes and governance
• Challenges!
– Business
– IT
• IT Strategy!
– Vision
– Governance
– Architecture
– Team
– Path

5. Current State!
General observation:!
– You are happy with how IT performs
– Systems and services currently fulfill the needs of the organisation
– IT acts as a facility

6. Operations/Architecture:!
– Mix of in-house and cloud infrastructure
– Some cloud applications
– Majority of support and development is handled in-house
!
Current State!

7. Processes and governance: !
– Link between objectives and project portfolio is missing
– Departments have the requirements, IT has the budget
Current State!

8. Business:!
– You will be growing rapidly
– Some business processes could benefit from using more technology
to increase the efficiency
– UK & Europe focus more on education (Digital Agenda)
additional opportunities for your organisation?
– Recruitment of candidates – Expand and look for candidates in other
EU countries?
– Education is shifting more and more online
Examples: OpenUniversity, Standford, Khanacademy
Challenges!

9. Challenges!
IT: !
– Needs to step up and turn into a business partner / enabler
– Scale the current environment to serve your future needs
– We aren’t using cloud services as much as we should
– Grow the team and add skillsets

10. IT Strategy!
Vision:
• BUSINESS ENABLER
We understand your challenges and suggest solutions for addressing them
• ANALYSIS
IT provides insight. We gather data, analyse it and provide it as a service to the rest of the organisation
• INNOVATION
IT has an incubator available to test innovative solutions with the business
• ARCHITECTURE
Based on off-premise solutions, designed to be cost-efficient and scalable
• LEAN
IT is able to rapidly on/off-board technology which meets the needs of our internal and external customers
• OPERATIONS
Partners take care of running our operations and ensure business continuity. We handle strategies, execute
projects, manage partners and perform basic administrative tasks in-house
• PARTNERSHIPS
We have partnered up with other organisations that have similar goals in the UK, EU and the rest of the
World. We combine forces to develop innovative technologies, solutions and get access to better deals with
vendors.

11. IT Strategy!
Governance: !
• We have implemented a clear IT governance model which:
– Allows us to focus our resources where they bring the most
benefit to the organisation
– Manage our project pipeline
• We have introduced Lean principles for adopting new technology
• We have basic ITIL processes for maintaining our (partly outsourced)
operations

12. IT Strategy!
Architecture: !
• Our architecture is based around a cloud integration solution which:
– Allows us to automate the flow of information
– Enables us to rapidly add new technologies and adopt innovative solutions
• All servers and services are off-premises. Exceptions are possible.
• We supplement our existing applications with the right modules
to improve functionality:
– i.e. Donor Management for Salesforce.com
– Rapportive for Google Apps
• We configure, but avoid customisation of off-the-shelve applications. If
possible, we’ll adjust our internal process to match the default of the vendor

13. IT Strategy!
Architecture: !

14. IT Strategy!
Team: !
• We need to free up resources from operational tasks
• IT will need some additional skillsets to add real business
value and manage our partners:
– Enterprise & Information Architecture
– Service & Vendor Management
– Business Analysis

15. IT Strategy!
Path: !
The IT strategy will be implemented gradually in 3 phases:
STEP 1: Preparation
STEP 2: Scaling
STEP 3: Optimisation

16. IT Strategy!
Path: STEP 1 - PREPARATION !
• Establish governance
• Preparation for growth, relocation to new premises and
potentially ‘New way of working’:
– Define/Update Enterprise & Information Architecture
– Move all on-premise systems to private cloud infrastructure or cloud
services (e.g. Google Apps/ Office 365; Unified communications)
• Establish strategic relationships with vendors, outsourcing partners and
potentially groups that support charities (e.g. Coders4Charities)
• Optimise/reduce current spending
(e.g. telecom expense management, CTX, contract reviews)

17. IT Strategy!
Path: STEP 2 - SCALING!
• Relocation/Expansion
– Plan, facilitate and support expansion efforts
– Deploy additional services needed for new way of working
• Scaling existing services to support additional users

18. IT Strategy!
Path: STEP 3 - Optimisation!
• Introduce cloud integration solution
• Automate workflows within the organisation
• Introduce framework for rapid on/off-boarding of solutions
• Provide analytics and insights to internal and external
customers
• Establish incubator to identify and develop innovative solutions
for supporting customers and beneficiaries

19. Feel you could approach your own IT in a more structured
way?
Great. Get in touch, we are always happy to have a chat and
see how we could work together!
email:
info@aquarterit.com
web:
www.aquarterit.com
phone:
+44 203 7000832
twitter:
@AQuarterIT
linkedin:
www.linkedin.com/company/a-quarter-it/