CASE STUDY #7

IT Strategy, Architecture and IT Sourcing Strategy Services

A Federal Government Department

CPT was engaged for a series of consulting assignments over several years, including:

• Selective Sourcing Strategy & Business Case;

• ICT Strategic Plan – development, implementation and periodic review and updates;

• US Free Trade Agreement – Scoping Study – systems assessment, business requirements, delivery strategy and architecture;

• IT Benchmarking – assessment of business cases, financial analysis and comparison with metrics;

• Electorate Offices Architecture and Service Delivery Review;

• Conducted a number of Gateway Reviews covering business case, implementation readiness etc;

• Infrastructure Market Testing – market testing & evaluation, service desk implementation, governance improvement and disengagement/transition support.

The ICT Strategy underpinned many of these assignments, and ensured that the ICT Sourcing Strategy was aligned with the Business Strategy.

The CPT Approach

CPT’s approach was to use small teams of highly experienced consultants, calling on specialist knowledge as required - this agile and efficient approach maximised value for the department – enabling both skills and knowledge transfer while remaining cost-effective.

CPT was selected due to our proven track record and experience with other government agencies, and specifically due to our:-

• Knowledge of Whole of Government issues such as Security, Data Privacy, Access to Data etc;

• Technical and application architecture capability;

• Knowledge of IT governance and ITSM/ITIL implementation experience;

• Knowledge and experience in selective sourcing.

CPT’s approach rapidly developed consensus based strategies based on the following:

• Predefined workshop templates that were customised for the client environment;

• Interactive and informative workshops that built on industry best / current practices;

• Discussions that built consensus and agreement within the organisation;

• A very specific specification of the IT governance required to control the delivery model for the organisation;

Standard templates that allowed key deliverables to be developed within 24 hours of each workshop;

Workshops led by consultants with expertise developed through many outsourcing and IT governance situations which were used as examples.

These assignments involved CPT delivering assignments in both the centralised ICT organisation and for Business Groups.  In most of these cases CPT has also needed to work with other delivery side consultancies.  As CPT has no conflict of interest with delivery organisations, this neutral capability was been leveraged by the Client in a number of these engagements.

Value for Money and Efficiencies Gained

CPT has completed assignments across a wide number of clients that have resulted in improved business cases and more effective use of technology. The range of assignments for this client delivered the following value:-

• The Sourcing Strategy and Business Case indicated that under the new multi-sourcing (best of breed) arrangements, there would be a sustainable 30% cost of service reduction, even after taking into consideration the additional “IT governance” or service system integration resources that would be required to manage a multi-vendor environment.

• On CPT’s advice, the key evaluation criterion was based not on the lowest price, but the “right price” to ensure that new arrangements were established on a sustainable “win/win” basis.

• Skills transfer occurred both for internal groups and for related stakeholder organizations.

• The client was able to clearly define areas of exposure, cost reduction and risk, and to initiate targeted projects to address them.

• The trade benefits of implementing a successful Free Trade Agreement using the new CPT-delivered guidelines, supported by the new system, were estimated to be in the order of one billion $AUD per annum.

• CPT identified a number of areas of potential cost savings that could be achieved through the use of different approaches.  In one area, CPT identified communication cost savings of $2m to $3m per year with higher availability and performance.