Cost, Risk and Time have long been the primary topics for ICT steering committees. Striking the right balance to deliver a successful project has been truly an artform as many factors could cause the scales to tip, resulting in a situation that is hard and often impossible to recover from.
Times have changed ... CIOs and Steering Committees now also have other important considerations, such as Cyber Security, Sustainability, Social Responsibility and currently, how to simply survive a pandemic. Whilst the evolution in Technology and Service Delivery models continues to create opportunities to do things better, faster and with less risk, making the "right" investments is more complicated and multi-faceted than ever before.
Now more than ever, there needs to be alignment across the organisation with a common set of goals and objectives. That requires:
- a Strategy (see here)
- be "Smart" (see here)
- Learn from the lessons of the past, embrace what works and disregard what doesn't.
'Value for Money' audits have long shown that there are easy savings to be harvested by adopting the principles of consolidation and standardisation. This is true for Technology as well as Service Delivery.
At a basic level, Cloud is a combination of thes principles and also the vehicle for embracing Digital Technologies, which create the environment and framework for innovation.
Through Innovation and the development of micro-services we can re-imagine busienss processes, business models and create new best practice and local expertise in Service Delivery.
This is a ‘Centre of Excellence’.
Centres of Excellence (CoE) can be established to reduce costs, scale expertise, foster innovation, leverage investments and generate commercial opportunities, providing functional domain expertise and support services to multiple stakeholders.
CoEs, coupled with Digital Platforms delivered in the Cloud, are core components of contemporary Service Delivery.