INFRASTRUCTURE

MANAGEMENT

In order to survive, businesses have to cut costs whilst remaining focused on their core business.  There is a need to remain competitive and respond quickly to new growth opportunities, including e-Business.  ICT issues are an unnecessary deflection.  ICT needs to be flexible enough to react quickly to new requirements.  If ICT is not your core competency, or it is not providing sufficient return on investment, then a new approach is needed.

The solution

UNICUS’ Infrastructure Portfolio Management (IPM) Service provides and manages the ICT resources required to continue the operational viability, technical currency and functional effectiveness of a portfolio of business infrastructures.  Including both the support and ongoing enhancement of your infrastructure portfolio, UNICUS works collaboratively with you long term, to ensure that your business infrastructures deliver real and quantifiable benefits to your business. Customers benefit from our experience in dealing with end-users and vendors, bringing an understanding of both environments to many projects. We have a background in both analytical consulting and system development.  We therefore bring a view of existing and developing trends and technologies, and a view of technologies at the design, development and implementation levels as well. With this background, we can assist our customers in providing turnkey, end-to-end resolutions and a strategy for the future by tying the theoretical and practical views into a cohesive business solution. Our IPM services have benefited from our relationships with those who consider infrastructures not only as mission critical to their operation but also as a way to achieve competitive differentiation and improve customer satisfaction. Unicus also offers Managed Print Services solutions.

Business benefits

• Reduction and control of operating costs
• Enables the internal ICT organisation to be lean, flexible and focused on core competencies
• Access to, and management of innovation
• Access to the best, and appropriate skills and resources
• Shared risk
• Clear return on ICT investment linked to real business outcomes 

Our approach

Our IPM Support Services are typically delivered against business-focused SLAs and against Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) metrics for enhancement work.  The IPM service is aimed at keeping business infrastructures (including package-based infrastructures) running reliably whilst staying in step with business requirements. 
Using excellent people and tried and tested methods and processes, our approach is to proactively manage-down the number of infrastructure problems and hence the cost of support, whilst maintaining the right level of service to the business. 
Our partnership agreements are typically structured to:

• Clearly define the business arrangement and commercial undertaking
• Focus on business outcomes  
• Evolve and change over time, as the business changes

Skills

We apply the following skills to produce an innovative and strategic Service Delivery framework:
People – we have access to skills and experience enabling us to have a flexible approach to human resources.  We can put the right skills, training, experience and motivation in place 
Methods and Processes – we have best-of-breed infrastructure maintenance, enhancement and development methodologies backed by quality-assured processes and procedures 
Structure – we adopt the structure that best meets each customer’s requirements –providing on-site and off-site service delivery 
Maintenance Toolkit – we have a series of proven tools to support our delivery professionals in all areas that are fully compatible with all major system development methodologies and processes 

Experience

UNICUS has a track record of providing reliable Application Portfolio Management services to customers in many different industries over the past five years. 

Business need

Increasingly, organisations are seeking to reduce costs and optimise use of existing investments, whilst still keeping an eye on the future.  Generally, they have multiple initiatives and changes in progress at any one time, presenting a significant management challenge.
These challenges include the need for:

• An ability to ‘pick the winners’ and prioritise competing investments based on sound criteria, not purely financial return
• The buy-in of all stakeholders and management
• A common view of business drivers and goals, which can be made visible to all stakeholders
• A shared and consistent ‘big picture’ view of hundreds, or even thousands of initiatives
• A clear picture of the benefits and impacts of decisions

Approach

Through initial engagements we assess your business imperatives and desires and make recommendations based on real-world experience and scenarios.  Whether your start point is strategy, portfolio cost reduction, or simply getting to the benefits of your investment, Infrastructure Portfolio Management (IPM) guarantees a pragmatic stance within an overall strategic framework.  The framework has a number of entry points:

• Cost base and portfolio assessments: positioning management to understand which programmes and projects it should continue, accelerate, consolidate or cut 
• Justification of investments or consolidation of ICT systems: creating a roadmap that identifies which business changes lead to benefits, and why. 
• Optimise the benefits from existing investment: allowing a business to realise maximum return from investments already made

For more information on our Infrastructure Management offering please email your contact details to: info@unicus-ict.co.za and a Unicus Representative will contact you.