Alignment of business and IT
"The collaboration with the business side has so far been carried out with an 'external fourth party'. With the help of the project conducted jointly with SMP, we have now completed the transition from a 'contract-based' to a 'trust-based' collaboration and directly refinanced the project through the efficiency potentials realised."
Managing Director of the IT organisation of an insurance company
"Many times high efforts are needed to translate different departments' requirements into more transparent and usable documents for the IT organization. The added value of SMP? We don't implement systems ourselves. Instead we manage implementation efficiently and effectively!"
Robin Prothmann, Partner at SMP AG
The real value of IT within organizations largely depends on its efficient and frictionless implementation of technical requirements.
An average of between 30 and 40 % of the total IT budget is invested in change initiatives. Often more than 30 % of these investments get lost along weak points of the IT requirements management and order process. Increased resource and budget requirements, longer run times and a variety of unplanned changes are the result.
The main objective of SMP alignment projects is to increase investment security of IT projects.
Based on an actual status analysis, optimization potential will be identified along the requirements management and order processes - whether organizational structures, responsibilities or utilized templates.
Then practical target processes are jointly developed in order to ensure a consistently high requirement quality. The fulfilment of clearly defined quality criteria - so-called "quality gates" - by the customer requirement plays a critical role in success in this context. Decision-making and control committees ensure the integrated planning of multi-disciplinary requirements. Clear roles and responsibilities increase transparency.
SMP carried out alignment projects in the energy, retail and finance sector with high success rates. The achieved efficiency improvements often amounted to more than 10 % of the total IT budget. As a result we're not just having an increase of investment security but also of the departments' and group-internal customers' satisfaction.
