Technology consulting has evolved and must continue to do so in order to accommodate the changing demands of businesses today. Organizations, people and processes simply don’t have the luxury of time and if the value is not readily recognizable, projects rarely get off the ground.
At Corridor, we remain closely attuned to these demands and proactively seek out new ways to add value that is well-aligned with our clients. Equally, we look to evolve Corridor from both a financial and career oriented capacity. To accommodate these mutually aligned goals, Corridor delivers Strategic Consulting, Implementation Consulting and Support Services, all of which adhere to the principles described below.
Adaptive Consulting Approach – Prior to SharePoint 2007’s prolific success, the interest and support for ECM technologies was compartmentalized in most organizations. With SharePoint 2007 popularity, IT departments have recognized the importance of providing broad and deep support for the product. IT departments are now heavily involved with SharePoint implementations whereas in the past, they would play a minor role as consulting companies such as Corridor would assume most responsibilities.
Analysis Protocol – As systems analysts, be it an internal or external role, there are two common themes that we are now facing when it comes to performing analysis work. First, analysis session participants are more pressed for time now than ever before. They simply don’t have the time to participate in lengthy analysis workshops. Second, participants are often located in different facilities and it is too costly to assemble groups of people together for analysis workshops. When these factors are combined, it becomes abundantly clear that an alternative approach is needed to perform analysis work. One that takes limited time, and minimal or no travel as operational parameters.
To accommodate this evolving change, Corridor now offers two Protocols for performing Analysis work. These can function separately or in a combined fashion and are referenced below:
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Workshop Protocol – This protocol is consistent with traditional methods of analysis in which participants meet in person for extended periods of time to collaborate and learn together. We still believe this to be the best approach as participants learn from each other by working together and this proves to be less expensive for our consulting services.
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Core Team/Validation Protocol – This protocol has been designed to take time and travel restrictions into account. In this mode, Corridor’s project team will work closely with a set of “core” team members to identify requirements with the understanding that the “core” team includes people who are representative Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) for your company. Working closely with the Core team, requirements will be identified and reviewed. Once this process is complete, we will then “Validate” those requirements with a larger audience. Much or all of this process is typically performed remotely to minimize expenses and extended analysis time.
Out-of-the-Box Optimization – Since Corridor’s inception, we have always looked to optimize out-of-the-box functionality prior to introducing software development. This remains a key tenet in all of our consulting work and because of the administrative flexibility in SharePoint 2007 and complementary products, we are able to remain true to this objective.
It is important to note that the focus on reduced software development does not negate the need to ensure that business requirements are fully understood – and met. In this capacity, Corridor stresses the importance of properly analyzing business and functional requirements during our analysis efforts.
Iterative Business Releases – Along with our emphasis on Out-of-the-Box Optimization, Corridor has introduced the concept of Business Releases to its clients. The premise of a Business Release is to enable certain product capabilities, ideally through administrative options and if necessary with software development, to achieve specific business objectives. Most ECM solutions and certainly SharePoint 2007, have a rich set of features and capabilities. It has been our experience that enabling the majority of these features at once typically results in project failures. The pure volume of enabling technology is often too much to embrace all at once.
To address this, we will work with your team to ensure that the enablement of functionality is grouped into distinct Business Releases. These are iterative in nature and as such, the user community will quickly assimilate and identify what they like and don’t like. Configuration changes, and if necessary customizations, can then be introduced in subsequent Business Releases. Each Business Release provides and increases value and the Return On Investment (ROI).
From a users’ perspective, the introduction of Business Releases has proven to be very successful as a Business Release schedule is formally defined and users can see when functionality will be enabled.