Case Study: Technology Consulting

ITaaS Enables a Leading Nonprofit Company to Increase IT Visibility, Enhance Tech Maturity, and Boost Team Productivity

Customer: A nonprofit provider of education, training, and career services Profile: The nonprofit enhances the dignity and quality of life of individuals, families, and communities by eliminating barriers to opportunity and helping them reach their fullest potential through powerful programs and services.
Industry: Nonprofit
Services: A suite of ITaaS

Business Need

The nonprofit had developed a strategic plan which included increased use of organizational data to enable better reporting and support outcomes. But several roadblocks restricted it from executing this plan:

Business Challenges

  • Stakeholders lacked a comprehensive understanding of applications and processes across the organization.
  • There was a high volume of manual data entry due to a lack of integrations and system automation.
  • Manual compilation of data was time-intensive and delayed the reporting process by a month.
  • The nonprofit’s IT organization had not scaled to support the full application portfolio.
  • Lack of centralized technical strategy allowed departments to make their own technology decisions.
  • Coordination and collaboration between different departments, teams, and locations was a growing issue.
  • Tribal knowledge and lack of documentation perpetuated functional and process silos.

Technology Challenges

  • The technology portfolio was extensive due to siloed decision-making, which led to overlapping application functionality.
  • New technologies were being implemented with outdated process requirements in mind and only ~20-30% of the functionality was being used.
  • Outdated technologies required significant break/fix support and manual workarounds.
  • The broad technology landscape created complex enterprise data architecture, and the business was unable to identify and maintain data to build an efficient reporting program.

In addition, the nonprofit had two distinct organizational functions that served drastically different purposes with little/no operational overlap. As the client recognized the underlying technology challenges that would prevent a robust reporting program from being effective, it reached out to Synoptek.

Solution and Approach

Synoptek recommended a strategic IT assessment to comprehensively understand the current state of functions and supporting technologies. We then made recommendations to optimize operational technologies that would best support the nonprofit’s strategic objectives.

We engaged a team of experts, including a senior consultant with CIO-level experience, a Business Analyst, a Data Analyst, and a Technology Analyst who:

  • Developed and executed a detailed discovery plan with business stakeholders, managers, and individual contributors to understand and document processes, pain points, and challenges.
  • Identified technology and process gaps in the current state landscape and formulated recommendations for a future state conducive to the nonprofit’s 3-year strategic plan.
  • Performed a high-level ROI analysis to quantify the business value of the associated recommendations.
  • Defined a future state enterprise architecture that supported recommendations.
  • Developed an integrated portfolio plan inclusive of key initiatives, approximate timelines, and budget.
  • Standardized systems across common functions and automated repetitive processes and integrated highly leveraged applications to support data-driven operations.
  • Evolved governance across the organization to maintain and evolve enterprise architecture.
  • Guided the client on how to better utilize systems to support organizational goals and reduce disparate processes.

Methodology

1. Discovery

  • Take inventory of functions, processes, and supporting applications.
  • Determine manual and automatic data interfaces.
  • Understand organizational pain points and inefficiencies that prohibit realization of strategic objectives.

2. Analysis

  • Define criteria to support business strategy.
  • Identify key initiatives to support future state.
  • Provide recommendations and roadmap to reach future state.

3. Planning

  • Prioritize recommendations into strategic IT roadmap.
  • Calculate budgetary estimates for roadmap.
  • Provide ROI estimations for recommended initiatives.

Key Deliverables

  1. High-level organizational process map.
  2. Current-state application blueprint with defined data interfaces.
  3. Future state application blueprint resulting from Synoptek recommendations.
  4. 2–4-year IT roadmap with timelines and cost estimations.

Business Benefits

Synoptek’s suite of ITaaS enabled the nonprofit to build a program roadmap with budget, timeline, and priority, to govern and evolve the implementation. In addition, the customer could enjoy several benefits, including:

ITaaS Enables a Leading Nonprofit Company to Enhance Tech Maturity
  • Manual labor reduction by 3-4 FTEs within 12-18 months.
  • $20-40k annual licensing reduction in year 1.
  • Improved risk management and data management.
  • Technical debt reduction resulting in maintenance cost avoidance of $300k.
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