IT Consultancy

The ICSL consulting practice

With the experience gained from solving the tough challenges presented to us, we launched a consulting practice within our organization back in 2010. ICSL Consulting Group (ICG) now provides advisory and consulting services. We are guided by IT service management best practices, to help our clients to build and manage efficient, secure and scalable Information and Communication Technology Infrastructure.

Traditional IT consultations take three basic forms:

• High level reviews and assessments that focus on high level strategy and tactical approaches to problems identified
• Expert advice on a specific area sometimes resulting in remediation or implementation services
• Technical specialists brought in to solve a specific problem or implement a specific application service

Our Approach

With our team’s years of experience, we have the unique opportunity to provide holistic advice starting from assessments, reports, designs, recommendations, and implementation. We then go further to build the appropriate support structure for the customer, recruit and develop talent, place this talent in the your environment or just outsource the support altogether if that is what is desired by you.

Ultimately we will offer competitive prices, excellent solutions design and configuration support, great delivery times and world-class implementation, flexibility and support services.

The Main Services and Structured Methodologies :

Software Selection

The IT industry has matured to the point where you can buy “off the shelf” software for any business need you may have. The challenge is to pick the right one – from the many hundred offerings out there.

Implementation Management

• Project management services
• Establish project office frameworks
• Introduce best standards and practices

Training and skill transfer in line with tools (MS Project), PMI and PMBOK

Business Process Reengineering

Reengineering is done in 5 phases, each with a specific purpose and deliverables

• DIRECT – Define and prioritize business drivers; and develop high reach targets
• DEFINE – Describe actual operations and performance, map current process, identify irrelevant processes and inefficiencies
• DESIGN – The “to be “ business process mapping and the business impact –on people, systems, technology., process
• DEPLOY – Implementation planning, system changes and training for the new processes
• MEASURE – Implement measurement and monitoring; ensure continuous improvement is in place

Our “Info-Structure” Assessment – Looking at the Technology

Do you know what technology you have and whether it can meet your growing business needs?

The goal of infrastructure is simple – it must provide a reliable Information Technology platform for supporting the activities of the business. The Infrastructure Assessment is designed to recommend what is required to establish such a platform. The methodology employed by us in gathering the information will be a structured one, based on a comparison of the infrastructure with best current industry practice. It will look at both:

• Physical infrastructure (data centre, cabling, internet, network equipment, and servers); and
• Logical infrastructure (operating systems, protocols, addressing schemes, access and security, domain structures, productivity software, service operations and organisational arrangements).

Our “Info-Health Check” – Looking at the Processes

Is your information technology just a drain in your organisation rather than a strategic asset that creates generally accepted real value for the business? Are the IT support services, organization and processes aligned with your business goals?

We will assess the quality and maturity of your IT infrastructure. The assessment is based on an evaluation of the extent to which the infrastructure implementation meets or complies with best practices across each of the layers. Our IT infrastructure Health Check will look at:

Business Continuity

Natural disasters are a part of our life; and our information technology services are more and more critical for the operation of the business. Business continuity planning is a must. The Innovative business continuity assessment will be based around the US Department of Commerce National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) framework for Contingency Planning for Information Technology Systems and the Business Continuity Institute best practice guidelines.

IT Strategic Plans

• Multi year time frame
• Based on Business Mission, Objectives and Critical Success Factors (CSFs)
• Cover application services, infrastructure, technologies and organisation
• Define required policies & procedures, standards, practices & methodologies
• Prioritisation driven by CSFs and practical/resource constraints
• Broad costs in 3-6 month bands

We also do Strategic and operational planning, project management and post implementation audits.

Stabilisation

• Post implementation and ‘service delivery problem’ driven
• Assessment and review against industry best practice
• Immediate fix delivery
• Medium term stability plan
• Long term process to enable replicable delivery of quality services