Recently we encountered a client that was heavily reliant on a bespoke software.
I know what you’re thinking. ‘Nothing unusual about that’. Especially in the sectors we operate in; retail, logistics, and financial services.
Well what if I told you that no one within our client’s company knew how to use or manage that bespoke software? You’re interested now aren’t you!
To be honest, different members of the IT team DID know how to operate and maintain certain PARTS of the application. But no one knew the system back-to-front, nor end-to-end. What’s more, they didn’t even have any up-to-date documentation about how to use the system.
And there was another snag, all of the IT department were over retirement age. Not just that, their average age was over 75!
Our client was terrified that at any moment one their key IT leaders would retire and take their knowledge of the company’s key operational system with them.
The client turned to us, managed IT consultants Crimson, for help. After an initial consultation, we diagnosed the client with a terrible case of legacy software coupled with a bout of limited skilled resources. We recommended a healthy dose of strategic application lifecycle management (ALM) to cure the problem.
So now you’re thinking what did this ALM strategy involve, right? Here’s our process:
- Document the specifications and workings of the entire bespoke software.
- Expand the IT team.
- Share the knowledge gathered in the documentation process and impart it to the new team.
This process sound pretty easy doesn’t it? Well it wasn’t. It was a long-term process.
One of our specialist ALM consultants will be explaining this case study and Crimson’s ALM strategy in detail in our latest 40-minute webinar. It takes place on 20 January 2016 at 11:30am GMT.
If you would like to attend this webinar please register below.
FYI, this is our client;
- One of the UK’s top distributors.
- One of the largest privately owned companies in Britain.
- It has £2billion+ turnover.
- It serves almost 90,000 UK retail outlets.
- It has almost 15,000 product lines.
- It has more than 1000 vehicles.
- It makes over 60,000 deliveries every week.
