Prepare for Change

Prepare for Change

Herb Brooks, the legendary coach of the Gold Medal winning 1980 Olympic hockey team once said "Success is won by those who believe in winning and then prepare for that moment. Many want to win, but how many prepare?"

Preparation is the number one determining factor for successful digital transformations. At Victoria Fide, we have developed a process for assessing your preparedness to help you become better prepared to make change positive tm.

Our first step of preparation is to investigate and help you discover the transformation opportunities within your organization and the aspects of your organization that are resistant to change. This provides you with a high level of certainty about what must change, what can change, and what obstacles must be removed to facilitate that change.

Our Discover step provides an assessment of the enterprise and a report with transformation opportunities, the challenges of change, and recommendations for transforming your organization.

Habit 2 of Stephen Covey’s “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” is “begin with the end in mind”®.[1] It is imperative to define the end goal for all digital initiatives, both individually and collectively. The end goal needs to clearly articulate how the company will look and act once the planned initiatives are completed. This is not only success criteria, but a vision for a business reaping the benefits of successfully completing the initiatives. 

At Victoria Fide, we help you fashion a vision for utilizing technology to obtain your business objectives. In our Define step, we analyze the information gained from the Discover step to provide a clear vision for a transformed organization, the business justification for making those changes, and a clear path for obtaining that transformation.

[1]Covey, Steven. “THE 7 HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE PEOPLE” 

Knowing who to include in a transformational project is more difficult than people often realize. If you utilize your best people, your existing business could suffer or you could burn them out because they are still trying to do their “day job” and the project becomes their “night job.” Many of the project positions also require a new skillset. Knowing how to define the requirements of a business process, understanding how to design an effective process and how to monitor operational assimilation are skills that are required for process improvement and business automation.   

Some of these issues can be addressed with training and coaching and some can be addressed with staff augmentation. The Victoria Fide process includes a thorough assessment of project team candidates and guidance for building the right project team to position your transformational initiative for success and ensure your team is prepared to make change positive tm.  

If you have the right vision and the right team the final step of preparation is to set expectations and remove barriers. There may be a need to remove some of the day-to-day business responsibilities from your project team so they can focus on the project. You may need to backfill with augmentation to help with either their normal business responsibilities or to help with project responsibilities. You may need to provide some project related training such as how to be a subject matter expert or a business process owner. You definitely need to clearly define the project governance expectations.

At Victoria Fide, we help you identify and complete the necessary steps to enable your project team to succeed with your transformational initiatives and make change positive tm.

Services

Our Prepare stage includes these services in the Business IT Strategy Category.

Organizations frequently encounter difficulties in comprehending and effectively managing their enterprise architecture, leading to inefficiencies, fragmented systems, and challenges in adapting to evolving business requirements. Victoria Fide addresses these issues by offering a comprehensive evaluation and assessment of an organization’s enterprise architecture. This involves a systematic analysis of business processes, information systems, technology infrastructure, and their alignment with strategic objectives. We aim to identify areas in need of improvement, assess the maturity of the architecture, and provide actionable recommendations for optimization to ensure that the enterprise architecture aligns with the organization’s vision and enables informed decision-making.

In today’s technology-driven world, organizations rely heavily on their systems for daily operations, meaning system failures or security breaches can be devastating for business. Our System Health Assessment service offers a comprehensive evaluation of your organization’s computer systems to identify potential vulnerabilities, performance bottlenecks, and areas for improvement. This proactive measure optimizes system performance, security, and reliability, empowering your organization to thrive in today’s digital landscape.

Companies that need to transform using technology often do not have the experience necessary to successfully execute a digital transformation. Victoria Fide specializes in ensuring that companies are well-prepared for digital transformation by helping them clearly define the end-goal for their digital initiatives and providing them with a vision and a roadmap for how the organization will look and act once the planned initiatives are completed. With a clearly defined vision, companies will save time and money during their digital transformation. 

Our Prepare stage includes these services in the End-to-End DX Planning and Execution Category.

Projects with poor definition often lack realistic expectations or a clear vision for the project life cycle. As a result, they are susceptible to scope creep, budget overrun, and employee burnout. We understand the necessity of good project definition, which is why we work with our clients to establish a project charter and a project management plan to create a realistic schedule, encourage teamwork, and optimize resources. With project definition, our clients can manage integration, quality and change, control cost, and experience on-time and on-budget delivery. 

Our project team assessment and training service helps address common issues that project teams face, such as skills gaps and toxic behaviors that can lead to poor performance. At Victoria Fide, we conduct thorough assessments of both team performance and learning to identify areas for improvement and enrichment. We provide targeted training to help project management teams identify specific coaching, mentoring, or changes needed to improve team performance. This results in improved goal attainment, better interpersonal relationships, enhanced performance, and motivation for continued improvements. 

Many organizations struggle with aligning their projects with their overall strategic goals, resulting in ineffective and inefficient program management. We work closely with an organization’s executive and project sponsorship to provide portfolio direction, project sponsorship, and project management effectiveness and efficiency, ensuring that all projects are properly prioritized and aligned. With our help, organizations can achieve greater success in their projects, improve performance and efficiency, and experience greater ROI.  

A lack of comprehensive and well-defined enterprise architecture leads to inefficiencies, redundancies, and siloed systems, hindering collaboration, innovation and adaptability within an organization.

Our service provides a holistic approach to aligning business strategies, processes, and technology infrastructure, enhancing operational efficiency, agility, and utilization of technology investments. Our experienced architects will collaborate with your organization to understand your business objectives, current state architecture, and future goals. Together, we ensure that your enterprise architecture becomes a catalyst for driving innovation, growth, and competitive advantage.

Without a solid Quality Assurance (QA) plan from the beginning, companies generally don’t leave enough time in the project for complete testing. At Victoria Fide, we work with companies that are preparing for digital transformations to incorporate the right level of testing into the project plans and to plan for the right project team members to complete that testing. With QA planning, companies will experience better customer experience, increased savings, and improved efficiency.

Data migration is critical to the success of any system implementation. Unfortunately, it is frequently left to be addressed late in the project, resulting in increased risk to the project. Victoria Fide’s Data Migration Planning service assists in putting together a high-level plan for data migration and incorporate the necessary data migration activities into the overall project plan from the beginning of the project. This allows companies to have the time necessary to complete all the best practice data migration activities to mitigate the risk of having data affect the success of the implementation. 

Organizations struggle to effectively leverage data for meaningful insights and informed decision-making. Without a robust business intelligence plan, growth opportunities and trends can be missed. We provide expert guidance in developing a comprehensive business intelligence strategy and plan by understanding data, business objectives, and reporting needs. By using our tailored approach to business intelligence planning, your organization can establish a foundation for data-driven decision-making, gain valuable insights, and stay competitive. Our expertise enables you to harness the power of data as a strategic asset for success.

Many companies starting a DX project recognize that some processes may require modification but are uncertain which changes are crucial for the initial transformation and which ones can wait for a later phase. Victoria Fide’s Business Process Analysis service combines our business process expertise with our solution architecture expertise to provide detailed process change recommendations. The resulting transformation roadmap enables companies to achieve greater efficiency, make more informed decisions, and deliver better products and services to their customers.

Our Prepare stage includes these services in the Business Process Optimization Category.

Many companies starting a DX project recognize that some processes may require modification but are uncertain which changes are crucial for the initial transformation and which ones can wait for a later phase. Victoria Fide’s Business Process Analysis service combines our business process expertise with our solution architecture expertise to provide detailed process change recommendations. The resulting transformation roadmap enables companies to achieve greater efficiency, make more informed decisions, and deliver better products and services to their customers. 

Our Prepare stage includes these services in the Organizational Change Management Category.

Companies who fail to prioritize OCM can end up costing the success of the entire DX initiative. Victoria Fide takes into account the complexity of OCM by tailoring a plan for each workgroup, building End User Training Strategy, and aligning executives and stakeholders to provide support and input from both a business and financial perspective. By adequately preparing for change within their team, our clients can ensure a more cost-effective and smooth software deployment in the future.