Five-Step Approach

Without a roadmap to follow, effort is wasted, schedules are compromised, quality suffers, and costs escalate. At Solutient, our step-by-step delivery process helps you avoid those pitfalls. Our process has been perfected over 20 years, providing a practical, flexible, 'best practices' approach to help you reach your goals.

Step 1. Strategize

What opportunities are out there, and how will you capitalize on them? Solutient brings an objective eye to help you define your vision for the future of your enterprise, your markets, and your way of doing business. We help identify your best opportunities, then we create an action plan that aligns your IT initiatives with your business objectives. You get a clear vision of the road ahead, and a technology roadmap to help you get there. Solutient is uniquely qualified in this role. Our experience in enterprise applications, business process re-engineering, technology architectures, workflow automation, and systems integration allows us to cut through the hype, recognize business and technical realities, and create a plan that makes sense for you. Few IT partners can cross the chasm from vision to reality like Solutient.
Deliverables in this step can include:

• Business Analysis-Scope business model and processes, and build consensus around your goals and business objectives.
• Discovery-Identify high-value opportunities for enhancing relationships with customers, trading partners, employees and other key stakeholders.
• Opportunity Appraisal-Prioritize your best opportunities, create a portfolio of key initiatives based on business value, risk, interdependency, and implementation cost.
• Technology Roadmap-Create a technology roadmap that supports your immediate initiatives and includes built-in flexibility to evolve as needed.
• Implementation Plan-Define a phased, high-level project plan including key actions, resources, and costs.
• Change Management Plan-Determine organizational impacts, identify key project risks and flesh-out avoidance measures and contingencies.

 

Step 2. Architect

With the vision in place, Solutient teams with you to define a business and technology blueprint. First, we identify and understand the business rules and workflows that control your business processes. Next, we work with you to define the optimal approach for your enterprise, applying our extensive experience and deep understanding of collaborative business models along with the current state of information technologies. The result is a detailed business and technology plan that is unique to you. We document everything including new business process definitions, functional specifications, application integration plans, content inventories, networking and hardware requirements, contingency plans, and more. Like any good plan, your blueprint outlines the steps it will take to reach the big-picture goals of your enterprise.
Deliverables in this step can include:

• Project Plan-Timelines, task assignments, resources and costs are factored into a turnkey project plan.
• Business Modeling-Identify all affected business processes, document business rules, map out future business flows, and identify impacts on personnel, procedures, and information technology.
• Design Workshops-Define use cases, map requirements to package vendor functionality, and create a functional specification that addresses modifications and new system capabilities including application logic, data models, and user interface storyboards.
• Content Inventory & Management Plan-Identify required content and owners, develop maintenance and publication workflows, define taxonomies for metadata, and create a content conversion plan.
• Integration Specifications-Identify integration points and specifications for adapting data and transaction flow among and between applications.
• Architecture Audit-Analyze existing hardware, software, network and security infrastructure and assess capacity to support key initiatives. Develop a scalable, extensible technology blueprint that accommodates future needs.

 

Step 3. Create and Validate

With your blueprint in place, we develop and test all aspects of your solution including infrastructure, content management systems, application functionality, system integration, and documentation. We build a solution according to your specifications, simultaneously validating the design to make sure everything will work as expected from deployment forward. Tasks here include pre-installation of supporting hardware, software systems and networking, application development, content deployment, workflow definition, functional testing and more. Our design-build experts are involved every step of the way. If we propose it, we can build it.
Deliverables in this step can include:

• Infrastructure Deployment-Install and set-up hardware, networking, and supporting systems for development.
• Package Software Implementation-Install software, customize screens, and modify functionality as needed.
• Application Development/Integration-Code new application functionality and system integration using middleware and development tools.
• Content Conversion/Development-Update taxonomy, deploy content, and setup content management workflows.
• Functional Test/Validation-Create test plans and validate system functionality, integration, and content availability.

 

Step 4. Deploy

All aspects of the go-live process are covered in a detailed launch sequence that addresses data conversion, final testing, user training, contingency plans, even outbound communications to bring target users up to speed. Nothing is left to chance. We make sure your enterprise collaboration solution goes live without any surprises, that it's in place and functioning as expected.
Deliverables in this step can include:

• Launch Strategy/Planning-Define launch plan including final testing, data and content conversion, user training, pilot and go-live activities.
• Communication Planning-Help develop a plan to communicate site availability, encourage target audience to experience and use the site.
• Production Environment Deployment-Ensure that network infrastructure and supporting systems are deployed and secure.
• End-User Training-Provide training on system functionality.
• Administrator Training-Provide training on system operation, management and maintenance tasks.
• Go-Live-Final system testing and cut-over.

 

Step 5. Support and Evolve

As your IT partner, our services don't end when your solution is deployed. We'll be with you in the months and years ahead when you need upgrades, tuning, troubleshooting, migration assistance, service or maintenance. And we're available anytime you need specialized IT assistance to explore new functionality or adapt your solution to address changing business conditions. That's what strategic partnership is all about-that's our commitment to you.
Deliverables in this step can include:

• Project Post Mortem-Review planning assumptions and update strategic business and technology plans.
• Knowledge Transfer-Transfer system knowledge from Solutient engineers to key personnel on your enterprise team.
• Problem Resolution-Log problems, troubleshoot, diagnose, and take corrective action.
• Enhancement Requests-Log enhancement requests, determine cost-to-value ratio, and prioritize.