Norrin is all about business transformation. Our delivery almost always comes with technical components, but the crucial part is knowing which parts are necessary. The answer to that question becomes apparent when you talk with business. We founded Norrin Advisory to remove the gap between business strategy and IT execution.
#1 Good business alignment drives up IT project success rates
We don't believe in IT projects disconnected from business. Sure, such projects are set up and we even take part in them - but the fact is that once the shovels start hitting the ground, business realities will turn up. So, there are two kinds of projects: those whose business alignment has been considered well in advance, and those for which it will be discovered along the way.
Project Management Institute has found that proper strategy alignment increases projects' success rates from 48 to 71 % - that's almost a 50 % increase in odds. We believe that everybody on the project team should understand the strategic perspective. Our Advisory services start our modernization engagements in a way that ensures our teams understand the challenges, goals and expectations from day 1. And it’s just not our teams at the project start – we need to have a shared, continuous mutual understanding with the customer’s various stakeholders, all the way.
We bring tech awareness to the business planning, and carry business realities into the deepest trenches of the implementation stage.
#2 Speed is essential: Advisory helps us get faster to value
Today's market stands no delays. We all work under significant budget pressure, and customers need proof-of-value, pronto. The problem is that the minimum viable product looks so different from the business angle than it does from the perspective of an IT department or its vendors. According to research, mature digital infrastructure and development approach provide 2.5x faster time-to-market for business innovation. We can often build the digital infrastructure as we go, but we also need the approach part: Making it super-clear what needs to be done and in which order.
Our Advisory services' mission is to help build the optimal roadmap for lasting change. How do we deliver value instantly, while still building to last? Our established methodologies and templates for business case roadmapping, data strategy, AI governance, and many more areas provide a backbone for fast, structured starts. Our advisory team specializes in identifying and resolving roadblocks before technical delivery or solution adoption ever even sees them, giving both us and the customer an advantage in speed and flexibility.
#3 Customer satisfaction happens when right things happen
Agility is essential, and exactly what business stakeholders expect from us. Business goals are dynamic, and findings in one project may impact future roadmaps at a very low latency. CIOs are also increasingly measured on business results. Everybody's satisfaction hinges on right business results being delivered. Crystallizing what this means is essential, and it often needs to take a view that is broader than a single IT project. That doesn't mean vendors couldn't or shouldn't engage at a single project level - but that there needs to be active outreach to understand the world around these projects.
Our Advisory team specializes in understanding the surrounding environment, and ensuring that signals travel both ways: both that project goals are constantly aligned with the business needs, and that project findings feed the holistic dynamic of business change. Tying this back to agile delivery management and a solid IT service management practice bears fruit: according to one Forrester study, a 45 % increase in customer satisfaction (we think more, but don't have the numbers to prove it). We have standardized our methodologies to make sure we deliver the right things, consistently every time.
#4 High-quality program leadership cuts costs
Systems development is expensive. Skilled labor is expensive, and systematic changes at a company's IT and process core often cause cascade effects, triggering other changes that require seemingly unconnected things to happen in tandem. This is a challenge both in program management (How to ensure all these projects advance in lockstep?) as well as in information management (How can I get everyone on the same page about everything?). Failure in either often leads to exorbitant rises in cost. According to McKinsey, almost 50 % of all significant project overruns are caused by failures in soft factors (alignment, communication etc.).
We are professionals in leading transformation - both at project and program level. We ensure goals and communication channels are clear to every person in the project. We have found that holding a seamless unified front across business problem solving and technical engineering is easily the best way to reduce financial waste. When end-users are taken into account from day 1, we don’t flounder and spend valuable time iterating things that could have been understood right from the beginning.
