Business and IT Alignment
IT Strategy

Knowledge and Information Management

Innovation Review

Portfolio Management
Enterprise Architecture & Integration
Service Oriented Architecture
Organisational Governance
Programme & Project Management
Facilitation & Event Management

Business and IT Alignment
The business needs to know that the IT organisation is working towards the visions and goals of the business. Equally, IT needs to know where the business is heading and what support it requires. Without this alignment, the business will not be able to realise its goals (especially as IT becomes ever more ubiquitous) and IT will create projects for itself, further reducing its effectiveness.

Parachute Consulting provide clear advice, guidance, and hands-on support to help organisations become and stay more aligned.

IT Strategy
An increase in the pace and scale of changes to business strategies means comparable pressures on IT strategies. IT strategies now need to be capable of evolution, offering more responsive structures and solutions.

Translating the business’s vision and strategy into coherent IT vision and strategy is an essential activity for any organisation. IT needs to work with the business to understand the level of technology support it requires: is flexibility key?; is cost control the biggest driver?; or is the ability to lead the market top priority? Appropriate governance structures and standards play important parts in the successful delivery of IT services.

Parachute Consulting help organisations to articulate IT strategies and implement enterprise structures that enable the IT organisation to deliver business targets.

Knowledge and Information Management

Knowledge Management is a large subject and one that is often misunderstood and so not capitalised on.

Parachute Consulting have a range of tools and techniques that help to identify an organisation’s knowledge management needs.  We identify areas for improvement and focus on delivering measurable change.

Innovation Review

At its simplest, innovation is about change; the successful exploitation of new concepts in products, processes, and practices that will change, for example, the effectiveness of a business or the dimensions of a market

This, though, only considers innovation in a singular sense: the introduction of an idea.  It provides no light on how numerous ideas can be realised in a way that does not see the organisation in a constant state of disruption

Business innovation is about having mechanisms for understanding the impact that an idea will have on an organisation, its competition, and its markets and being able to implement those ideas in an efficient and cost-effective way.  It also means having the environment to spawn, recognise, and develop ideas in the first place.

Parachute Consulting has a deep understanding of innovation processes and how to make an organisation more innovative, supported by a range of tools and techniques.

Portfolio Management
Understanding the mix of projects and programmes that the business and IT need to run is essential if goals are to be met. Developing approaches for establishing and managing projects is essential if costs are to be contained.

Portfolio Management includes structures and approaches that enable organisations to plan and manage their projects.

Parachute Consulting help to establish and run valuable Portfolio Management functions that focus on delivering for the business.

Enterprise Architecture & Integration
As information becomes ever more vital to the operation of a business, making that information more available across the enterprise becomes more important. The electronic sharing of information provides a business with opportunities for greater effectiveness and efficiency by replacing other less optimal mechanisms. It also means that the business is in a better position to rapidly exploit that information when the chance arises.

Enterprise integration is concerned with understanding the information that is valuable to the business, who needs to use it, and how it is currently managed. Enterprise architecture is focused on designing and implementing the services, structures, and solutions to pass that information around the business and to manage it all successfully.

Parachute Consulting understand the challenges involved in enterprise integration, whether the business is a single entity or a large federally-structured collection of organisations, and provide advice and techniques for working towards a more integrated business.

Service Oriented Architecture
The next evolution from Enterprise Architecture, S-O-A is the repositioning of business capabilities into a suite of complementary, and often autonomous, services. Parachute Consulting is at the forefront of S-O-A thinking and can guide and advise organisations in how to understand and act on S-O-A ideas and principles.

Read Parachute Consulting’s views on S-O-A in The Salamander Organisation’s INSIGHT Magazine here.

Organisational Governance
Having the right governance mechanisms is essential for any organisation, especially those that embrace a programme and project delivery culture. Yet so often governance structures seem to restrict and stifle change rather than drive it forward. Parachute Consulting help organisations to review their governance structures, determine what mechanisms are actually needed, and then work to establish them.

Programme & Project Management
Parachute Consulting also provide advice and resource for programme and project management and project office support.

Facilitation & Event Management
Consultation and workshop events are valuable tools for getting large numbers of people engaged and involved. Parachute Consulting design, arrange, and run innovate and challenging events for anything from 10 to 100 participants.