Tag Archive: cost

1. Our Approach to Application Development Consulting 

   June 20, 2024 12:00 pm Leave a Comment

   How Our High-Value, Purpose-Built Application Development Services Deliver Results Across the Board.

    

   When your organization requests IT consulting services from Core Catalysts, you can expect a highly intentional process that not only delivers results, but establishes a sustainable legacy and long-term success. 

   Core Catalysts knows that challenges such as application development require more than a consulting firm that “knows tech.” Taking many strategic steps alongside development gets you across the finish line, including:

   • Dynamic program and project management.
   • Effective business analysis and process mapping.
   • Key development resources.
   • Comprehensive application functionality.

   Core Catalysts provides significant expertise in IT implementation, but our robust services offerings turn application development into something larger: comprehensive process development. When we approach IT implementation, we also ensure that we make the best decisions on behalf of all stakeholders, while reducing costs and securing team member buy-in.

   A Core Catalysts Case Study In Application Development

   Our client is a globally recognized business that required our assistance with their goal to build a high-value, purpose-built application. This application modernization project would allow them to automatically allocate insurance premiums across their multiple properties. 

   Our initial assistance was focused on helping them to project manage the effort, which also included vendor management. In addition, this client needed a skilled resource that could aid them in gathering all the requirements necessary for the creation of this application. 

   Our Initial Recommendations: Project Management

   Core Catalysts assigned a seasoned project manager with significant experience in managing custom development projects. This individual quickly established a project timeline for the initial phases of the project, leading up to actual development. 

   Additionally, the project manager established the appropriate project governance that would help ensure the proper management of risk, issues, and changes. As part of this governance, and critical to the gathering of requirements, our project manager determined that a stakeholder analysis was necessary. This analysis identified all appropriate internal and external individuals and established their project needs (e.g., the creation of a RACI model to determine which team members were responsible, accountable, consulted, and informed).

   Implemented Business Analysis and Cost Reduction Solutions

   In addition, Core Catalysts assigned a highly skilled business analyst, who guided our client through the development of their application requirements. This individual leveraged the stakeholder analysis and initiated interviews and workshops that allowed the stakeholders to discuss their needs and expectations. 

   This business analyst carefully documented the requirements using a proprietary “traceability matrix” that helps to link business, functional, technical, and testing requirements together. After the business analyst reframed this data in a logical and consumable format, they validated the information with the appropriate stakeholders. 

   Application Development Consulting Begins

   Upon completion of these efforts, the requirements were provided to the application development vendor that the client selected. This vendor provided our client with a timeline and cost estimate to complete the application. Unfortunately, the timeline and cost associated with the development of this application was significantly longer and significantly higher in cost than our client had anticipated. 

   Intimately familiar with the application’s requirements, Core Catalysts took the opportunity to provide our own cost and timeline estimate to the client. Our estimates were significantly less than those of the other vendor. Because Core Catalysts had already established trusted working relationships with the stakeholders and had intimate familiarity with the requirements, the ramp up time to development was significantly reduced, thereby lowering costs as well.  

   A Highly Efficient Timeline 

   Our client selected our proposal to build this high-value purpose-built application, including development work on the initial phase and an MVP (minimum viable product). Our work commenced immediately.

   Because our client valued our ability to respond quickly to their needs, they requested that Core Catalysts not only host the application, but also provide ongoing maintenance and support.

   Within three months our client was able to interact with the initial build of the application. Within six months, our client was able to start using some of the initial functionality within the new application. At the nine-month mark, our client had a complete and operational MVP that provided them with the foundational elements necessary to properly allocate insurance premiums across all their properties.  

   Successful Application and Process Development 

   As the MVP phase came to a close, the trusted relationship that Core Catalysts established with our client was still flourishing. Our ability to execute and deliver on their requested product gave them the confidence to move forward with phases two and three of the project. 

   Core Catalysts is currently working on phase three, continuing to provide additional application modernization and functionality for our client. We provided immediate results and value for both individual users of the application and our client’s entire organization.

   4 Reasons to Partner With Core Catalysts For Application Development Consulting

   This case study illustrates our application and process development success. This success can be broken down into four essential qualities that separate us from other business consulting firms. 

   • Seasoned program and project management talent: Our team’s experience ensures we honor project timelines, reduce costs where possible, and expediently and efficiently deliver application functionality.
   • Effective business analysis and process mapping: We provide highly-skilled resources to gather business and functional requirements, and fully map the application development process. We offer a deep understanding of technology, allowing us to initiate technical requirements, as well as associated testing requirements, such as quality assurance. 
   • Robust development resources: Core Catalysts provides clients with a blend of onshore and offshore resources for the development of the application. This ensures that communication, critical in the development of a custom application, is effective and consistent. We also provide clients with balanced cost models, allowing applications to be built in a cost-effective manner.  
   • Exceptional application functionality: We ensure that your application meets all your functionality requirements, including application modernization. Ultimately, with Core Catalysts’ help, your application will meet or exceed your requirements, so you can use this new resource efficiently and sustainably. 

   Core Catalysts exists to resolve your challenges and deliver results that are yours for the taking. If your team requires application development to modernize your processes, improve organizational efficiency, or deliver any other key metrics, contact our team. 

    

2. Questions for 2022 Pt. 3: Cost Structure and Expenses

   March 2, 2022 11:00 am Leave a Comment

   This week, we’ll further explore the pressing need to review cost structures and all major business expenses in light of how business has changed (and will never go back to how it was pre-pandemic).

   What we already know:

   Once again, let’s take what we know about 2022, and then apply it to the question:

   • Some jobs and activities will always be in-person, and some organizations now feel confident enough to mandate returns to the office. However, remote-working has become a fact of life during the pandemic, and many organizations and people may choose not to return to their old in-person, in-office schedules and ways of working.
   • Business travel expenditures are still radically below pre-pandemic levels. And yet, most organizations have found ways to overcome travel limitations to their business development, operational management, and delivery activities in the short to mid-term.
   • It’s too early to fully know what the future of the office and the commercial real estate market is, but it’s likely that many organizations’ future office space and design needs will be different (both during and after the pandemic). Warehousing and other real estate needs may also be different moving forward.

   Great, but so what?

   First off, have you re-evaluated your real-estate needs versus your current real-estate footprint, given how business has changed and how future requirements may be different in the future?

   Real estate costs (including rent, utilities, facilities, and maintenance) can be a significant expense in many businesses. If future needs translate to the need for less office space, what are you doing to realize these potential cost savings? Equally, if your real estate needs will be different, are you budgeting for any required capital investment, such as for physical updates to office spaces?

   Another outcome of the pandemic is a record demand for warehousing and fulfillment center properties, and other logistics related real estate. So, even if your office space needs haven’t changed, what about these kinds of needs? Rather than offering an expense reduction opportunity, this might even be another area of rapidly increasing (potentially spiraling) business expense that deserves further analysis and action to bring it under greater control.

   Secondly, have you adequately and effectively reallocated budgets previously allocated to business travel? Moreover, have you considered whether your organization will return to previous levels of spending after the pandemic?

   Reduced business travel has not reduced the need for facetime with customers, colleagues, and vendors. However, the fact that most organizations have managed so well despite less travel does suggest that returning to previous spending levels may not be necessary. Equally, even if spend can’t (or shouldn’t) be reduced, how is it going to be reallocated to ensure business results and ROI if old travel activities (conferences, junkets, etc.) are going to be less prevalent?

   Thirdly, collaboration tools such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meetings have improved significantly in the last few years, as has their utilization by many organizations. Gaps and opportunities still exist, however. Has your organization fully accounted for the likely hardware, software, and other financial and capital investment implications of the increased usage of IT collaboration tools?

   Some of these incremental costs may already be obvious and/or known, but some may be less so. As examples:

   • Giving employees regular home office “stipends” for equipment costs is becoming more common. Should you be doing this, and how should you reduce corporate office expenses to offset?
   • Providing the same hands-on hardware and technology support employees are used to in a corporate setting is harder and more expensive in a remote work setting.
   • Will a prolonged increase in remote working have subsequent bandwidth, licensing, hardware, and infrastructure implications (and if so, what are the financial implications)?

   If you haven’t already, now is the time to more deeply review the longer-term impact of the pandemic on your IT organization and infrastructure, and how this could translate to your financial bottom line.

   Finally, we’ve mentioned in previous posts that worker shortages (translating into higher labor costs) have been another consequence of the pandemic’s impact on cost structures. Reviewing labor costs should be another priority for most businesses, but this topic deserves its own deep dive and will be the topic of the next post in this series.

   Conclusions

   Changes in how many organizations do business, including the increase in remote work and reductions in business travel, offer opportunities to re-evaluate cost structures and business expenses. These changes also highlight the need to identify and evaluate future financial implications. Core Catalysts regularly helps clients assess financial and operational efficiency and effectiveness to understand and optimize business operations and cost structure. We’ve also helped multiple customers optimize their IT strategies and infrastructure to match today’s changing environment. If you believe we could help your organization with this, why not reach out to us and schedule a call?

   Thanks once again for reading and please share any thoughts or comments you have. We’ll see you again in two weeks for the final post in the series, which will cover the question of business automation during and after the pandemic.

   – Mark Jacobs, Client Service & Delivery