Featured Advisory Papers
Workplace Innovation
As a Service
Security Leadership
Governance & Planning
Infrastructure
Applications
Sourcing & Staffing
Operations & Service Delivery
Workplace Innovation
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How not to innovate
Conclusion: Innovation is a growing key competency for organisations in the public sector and seemingly an imperative for the commercial and not-for-profit sectors to grow or maintain market share and...
- Sue Johnston -
Analytics artificial intelligence maturity model
Conclusion: Artificial intelligence technologies are available in various places such as robotic process automation (RPA), virtual agents and analytics. The purpose of this paper is to provide an AI...
- Wissam Raffoul -
SNAPSHOT: From paper to digital thinking
Conclusion: Current approaches to knowledge management are being disrupted by a wave of new working practices that replace the paper-based metaphor that pre-dates the computer revolution, with a...
- Joseph Sweeney -
Digital transformation: More than a technology project
Conclusion: Organisations everywhere are thinking about, planning or undertaking digital transformation activities. While good progress is being made, there is still a tendency to view digital...
- Sue Johnston -
Leadership is critical to innovation
Conclusion:It is difficult to plan when innovation will occur. It is particularly difficult for established organisations to be innovative – they have been successful through sound business...
- Sue Johnston
As a Service
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The impact of Software-as-a-Service on enterprise solutions: Why you must run IT-as-a-Service
Conclusion: Business executives in different business units are bypassing ICT with enterprise Software-as-a-Service. Two early leaders in this trend – marketing and human resources departments – are...
- Joseph Sweeney -
Running IT-as-a-Service Part 49: The case for hybrid Cloud migration
Conclusion: Public Cloud is not the solution to all IT organisations’ technology and services problems. This is because most IT organisations use a portfolio of environments such as legacy systems,...
- Wissam Raffoul -
Running IT-as-a-Service Part 48: IT value creation accelerated approach – phase 2
Conclusion: IT organisations wishing to create value should initiate selling processes to define business needs, establish SLAs for mission-critical systems and provide IT solutions to key business...
- Wissam Raffoul -
Running IT-as-a-Service Part 47: IT value creation accelerated approach – phase 1
Conclusion: IT organisations wishing to create value are challenged by long implementation time-scales and inability to change the business perception of IT capability. To address these challenges,...
- Wissam Raffoul -
Running IT-as-a-Service Part 46: Mergers and acquisitions impact on service contracts
Conclusion: IT organisations revisiting their service contracts as a result of mergers and acquisitions should establish a federated vendor management arrangement. The rationale is to ensure central...
- Wissam Raffoul
Security Leadership
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Microsegmentation: Improving IT security
Conclusion: Recently, several architectural models and tools have become available to enable the microsegmentation of networks, which helps improve overall security within organisations and can help limit the...
- Peter Hall -
Why the CISO should evolve into a CSO
Conclusion: Over the past decade, the role of the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) has risen to be one of great importance in many large and mid-sized organisations. While this remains the...
- Claire Pales -
What is the security agenda for 2019?
Conclusion: Throughout the year, most businesses invite in a third party to conduct an information security risk assessment – as per best practice. Often this is a compliance exercise, other times...
- Claire Pales -
The security of third-party access
Conclusion: Relying on third parties to succeed in business has become the norm. Cost limitations and workforce requirements mean that businesses need to find efficient ways to achieve their goals. This...
- Claire Pales -
Should elements of your IT environments and data holdings be classified PROTECTED? Why and what to consider
Conclusion: CIOs should consider the environments for their PROTECTED information, both when building new capability and/or when renewing older infrastructure and services. The need to have...
- Mike Mitchelmore
Governance & Planning
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Strategic planning problem: Line of sight bias (myopia)
Conclusion: Many strategic planning activities that are meant to set the future direction for the organisation fail to meet that objective. Current success, a high level of incumbent expertise or even...
- Sue Johnston -
Enterprise architecture frameworks Part 1: What’s in a standard?
Conclusion: During periods of business-as-usual activity or low project investment, organisations often consolidate or reduce thei.e.terprise architecture (EA) capability. Conversely, when entering a period...
- Sam Higgins -
Cyber security and the board’s audit and risk committee
Conclusion: Increasing emphasis in the media and in industry literature on cyber security and the risks of data breaches with service disruptions is likely to get extra attention in future from the...
- Alan Hansell -
Business Relationship Manager’s new focus
Conclusion: The current Business Relationship Managers mostly act as a service desk to manage the implementation of business stakeholders’ service requests. While this is an important business...
- Wissam Raffoul -
Smart thinking needed to buy an ERP and maximise its benefits
Conclusion: When faced with determining the long-term future of an ERP solution that has met the organisation’s needs, business and IT management must investigate and weigh up their strategic...
- Alan Hansell
Infrastructure
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Telecommunications capability: Not the way we have always done it
Conclusion: Telecommunications services and the supporting infrastructure have historically been complex, costly and difficult to change. The modern technology landscape now allows for greater...
- Mike Mitchelmore -
PROTECTED Cloud: Cyber considerations
Conclusion: The Agency Head/CEO is responsible to accredit the ICT system for use at the PROTECTED level. The accreditation process is specific to the services being delivered for the organisation....
- Mike Mitchelmore -
ICT monitoring strategy: First principles
Conclusion: What to monitor and how you respond to the data is often poorly documented and not fully understood until after a failure occurs. In this world of “no surprises”, effective monitoring is a key...
- Mike Mitchelmore -
The value proposition for PROTECTED Cloud
Conclusion: Cloud offerings are now commercially available, allowing CIOs to engage the technology offerings with a high degree of trust that the service is secure and responsive at reduced cost to...
- Mike Mitchelmore -
Keeping your mobile device strategies up to date
Conclusion: BYOD strategies need to be updated regularly to keep pace with the evolving nature of not just the devices themselves but also the increasing challenges and complexity to stay secure;...
- Peter Bickerton
Applications
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Nearables, location and proximity beacons
Conclusion: The ubiquitous availability of smartphone and wearable technology has opened up opportunities for a wide range of new applications that take advantage of knowing the location and...
- Peter Hall -
CIOs must support innovation, but they do not own it
Conclusion: Globally, organisations are dealing with the challenges of “digital transformations” and the need to “innovate”. Chief information officers (CIOs) need to support their organisations in...
- Peter Hall -
Acknowledging the limits of machine learning during AI-enabled transformation
Conclusion: Increasingly, leaders in the field of AI adoption are calling out the limitations of the current machine learning techniques as they relate to knowledge representation and predictive...
- Sam Higgins -
Power BI is driving data democratisation: Prepare now
Conclusion: As self-service data analytics and visualisation becomes mainstream – due in no small part to Microsoft’s Power BI strategy – traditional data teams within IT groups need to reconsider...
- Joseph Sweeney -
10 years of blockchain: What is next for DLT?
Conclusion: In IBRS’s 2018 Top Business Technology Trends Priorities Report, we noted that despite significant media attention on blockchain or distributed ledger technology (DLT) in 2017, the...
- Sam Higgins
Sourcing & Staffing
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Effective communication is a combat multiplier for business
Conclusion: Successful businesses need their people to be productive and to perform well. Effective communication may assist i.e.suring they do. Effective communication is about thought leadership,...
- Mike Mitchelmore -
Sourcing Monthly April 2019 – May 2019
Conclusion: This month, a number of failures due to external vendor systems performing essential functions have been prominent. Disruption caused by these types of outsourced solution failures become...
- Irene Pimentel -
Competing for talent? First look for the three Cs
Conclusion: Finding superior talent has always been a challenge, even more so now. Traditional attraction and retention strategies still have value in most situations. However, there are novel ways to...
- Ewan Perrin -
Modern day slavery: Are you conscious of the human implications of your sourcing choices?
Conclusion: With both the NSW and commonwealth parliaments passing respective Modern Slavery Acts in 20181, there are now real implications and consequences for business leaders and their...
- Sam Higgins -
Sourcing Monthly March 2019 – April 2019
Conclusion: This month, the number of tenders and plans has continued to grow, highlighting the important role projects play when it becomes necessary to replace legacy systems, capitalise on new or...
- Irene Pimentel
Operations & Service Delivery
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Testing your business continuity plan
Conclusion: Regular testing of the business continuity plan (BCP) has many benefits which go beyond ticking the mandatory compliance box to keep audit off the back of executives. Effective testing...
- Peter Bickerton -
Challenges when conducting business impact analysis
Conclusion: Conducting effective business impact analysis details the business functions and provides further insight into the relative importance of each function and its criticality. The...
- Peter Bickerton -
The IT Data Analyst: A crucial role and function for delivering IT-as-a-Service
Conclusion: The IT organisation in most enterprises suffers from the “Cobbler’s Children” syndrome – they give great advice but do not practise what they preach. A prime example is when IT does not apply...
- Sam Higgins -
What is the right digital strategy?
Conclusion: There are two broad groups of digital strategies – bold and defensive. Companies that choose bolder strategies tend to be more successful. However, there are good reasons why certain...
- Ewan Perrin -
Digital transformation: The challenges of scaling
Conclusion: Digital transformation is top of the agenda for most companies in 2019. Many organisations have initiated digital transformation programs and are seeing success with small-scale pilots....
- Ewan Perrin
