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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Designing next-gen workspaces: Environmental considerations
Conclusion: Many organisations are interested in next-generation office space designs that leverage technology to promote collaboration and workforce transformation. Leaders in this field...
- Joseph Sweeney -
Designing next-gen workplaces: The human considerations
Conclusion: To support the changing workforce, businesses should look at adaptingtransformative workplace designs to maximise productivity and collaborative efforts. Early adopters of modern...
- Joseph Sweeney -
The journey to Office 365 Part 6: Mixing up Microsoft’s 365 licensing and future compliance risks
Conclusion: Under its 365 umbrella, Microsoft offers a portfolio of plans with different packages of products and services. These Enterprise plans vary in terms of Features, Analytics, Security...
- Joseph Sweeney -
Special Report: The journey to Office 365 Part 7: Understanding Unified Support
Conclusion: Microsoft is pushing its enterprise clients from Premier Support to Unified Support. Unified Support bundles many new and existing support services into a single program. As a result, the...
- Joseph Sweeney -
Key lessons from the executive roundtable on data, analytics and business value
Conclusion: On 16 May 2019, IBRS conducted a peer roundtable on issues related to data, analytics and business value. The focus of the roundtable was to allow senior IT executives to explore how...
- Joseph Sweeney
As a Service
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Running IT-as-a-Service Part 58: Digital transformation requires effective IT value creation and management
Conclusion: Digital transformation is more than another software development stream to replace legacy systems by mobile applications. Digital transformation includes building a new IT capability...
- Wissam Raffoul -
Running IT-as-a-Service Part 57: Cloud migration strategy – pragmatic approach
Conclusion: IT organisations wishing to migrate to Cloud should adopt a pragmatic approach that strikes a balance between migration cost, Cloud risks and benefits. The bottom line is to avoid the...
- Wissam Raffoul -
Get board agreement to the Cloud strategy
Conclusion: Cloud services have now been around for over a decade and since that time many of the services available have evolved in both scope and maturity. Most organisations now have a range of...
- Philip Nesci -
Running IT-as-a-Service Part 56: Digital transformation systems should cope with stress
Conclusion: IT organisations challenged with predicting performance requirements of new digital applications should undertake end-to-end stress tests that can detect systems performance problems prior...
- Wissam Raffoul -
Running IT-as-a-Service Part 55: IBRS Infrastructure Maturity Model
Conclusion: Delivering mature infrastructure services depends on many factors. For example, the service levels may vary significantly. Some organisations opt for non-stop operations, others seek basic...
- Wissam Raffoul
Security Leadership
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Improving your organisation’s cyber resilience
Conclusion: Cyber security and data privacy are currently hot topics at both executive and board levels and security incidents feature in the media on an almost weekly basis. CIOs and executive...
- Philip Nesci -
Implementing the ASD Essential Eight Part 2: A fresh viewpoint
Conclusion: As detailed in part one of this pair of notes, the Australian Signals Directorate’s Essential Eight (E8) are detailed technical recommendations for securing an information...
- Peter Sandilands -
The cost of technical debt and cultural change inaction
Conclusion: Digital strategies often require organisations to complete major transformation projects to deliver the outcomes required of the strategy. A digital strategy is not just about...
- Mike Mitchelmore -
Implementing the ASD Essential Eight: A bigger challenge than expected
Conclusion: The Essential Eight from the Australian Signals Directorate constitutes a recommended set of strategies to reduce the risk of cyber intrusion. They are said to prevent up to 85% of...
- Peter Sandilands -
Embracing security evolution with zero trust networking
Conclusion: Current network and security deployments make many assumptions about the threat environment and which controls are effective. Many of these assumptions are predicated on an older...
- Peter Sandilands
Governance & Planning
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When does a project need to be rescued?
Conclusion: When projects start to show early signs that they may be in trouble, it is easy to have a knee-jerk reaction and address the most visible symptom. However, it is critical that CIOs and...
- Sue Johnston -
Digital strategy: Considerations
Conclusion: A digital strategy and the need for organisations to undertake numerous projects to achieve digital transformation have become the new norm. Digital strategies often require...
- Mike Mitchelmore -
Why a strategic partnership with a vendor may be unrealistic
Conclusion: The entering of a strategic partnership with a client or prospect by a major vendor, e. g. more than $50k paid p. a., is aimed at convincing them that mutual benefits such as helping...
- Alan Hansell -
Being a good customer of consulting Part 3: Maximising the value of stage gates through considered design and definition of unique objectives
Conclusion: Stage gate reviews can be a highly effective governance tool that can materially enhance project outcomes; however, their value can be eroded by poor design, a lack of planning, or if...
- Michael Smit -
Project delivery tracking: Careful of the blind spots
Conclusion: Most organisations across Australia have implemented project management methodologies to support successful project outcomes in a consistent manner. Project boards exist to provide...
- Sue Johnston
Infrastructure
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Asset management maturity model: Are the processes a living part of your organisation?
Conclusion: Asset management can be described as ‘the life cycle management of physical assets to achieve the stated outputs of the enterprise’. To achieve the appropriate level of asset...
- Mark Unwin -
ICT health check: Win-win for ICT and business
Conclusion: ICT health checks enable organisations to better understand risks and prioritise activities to both maintain and improve the performance and reliability of ICT in support of business...
- Mike Mitchelmore -
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
Applications
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Workforce transformation Part 2: The evolving role of folders for controlled collaboration
Conclusion: Dropbox’s announcement of a new interface may seem trivial, but its repositioning of ‘folders’ heralds the next disruptive phase of information management. By changing folders from being...
- Joseph Sweeney -
Enterprise resource planning (ERP) Part 2: Planning the ERP strategy for modernisation
Conclusion: Reimagining the ERP strategy will require IT and business collaboration to ensure requirements are clear. Retaining the 5–10 year old ERP system1 may serve back office functions but this...
- Mark Unwin -
CRM modernisation Part 5: Microsoft Dynamics vs Salesforce total cost of service
Conclusion: The aim of IBRS’s CRM modernisation series of advisory papers is to help organisations create a contemporary CRM strategy, not to advocate for specific solutions. Many organisations are...
- Joseph Sweeney -
Email/social platforms: Policy, etiquette and best practices
Conclusion: Email is one of the most pervasive IT applications spread throughout organisations of all sizes. It is hard to imagine any employee in any organisation not having an email account. It is...
- Peter Hall -
Familiarity can create blind spots
Conclusion: Agile approaches are being applied to a wide range of projects and activities within organisations including infrastructure upgrade projects of known tools and devices and across...
- Sue Johnston
Sourcing & Staffing
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Sourcing Monthly December 2019 – January 2020
Conclusion: This month, security issues that concern businesses have been prominent. In particular, high profile security incidents in 2019 have resulted in a greater awareness of challenges faced...
- Irene Pimentel -
Leadership practices over holiday breaks
Conclusion: There are many benefits in taking a break during the holidays that go beyond just recharging the batteries. However, along with the seemingly obvious benefits, there are also some traps...
- Peter Bickerton -
Sourcing Monthly November 2019 – December 2019
Conclusion: This month, regulatory frameworks for the ICT industry and their interaction with IT businesses and customers have been prominent. The private sector has been more vocal about the need...
- Irene Pimentel -
Software licensing tactics: Delay, delay, pay, pay
Conclusion: It is not uncommon for IBRS to see vendors delaying licensing negotiation for renewals until the very last month via a variety of tactics. By delaying negotiation vendors can limit...
- Joseph Sweeney -
Employee onboarding: Digitising can improve consistency and save significant time
Conclusion: Onboarding is a critical process when hiring new employees. Poor first impressions can impact the potential success of new employees, and potentially the productivity or benefits that an...
- Peter Hall
Operations & Service Delivery
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Incident response planning: Key artefacts
Conclusion: Two key supporting artefacts in the creation of pragmatic incident response plans are the incident response action flow chart and the severity assessment table. Take time to develop,...
- Peter Bickerton -
The human element of disaster management
Conclusion: Australian organisations must have strong disaster recovery plans, be it for natural disasters or man-made disasters. The plans need to deal with the protection and recovery of...
- Peter Hall -
Improve the customer experience within a digitally transformed world
Conclusion: In this day and age, customers expect to be able to complete a transaction across multiple touch points and for each touch point to be aware of where they are in the transaction process, and...
- Mike Mitchelmore -
Are your KPIs slowing down your service transformation?
Conclusion: Shifting end users to a digital service delivery channel is more cost-effective for most scenarios and most organisations. The return on investment is through a reduced volume of...
- David Beal -
Laying the business foundation for IT: Selecting an IT service management partner
Conclusion: Today’s business activities are heavily reliant on constantly commoditising IT functions. Faced with this reality, few organisations would now deny that improving the delivery of...
- Sam Higgins
