It is essential for Retailers to develop this comprehensive plan in order to deal with the painful reality that IT and business units cannot successfully execute on everything being asked of them. The ultimate responsibility for the roadmap resides with senior executives, who are able to view available business and IT resources, project cost ﾩ Copyright 2011 IHL Group and C-CORE Consulting Group All Rights Reserved. ihlservices.com 4 estimates vs. available funds, and dependencies. Through a well-developed roadmap, retail technology leaders understand what can be accomplished with these resources and rationalize the number of projects balancing strategy, cost and risk. It is better to focus on 10 well executed core projects than to attempt to deliver 25-30 poorly executed projects that require additional maintenance and support due to an over-ambitious plan.
The Rapid Project Retail Roadmap Toolkit includes the following functions:
Roadmap Development and Audit
Governance Model Execution
PMO Set-up/Methodology Review
Business Function Model Development
Process Management/Harmonization
Program Key Design Points
Risk Assessments
Process Training for Teams
Program Executive/CIO Support
Vendor/System Selection Approach
Why IHL/C-CORE?
Quite simply, speed and experience. When you deal with IHL/C-CORE you are dealing with a core group of experts with over 100 combined years of Research and Implementations. When you use one of the large consulting outfits you are generally receiving the low level experienced personnel in the engagement or paying exhorbitant fees for the principals and a delayed project timeframe. With IHL/C-CORE – you get both the speed to market and the experience of many installations and vendor selections.
Finally, utilizing IHL’s Retail Technology Database, we are quickly able to find multiple references for each vendor (not just the references they hand select). Together, IHL/C-CORE can provide an unmatched solution of technology insight, contacts, and selection/implementation.
Will the toolkit work effectively with my existing project methodology?
The Toolkit is content rich and designed to be quickly aligned with project management best practices. The Toolkit focuses on jump-starting the requirements definition and vendor evaluation and provides Microsoft office compatible based templates easily converted to a retailers templates and methodology to launch the project quickly while leveraging the project disciplines that retailers have developed in their IT organizations.
Why would I need to use the toolkit? I have a strong IT organization.
Vendors and Retailers have both expressed concerns over the challenges of starting a project. Many of the resources responsible for the current platform support have been promoted, or moved to other organizations. Typically, retailers have not placed much value in creating and updating process and requirements repositories. The RAPID PROJECT TOOLKIT provides the mechanism to jump-start the process and move through business requirement definition and vendor selection quickly.
Why would I not use the ARTS RFP instead of this toolkit?
The Rapid Toolkit includes the ARTS RFP Framework but takes the process to a much deeper level than just the business requirements and an RFP template. It provides tools and templates for due diligence around the vendor evaluation and scoring process required today due to SOX. It also includes training requirements estimates, deployment plans, testing plans and risk management templates. Finally, the RAPID PROJECT TOOLKIT also provides a user adjusted weighting system so that the retailers can present the RFP according to the most important needs of the retailer. In other words, it allows the retailer to direct the RFP towards how they operate rather than a standard industry document only.
How much help will I need to use this toolkit?
We estimate that the skills transfer can take place in 10 full productive days, including customizing the information for the retailer’s business, depending on the complexity of the retail operation.
For more information, please feel free to contact us.
The Rapid Project Retail Roadmap Toolkit pricing includes a product license fee for the tool and consulting/training from our experts. For more information, please contact as at 615-591-2955 or click below to send an email.
IHL Group License and Fair Use Agreement
All of IHL Group’s generally available research are electronic licenses and can be shared freely within the purchasing organization and wholly owned subsidiaries. We only ask that this information not be shared with partners or others outside the purchasing company without authorization from IHL Group. The license does not extend to joint ventures or other partnerships. If the relationship is not a wholly-owned subsidiary, then both parties would need a license.
Practically, this implies the following:
- The purchasing company can use the data and research worldwide internally as long as the international organizations are wholly owned subsidiaries of the purchasing company.
- The data or any research cannot be distributed in whole or in part to partners or customers without express written approval from IHL Group.
- The purchasing company may quote components of the data (limited use) in presentations to customers such as specific charts. This is limited to percentage components, not individual unit information. Unit data cannot be shared externally without express written approval from IHL Group. All references to the data in presentations should include credit to IHL Group for the data.
- The purchasing company can reference qualitative quotes in printed material with written approval from IHL Group.
- All requests requiring written approval should be submitted to ihl(at)ihlservices.com and will be reviewed within one business day.
For any questions regarding this policy, please contact us at 1-888-IHL-6777 (North America) +1.615.591.2955 (International) or email us at ihl(at)ihlservices.com.
