Case Studies
Agile services are those that are robust to the inevitable changes that face any system, be they capacity (growth and/or variability), function, or changes in the environment in which they are intended to operate. The anonymised examples below illustrate the different ways in which we have been able to help organisations design, introduce and re-deploy complex service systems.
Integrating business process engineering with systems architecture
A large e-retailer was faced with the issue of their information system capacity growing far more rapidly than their expanding business; projections suggested that with their current model of customer and “shopping basket” management they would become unprofitable within 18 months. We modelled their end-end business processes, from customer behaviour to shipping infrastructure. Alongside the client we identified a number of restructuring options that involved changing customer behaviour, the information systems infrastructure and the timing of shipments. Subsequently we designed a number of experiments that would minimise the risk of any change while providing validation of the proposed restructuring. As a consequence the organisation reduced their infrastructure costs by almost 25%, and more importantly, reduced the rate of infrastructure growth to match revenue growth;
Rationalising and integrating multi-vendor services
A pharmaceuticals company that makes extensive use of “multi-sourcing” (purchasing services from different vendors and integrating internally) was having difficulty specifying the service levels for each vendor in order to achieve a combined of performance (responsiveness, quality of machine and people service and availability) that met their requirements. We modelled the offerings from each vendor, and the optimal service levels (from the point of view of the cost of provision, the effect on the overall system performance, and the restrictions such modifications might have on growth) to define and then deploy a suitable set of service levels and the appropriate monitoring and compliance regime.
Balancing performance, availability and requirements
A financial institution commissioned a new trading system infrastructure to handle both end of day settlement and derivatives modelling & forecast services. The solutions proposed by both vendors and the internal IT team were financially prohibitive. We modelled the critical process flows, settlement, derivatives and development/staging systems in order to demonstrate how costs could be reduced, risks controlled and the options for growth maintained.
Modelling and managing user behaviour
A public sector organisation wished to move from a largely email based collaboration system to one that used a searchable, indexed electronic document and records management system (EDRMS) for tens of thousands of users. They were uncertain how to specify and then size the new system. We created mathematically based models of the different groups of users, business critical and normal, that could be used to experiment with multiple working patterns under different scenarios in order to understand how the communications and processing capacity could be optimised. We used these models to design roll-out procedures that would rapidly demonstrate if and when the clients assumptions were incorrect, again to minimise the risk of deployment. Finally we developed metrics that would allow our clients to understand how physical measurements of their information systems performance could be related to the working practices and behaviour of their staff and tracked as working patterns changed.
Valuing service agility
A large commercial information aggregator and supplier commissioned concinnitās to analyse and model their choices of systems and service infrastructure investment based on a number of business scenarios including expansion, volumetrics, new service provision, and a fluctuating economic climate. Using a lightweight options oriented valuation methodology (LOOM), developed by concinnitās, we explored the implications for cost, agility and robustness of different investment and outsourcing models. This enabled our customer to place monetary value on infrastructure choice and design, the optimal form of outsourcing agreement that maximised their benefit, and identify systems metrics that could be used to manage their investment and relate performance to business objectives.
