Quick Start Approach Beats Cut and Paste Consultancy to the Punch
PRESS RELEASE
London, 12th February2018 – Cyber liabilities, new ways of working and today’s complex technology landscape are creating challenges that CIOs and their Boards are failing to address due to a lack of practical expertise in IT leadership, says Fifth Step CEO Darren Wray.
According to Wray, many CIOs and organisations are becoming disgruntled with the approach taken by some of the big name consultancy companies, questioning the value and cost effectiveness of “off-the shelf solutions” that fail to address the specialist sector-specific needs. Flexibility is key. Modern CEOs and IT leaders need to act quickly in response to fast changing market dynamics, hence a “Quick Start” approach.
Wray says: “Consultancy firms are under pressure to deliver greater value for money to clients but there is more than one way to skin a cat. Cut and paste consultancy as I term it often fails to draw upon extensive and practical expertise in IT Leadership, Change Leadership and Resiliency Leadership. Businesses are telling me there is a real desire and need for a clearly defined deliverable in a clearly defined time period and price rather than the “you can work with us but it will cost you” approach taken by others. With the backdrop of the current business environment, an approach that allows for benchmarking and demonstration improvement over time has to be the way forward in 2018.”
Wray notes that three areas, in particular, can best be tackled by a quick start approach: cyber resilience, complex change and today’s complex digital corporate landscape.
Starting with Cyber resilience, Wray says: “The world is changing rapidly and cyber criminals are adapting to it faster than security solutions are being developed. Targeted attacks by skilled and persistent cyber criminals are now a worrying business reality. Traditional security measures like firewalls and antivirus software are proving inadequate in the evolving threat landscape. It’s not a matter of ‘if’ but ‘when’ an organisation will suffer an attack. Flexibility and a smart quick start approach is key to allowing management to make informed decisions at the pace demanded by today’s business environment.”
Managing complex change: “Sometimes a longer-term strategy is unlikely to be sustainable, says Wray and therefore “CEOs and IT leaders need to re-visit plans and ensure their change programmes are delivering the business benefits that they were approved for.”
Complex modern IT environment: “In today’s fast-changing business environment, few find themselves more in the crosshairs than a newly hired chief information officer. New – and more mature CIOs – are facing conflicting challenges that are increasing in depth and breadth. Keeping ageing legacy systems running to meet business units’ more complex and ever-increasing demands is a massive challenge. At the same time, the Board is looking to them to lead and deploy a range of new IT capabilities, including mobile, social, and cloud technologies. Sometimes it means they need to be open to new ideas or ways of working – or business models – and draw on different views about the way the world is working.”
Fifth Step’s Quickstart™ Assessments provide companies with the information they need to understand where their business is protected against cyber threats, have confidence that the complex change they are undertaking is delivering the benefits, that they are compliance with the regulatory and governance requirements and that their systems and processes are ready for the present and the future. All these benefits should be delivered in a defined timescale with business enhancing deliverables that will help guide businesses to fulfil their strategic objectives.
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Notes to Editors
Fifth Step works with clients around the world in the Financial Services, Legal and other sectors helping them to leverage the power of their existing IT resources to maximise business performance. We help our clients meet strategic goals, surmount the challenges of change and enhance their governance.
We do this through a highly focused combination of industry experience and high-level IT expertise at both strategic and functional levels.
We consider ourselves a strategic resource, operating on a consultancy basis to add value to our clients by delivering bespoke services to agreed plans, timetables and budgets.
Darren Wray