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Technology

Where deep Business understanding and technology knowledge combine

Technology is critical to most organizations to automate the business processes, connect with customers, and support growth. Although it's important, good technology is not the end goal, rather business effectiveness and efficiency is the desired outcome. Sellside Group works with our clients to envision how technology supports a new business vision and then interprets that into a practical strategy and implementation plan. Sellside Group also helps clients transform the IT function recognizing that new approaches and skill sets are required for a future business that operates at the speed of digital.

Setting a new Direction

Customers expect companies to serve them where and how they want to transact; this has exposed limitations in many companies that are just not equipped to support new ways of doing business such as self-serve or e-commerce.

 

As a result, our clients have come to  appreciate the need to transform their business and that integrated technology is foundational to staying competitive and supporting growth.

This combined with the speed at which technology is evolving creates the need to rethink the business vision and to have a technology strategy and plan that is in lock-step.

Define A New Strategy

We help you design a technology vision and strategy that supports the business direction. This includes a tactical plan with budgetary amounts that can be used for business cases and receiving approvals to move ahead.​

​specific steps might include

  • Current State Assessment of the technology landscape and the IT function

  • Developing a technology vision on what a new end state would look like and its linkages to the business strategy

  • Defining a strategy on how to get to the end state recognizing the business imperatives and the constraints associated with the current technology

  • Creating a Tactical Plan that defines the overall work streams, milestones, activities, and resourcing needs

  • Defining the governance needed to steer the strategy execution

Implementation Support

Sellside Group will also be there to assist in execution of the new technology strategy. Our tailored involvement can range from coaching, governance, helping with the program management and taking lead on some of the activities.

Where We Can Help

  • Setting up the governance for the strategy execution and helping to run them

  • Presenting regular updates to the stakeholders  

  • Assigning the right talent and skill sets to ensure the program is successful

  • Managing the program financials

  • High level architecture of the new systems

  • Engaging technology vendors and negotiating new contracts

  • Exiting the old systems and terminating contracts

  • Coaching the Program Leaders who are responsible for delivery

Golden Gate Bridge

Mergers & Acquisitions

Whether you are the buyer or the seller, one area that gets a lot of attention during the actual deal and subsequent integration is technology. In many situations it is “the long pole in the tent” as integrating or divesting technology is complex and has an impact on the people and the processes across the enterprise.

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If you are selling a company, it's important to have the systems in a state that can be transferred to the buyer including a strategy for interim support. If you are the buyer, its important to think through different strategies for taking control of the systems and rapidly moving to an interim Day 1 state so that change can be managed well and co-ordinated with the other areas of the business integration.

Optimizing The Deal

While technology is not usually a make or break factor on a purchase or sale agreement, it can have an impact on pricing and the cost to integrate. Sellside Group can help you identify the issues, opportunities and costs associated with integration so that they can be added into the agreements and reflected in both the price and the support costs during transition.

Supporting Transition

Transition is a very important period to stabilize the systems and work through the “next state” such as integration with your current systems.

Post Merger Integration

Once the deal is complete and the systems are under support, the critical period of post merger integration starts leading to a Day 1 target and then carrying on from there to achieve the merger business objectives. This period is usually very stressful and fast paced as the buyers get their arms around the new systems and the seller is working through details on how to actually do the transfer. 

Due diligence on the technology and team coming with the deal

  • The applications, data and infrastructure that supports the business

  • The performance of these systems and their ability to scale up

  • Major contracts such as outsourcing contracts to better understand breakage fees

  • The resiliency of the systems and the ease at which they can be transferred and reshaped

  • The IT team and the key leaders that will be important – particularly through transition

Ensuring The people and support you need for Transition are in place

  • Negotiating the scope, cost and timing of the Transition Support Agreement

  • Helping with tactics to retain desired members of the IT team so they can assume new responsibilities and help with the subsequent changes.

Seamless Integration 

  • Designing the overall Integration Program, governance and timing

  • Defining the Day 1 target state and associated benefits

  • Helping to run the PMO and co-ordinating the various work streams

  • Designing the new IT function that is a combination of existing and new

  • Leading the workstreams or coaching your own leaders

  • Changing/ restructuring vendor and sourcing agreements

Technology Enabled Transformation

Many companies today are undertaking a significant transformation of their business to stay competitive and to take advantage of modern technology that can extend the reach of the organization, improve efficiency, support growth, and in some cases reduce costs.

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While the focus needs to be on business outcomes, the underlying technology often defines what is possible and the speed at which future change can be implemented. Sellside group works with our clients to design a holistic approach.

Setting up for success

Business transformations are often large, complex and “bet the company” types of initiatives. SellSide group works with our clients to set the program up for success which often involves the scoping, business case, governance and talent assigned to execute. In some cases, our clients already have a program up and running but it is not meeting expectations; in these situations we will bring an experienced and a fresh perspective to remediate the program and get it back on track.

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  • Reviewing the business objectives, timing and budget

  • Reviewing the current business baseline of what needs to be transformed

  • Designing the Program approach, scope, and structure

  • Creating a detailed execution plan

  • Creating an internal marketing and communications plan to keep stakeholders current

  • Defining the key skill sets needed and the timing of each

  • Reviewing with leadership to gain alignment and make adjustments based on feedback

Business case and Executive Alignment

One area that is often a challenge in these large programs is developing a solid business case and getting that aligned with senior leadership. Sellside group can help with this by bringing our experience and templates to accelerate the development time and working to align the leaders.

Program Management

In some cases, our clients need experienced program managers to supplement their own capabilities given the size and complexity of the transformation. Sellside Group can provide leaders to fill these interim roles and to coach your people so they develop these skill sets.​​

Glacier

Technology Operating Model

Most companies now find themselves in a competitive situation where speed to market, cyber protection and innovation are as important as stable systems that meet uptime service level agreements. The common challenge is that the IT function was designed in a different era and cannot adapt to the new realities of speed, agility, collaboration, and innovation.

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Sellside group works with clients to envision a new IT function and operating model that reflects changes in how modern systems are constructed, advances in technology, and the need to work with internal customers and 3rd parties.

Designing a New IT Function

Sellside group works with our clients by providing experience and IT operating model examples from previous client projects. This accelerates the timeframe to get to a new design that has been proven in other organizations and meets the most important business needs.

The Steps we Follow

  • Review the current IT organization design, performance, and skill sets and compare that to the business requirements

  • Consider the technology direction such as cloud, buy vs build, digital, and AI/ Machine learning

  • Review design alternatives and best practices to decide on a future design

  • Review with leadership and gain alignment

  • Market internally and secure key IT staff needed for the future design.

Detailed Design and Transition

Once the new IT Operating model design has been approved and key leaders are aligned, Sellside group works with its clients to go deeper into the design. Reviewing the roles and responsibilities in order to identify internal candidates that can assume these new roles and also the gaps that need to be filled to make the new design work well. 

Where We Can Help

  • Define the IT capabilities in terms of functional groups in IT and in the business

  • Define detailed roles and responsibilities using job descriptions

  • Identify key leadership roles and responsibilities and match to internal people

  •  Work with IT leaders and HR to retain key people and minimize disruption during transition

  • Identify talent strategies to uplift skills and capabilities

  • Transition people into new roles using a structured and phased approach.

  • Address changes in other operating model areas such as sourcing, software engineering, performance measurement, compensation, and goal setting.

A woman at the office overlooking the city skyline

Data Management & Governance

Data has become a competitive differentiator and fuels AI/ML, accelerates decision making, and allows companies to serve customers seamlessly whether that be in a physical or digital situation.

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The challenge in most organizations is that data is trapped in silo systems, which makes it difficult to extract for analysis and reporting purposes, and for sharing across the enterprise.

 

The other challenge we often see is that data is not managed well so the quality is suspect and the same data is duplicated across the company contributing to the explosive growth that is outstripping computer systems’ capacity.

 

Sellside group works to help liberate your data, and manage it in a way that enables easy access and integration across the enterprise. Furthermore, we help make decisions on the tooling you should be using to manage data so that its timely, accessible and protected.

Data Architecture

Helping you optimize the way you store data and manage data through its lifecycle. Getting the end state vision defined for data is often the first step as it can be used to map out the transition plan and define standards.

Assess the tooling and Technology Used for Data

  • Assess current data landscape and business needs

  • Define a high level architecture for the future state information

  • Define the data strategy and transition plan

  • Identify alternatives for data management, reporting and analytics technologies and make recommendations for improvement

  • Identify alternatives for data tooling for modelling and managing data.

Data Governance

Data governance is a key discipline in digital business and often needs improvement to ensure that data is correctly tagged, managed and protected. Data governance is also a joint responsibility of the business and the IT group requiring clarity on who is responsible and accountable for data quality. 

Improve the way you govern the asset called data

  • Assessing current data governance and business needs and making recommendations for improvement

  • Defining a data governance framework including goals and objectives, and roles and responsibilities

  • Defining the tools and training required for data governance

  • Implementing data governance including data quality management

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