Strategy and Business Planning

Service: ICT Consultancy

We have considerable expertise in the provision of Information & Communications Technology (ICT) Consultancy. Qi Consulting provides ICT consultancy support to the public sector, including central civil government, agencies, the health sector, local authorities, defence, Criminal Justice and NDPBs. We support, promote and comply with government and industry best practice.

Key services include:

advice and guidance on ICT Strategy;
advice and guidance on the design and development of ICT applications;
procurement of ICT solutions and services;
ICT organisational review;
design of stand-alone applications or middleware to ensure effective systems integration;
advice on application design management;
integration with existing ICT systems;
advice and guidance on the design, optimisation and implementation of new and existing ICT systems;
integration of business processes with application and data across diverse platforms and technologies;
consultancy and support services in respect of electronic commerce including EDI, multimedia and Internet/intranet services and other e-business solutions;
advice for record, data and knowledge management (EDRM);
system design and functional specifications;
software development methods and tools;
testing services;
through-life management;
data management;
authentication
benchmarking;
technical assurance and Post-Implementation Reviews;
Service Orientated Architecture;
networks and telecommunications consultancy;
secure network design and implementation;
ICT disaster recovery and business continuity;
development and production of relevant documentation.

These services are often delivered alongside our programme and project management services.

Best practice

Qi consultants follow government and industry best practice, including the following methods and tools:

Information Strategy Planning (ISP) – a flexible planning method to align IT with business objectives, and build the User Requirements Specification and Systems Implementation Plan
PRINCE2 – government’s project management method.
Rational Unified Process (RUP) – one of the standard requirements capture and agile development methods
Lean Six Sigma – a toolset that uses statistical analysis to probe why things are going wrong in a process. It allows users to rectify matters by focusing on exactly what the customer wants at the lowest cost and with no waste Simplification and continuous improvement play a key part in facilitating improvements
Balanced Scorecard – widely used across the public sector to measure performance against an organisation’s strategy and objectives
MSP – Cabinet Office’s Managing Successful Programmes methodology and guidance
TOGAF (The Open Group Architecture Framework) – an industry-standard architectural framework – a detailed method and a set of supporting tools for developing a broad range of different IT architectures to enable business requirements to be provably met by IT systems
Management Of Risk (M_O_R) – Cabinet Office’s best practice guidance on managing risk; compliant with HM Treasury’s Orange Book, which provides guidance on the principles of risk management
CRAMM – the Cabinet Office (CCTA) security/risk analysis method
Microsoft Project – the widely-used project planning/ management software
EFQM – the European Foundation for Quality Management Excellence Model is widely used in some government sectors for objective benchmarked measurement of progress in delivering service quality improvements
HM Treasury Green Book – used as the core guidance / structure for business case preparation; mandatory in central government
Information Economics– a structured way of looking at the use of technologies and systems in organisations, focused on real value and worth in ICT investment
Lanner Witness – a simulation modelling tool used for modelling workflow in complex public-interface environments with IT-dependent processes (e.g. call handling and call centres)
ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library) - used as best practice guidance for consultancy assignments on service delivery improvement
SSADM – Cabinet Office’s Structured Systems Analysis and Design Method, used in the analysis and design stages of systems development
4PS Procurement Pack - guidance and best practice for Local Authority initiatives in Corporate and Transactional Services.

We can offer a range of ICT consultancy and implementation roles and where teams are required we can also bring together a complete Programme or Project Team and support staff or team of project managers to address a particular challenge. All assignments are controlled through our ISO 9001:2008 Quality Management System for ‘The provision of management and Information Communications and Technology (ICT) consultancy services’.

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