Optimising the performance of an enterprise application requires expertise in a range of technologies as well as a clear understanding of the business drivers and end-user expectations. With expertise across all the technical components that in combination determine overall application and system performance, KOS has delivered a number of Enterprise Systems Health-Checks.
What is an Enterprise Systems Health-Check
A targeted systems review structured around a standardised Technical Landscape depicting the components commonly found as part of an end-to-end Enterprise Systems technical environment, The Health-Check consists of a top down architectural assessment and a bottom up detailed analysis of the individual technical components to identify challenges and determine how to address them.
Scope of Review
Relevant components are agreed to determine the scope of the Health-Check.
Health-Check Deliverable
The key output from the review is a detailed report, which includes:
- Assessment – A statement of the systems state of health at a component level.
- Correction – Recommendations for immediate changes to address specific issues.
- Direction – A road map detailing specific actions to address future challenges.
MOBILE FIRST
Go mobile or go bust. Are we overplaying it here?
It may sound a tad dramatic, but the reality is that if your digital strategy isn’t focusing on the mobile user experience, you’re losing out.
We’ve seen the progression of daily mobile usage taking over desktop usage. Today, more than half of all Google searches are carried out via a mobile device. And with more and more people using mobile to search, browse, buy and engage online, the mobile experience can’t be overlooked anymore.
Think about how often you use your smartphone on a daily basis and how frustrated you get if the site isn’t mobile friendly. Thankfully most sites these days are responsive (and if it isn’t mobile friendly it could effect your search rankings), but it’s really just the start.
What is a mobile first strategy?
When our digital consultants talk about mobile first, we focus primarily on the mobile user’s needs and their experience before desktop. We do this by designing, developing and marketing for the smallest screen and then scaling it up.
When you look at a desktop site, there are always certain features that can’t be applied or rendered the same way on a mobile platform. With a mobile first strategy, we take into consideration the limitations of small screens and design a site that works within those parameters. Therefore avoiding having to overcome issues that sometimes arise when scaling down from a desktop design.
Your mobile site ultimately becomes more user focused, because it forces you to prioritise what is most important for the user from a content perspective. Google’s notion around micro moments can directly be applied as a thought process to developing a mobile first site.
3 key benefits of mobile first websites
Enhanced user experience
When designing a mobile site you look at what really matters and strip away unnecessary information, keep menus short and get straight to the point. Basically you’re making it easier for the user to browse and find what they need on your site. When this clean approach is applied to desktop sites, it already improves the user experience (UX) and user interface (UI).
Made for all platforms
A properly designed mobile site translates to a great site across all devices. Anything you design for a mobile site will essentially work for a desktop site, so the approach can then be applied and enhanced for larger screen sizes, if required. Just as responsive sites adapt to the size of your device, a mobile first design works in much the same way on larger screen sizes.
Improved SEO
A mobile first site ensures your content is relevant as space is at a premium. Information is also more manageable because it is designed with mobile readability in mind. This means short paragraphs and easy to read content. All the things that search engines love, which can favour your organic search rankings.
For more insights on how our digital consulting services can help your business shift to a mobile first approach get in touch with KOS
BIG DATA
We identify and analyze our clients’ business requirements, recommend solutions and assist them in implementing these solutions successfully.
Strong Enterprise Information Architecture is needed for organizations to stay ahead of competition, and there is a need to continuously invest & innovate to attract buyers in the market. Effective use of data from internal and external sources plays an important role here. We offer the following strategy and consulting services to assist our clients in their new initiatives and help them envision and mature their information architecture.
Analytics Strategy
To stay ahead of the competition, organizations have to use predictive analytics that inform them about what can happen in the future, based on past data. There are numerous advanced analytics techniques like Markovian methods and Bayesian algorithms. These help in combining multiple parameters and defining a model that can predict future results, based on past data. We also take into account various business functions and their interdependence; external influencing factors; geographical spread of business; and past behavior of the organization; to define the analytics roadmap.
Our Analytics Maturity Assessment helps organizations decide on preparatory steps to align with their analytics roadmap. We thoroughly review the existing information architecture landscape from a business and technical perspective, identify gaps and offer future recommendations.
Warehouse Strategy
While few organizations have legacy data warehouses, there are also some that have data warehouses that are a couple of years old. There could also be few others that have been considering a brand new Enterprise Information Management (EIM) architecture. We understand both Greenfield and Brownfield implementations, and work closely with business and IT teams to discover, analyze and strategize their future roadmap for new warehouse architecture. This includes Big Data management architecture, where data is semi-structured, unstructured, or structured, but unknown. Data could be in persistent, semi-persistent or non-persistent storage. Architectural principles that warrant minimum data movement, but effective information delivery would be applied in the definition of this architecture.
The success of a BI/DW (Business Intelligence/Data Warehousing) solution is deep-rooted in the technology that is selected and used. This could vary across organizations, and hence, technology evaluation becomes an important pre-requisite for any EIM initiative. We conduct technology evaluation and rationalization to select the best set of technologies that align to their warehouse strategy.
Our data architecture team leverages industry best practices and frameworks such as The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF) in enterprise data architecture definition. Data modeling differs across industries and could be done either as a Third Normal Form (3NF) or as a dimensional data warehouse. We have adopted various industry-standard 3NF data models and implement them for our clients. We also leverage our proprietary industry-specific data models defined as dimensional models for implementation.
Data Integration Strategy
Data being a corporate asset, involves three key elements in its governance – people, process and technology. We work closely with business and IT teams to define a data governance policy.
Considering the quick growth rate of data warehouses and data marts, an archival policy becomes extremely important. Archival policy definition helps in retaining the right data online and archive the unused data. Curbing explosive data growth has become a challenge for organizations. If not done efficiently, business-critical data could go offline. Through robust data retention policies, inactive data can get intelligently relocated, while maintaining integrity and seamless access to information in the future.
Reporting & Visualization Strategy
We work closely with business users, act as a thought partner to define a complete set of reports & visualizations, and data dissemination through a secure BI portal; and define the roadmap to achieve them.
Power users need capabilities beyond reporting to perform Adhoc analysis. Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) models are built to allow slice and dice of data across various dimensions and look for data patterns. We empower end users to build their own analytical views by offering data mash-up capabilities and provide them self–service BI capabilities.
We define dashboards and scorecards that help enterprises view and interact with data to measure, monitor and manage business decisions, using both financial and non-financial parameters. We help organizations get an at-a-glance view of their operational, tactical and strategic information to allow them to make better business decisions.
Big Data Strategy
As the Digital era awaits us, the data we will be dealing with in the near future will source from various input systems at a high velocity and in seamless volume. Organizations have started using unstructured data to derive insights on their businesses and customers. We offer Big Data strategy, to assess the available unstructured data and its benefits, thus building a future road map to thrive and achieve maximum profits from the available big data silos.
Enterprise Performance Management Strategy
We help organizations build an integrated performance management system, which forms the backbone of their management operating system and serves as a foundation for an agile enterprise. Our performance management system delivers a balance of standard, as well as flexible and customized services. This includes common definitions and calculations, common processes, and a common management information interface; as well as flexibility.