With over 20 years of experience implementing and using technology across both small and very large businesses, clients have often found me really helpful to act as a bridge between them and their technology suppliers to help translate tech-speak into plain English as well as help them shape a brief their suppliers will find useful.

I’m happy to jump in (and out!) at different points in the process as needed, whether it’s to help a faltering project get back on track or to help bring some focus to a project that’s always on the to-do list, but never quite reaches the launch pad.

Different projects need different levels of support, but I've often found a simple four phase process can give some useful structure…

Discover

The first stage is to take a really thorough brief from you and understand what you’re looking for and what good looks like. I’ll want to get a better understanding of your business, what works, what doesn’t and how I can help.

Depending on the project, at this stage you might want to bring in a wider group for their thoughts and I can set up a survey, focus groups or interviews to make sure everyone’s perspective gets heard.

Plan

Once we understand what’s needed and have agreed a route forward, I can  come up with a plan, evaluating a range of different approaches, pieces of software or other tools and giving you a run down of the pros and cons, as well as the potential costs.

For bigger software projects, I can also help you long list and short list potential providers, run demos and make your final selection. So you can rest easy that whatever you end up choosing will meet your needs.

Build

Once a plan is in place we reach the build stage, if you already have a supplier in place I can work with them to make sure things progress as planned. Or for many of the cloud based solutions I can dive in and configure them to meet the needs we’ve identified, doing all the initial set up and making sure your team is ready to hit the ground running.

Support

While many projects are short term and delivery focussed, I love to get to know you and your team and support you longer term. Whether that’s through launch and initial training or regular reviews to make sure everything is still performing as planned.

Inevitably, over time your business and how you work will shift and change, new people will join and your needs will grow. I can be on hand to provide further training, re-configure systems and look at new integrations and opportunities to fine tune your workflow.