Digital technology consultancy and solution architecture
Xacam is a specialised digital experience technology consultancy employing human-centred design and systems thinking, lean and agile methods that operate at the intersection of business and technology:
1. Problem: Growing pains, changes to a business model, new services
Solution: Technology capability building and target operating model to scale or expand services
Example activities:
- Audit of existing capabilities in terms of people, process and technology
- Assessment against goals and industry standards
- Definition of a target operating model with roles, teams, skills and tooling
2. Problem: Reduce costs and time to market with fixed capabilities
Solution: Optimisation with people, tech and process improvements to get more of existing resources
Example activities:
- Review culture, roles, people, skills, tools and ways of working to establish goals and measurements for time to market and quality standards
- Recommend a mix of team structures, partner ecosystem, agile and lean methods, DevOps, continuous delivery, automation, standardisation of processes and collaborative documentation
3. Problem: Don’t know what you have in terms of technology or other capabilities and whether they are fit for purpose to execute against your strategic objectives
Solution: Perform an audit and assessment to benchmark your capabilities such as digital platforms, tools, processes or roles against industry standards and your own tailored requirements.
Example activities:
- Gather and interrogate your short-term and medium-term goals, barriers, risks and pain points and define requirements to achieve them
- Review technical documentation, systems, technology and infrastructure architectures and ways of working and document as a working map of resources
- Design and document using a standardised set of lean architecture diagrams, a matrix of resources and findings with actionable recommendations for mitigation and next steps
4. Problems: Outgrown platforms or need to rebuild or expand online presence; operational issues due to functional gaps or a disconnected technology estate
Solution: Digital solution design for a platform project approach; enterprise architecture for an organisational technology view that meets business strategy
Example activities:
- Analyse business strategy, user research and requirements, risks and assumptions
- As is technology profile and to be options benchmarked against the marketplace
- System and functional capability modelling, technology selection and architecture blueprinting
- Resourcing needs, indicative costs and roadmap
5. Problem: How to manage the risk in choosing the right fit of critical applications, systems or platforms from the marketplace?
Solution: Procurement and tech vendor selection with a structured framework and broad market insights
Example activities:
- Marketplace review
- Requirements and capabilities review and mapping
- Scenarios to test and demo
- Scoring vendors against tailored criteria
- Business case development
6. Problem: How to manage change during business as usual with lack of time or space?
Solution: Advisory-as-a-service to tech leadership offering change and portfolio management to free up time and provide objective and experienced perspectives drawn from other sectors as well as non-profits
Example activities
- Business case development
- Change portfolio and programme management
- Ongoing and timely industry insights and guidance on practices in other sectors