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Specialist IT Consultancy, Advisory, Strategy & Delivery Services





Centric IT Consultancy



Services



Consultancy



Offering traditional IT Consultancy services to businesses Leadership teams, to support your IT objectives and projects.


From the ideation stage, in-flight or somewhere between. Our specialisms cover all aspects of IT, however we ensure a focus on driving your business results through technology (see other services for more information).


All our services include advice, support and delivery to help you achieve your IT projects, roadmaps and strategy planning. We also have experience in M&A, scaling IT up or down for business change and demergers/divestment.


We believe in tangible results for you and align to deliverables to ensure your project is successful and expectations are met.


We have a very flexible engagement process and each of these services are tailored around providing exactly what you need.


We can support you through a traditional consultancy method, adhoc or via a resource augmentation model.





Advisory



Providing CxO/Director/IT Manager level IT advice to Senior Leadership

Teams regarding your current or future IT tech & Ops Services. We integrate into your SLT and use our 30+ years of IT industry experience to advice on your IT.


We've advised SLT's on a number of large and small IT projects, from

complex global 10 year IT business alignment and transformational projects, to application selection including resource, compliance and process advice.


We've also advised on strategies for Digitalisation roadmap advice, governance, Data architecture, MDM/Single Source of Truth, Data Analytics and compliance for GDPR & SoX.


For any hardware advice , this would be dealt with by our partner network, via Centric. Ownership of partner assigned services stays with Centric IT Consultancy to ensure ownership and cohesion of services.





Steer co / leadership



Steering your larger projects on an ongoing basis at the CxO/Director/Senior Project Manager level. We'll attend required Steer Co meetings/SLT meetings to ensure the project direction is on-track. We augment resource into these Steer Co meetings to ensure we give you our full unbiased attention to the objective. We work with you on your deliverables and ensure teams and vendors deliver the requirement.


We will ensure your project, service or roadmap stays on-track. Using our Exec and Steer Co experience, we understand the risk, reputational exposure, cost of project scope creep and affect of having unclear objectives.


We offer flexible cost models, but as with all services we offer initial discussions and brief exploratory calls, for no charge. That's because alignment and fit between Centric and the customer is a major success factor for both parties.





strategy



One of our USP's is our understanding of Business and translating this into a Tech roadmap. The key is how we manage and support the "ideation"/"Conceptual" plan and move this into a realistic and tangible project. A successful Strategy needs to be realistic, measurable and aligned to your business objectives.


There can be clear links to other services we offer to support your ongoing strategy delivery also, especially Advisory and Steer Co. services.


Strategy covers all elements of IT and IT service and is

Intrinsically linked to business plans and objectives, thus is very complex to drop onto a website. All facets of IT link to an overall success plan, making the plan as simple or as complex as your require.


We have many examples of how we have helped drive local, regional and global IT plans aligned to business and/or technology objectives, we'd be happy to discuss these with you too see if we can help.





technical



We specialise in ”the bigger picture” at the business and

technical levels in tandem. Through the Consultancy expertise we offer you a hands-on approach to defining/planning your Tech roadmap. We

know about Enterprise systems, Data and integrations, ETL, BI visualisation tools, Data governance and Data ownership. We can scale all tech plans appropriately to your needs.


Centric IT have a vast knowledge from the ground up, so we can advise and recommend on most IT needs from structured cabling installs, Wi-FI install/Diagnosis, telecoms, IP phones, Cloud etc. right through to 5 year plans and costs. Of course as part of any Due Diligence we carry out on your IT current landscape, we ensure our help is fit for your future plans.


Centric have excellent knowledge on IT hardware, IT architecture, Networking & Telecoms, however by leveraging on our partner network to help us in the area of quote, supply and fit, Centric can focus on what we do best.


We have worked with our partners for the past 30 years, in

various capacities. We’re not your traditional Installer, hardware provider or support/managed service company. We can however offer you initial advice and on-going support on these, with one of our partners along side us.






Process & workflow re-engineering



Centric IT Consultancy offer a process and workflow

re-engineering service. We can identify and guide you through improving process inefficiencies to redress. Or you maybe deploying a new system/application and you need some help in the design phase.


Centric IT Consultants are ITIL and Lean Six Sigma qualified, more

importantly experience in these area's. We can advise on internal multi-point and multi-system process requirements and on the tech you might need to support this.


Some examples where we have helped customers are in manufacturing, production, supply chain, Inventory and Warehousing/Logistics and in many other areas of the business in various industries also.


As part of this service we can advise on the appropriate technology / applications required to achieve your process needs, but often is the case where its the underlying process that's at fault and the application can be secondary in priority to deliver that process.


We've worked with many customers on process engineering and re-engineering projects of all sizes. We've worked on improving small single site office processes through to Multi-Site Distribution and Supply Chain processes.


It important to know that Centric's understanding of Process & IT systems together, enables us to advise on full end-to-end process and efficiencies

aim to save you time and money.





Case Studies





Digitalisation roadmap:



A manufacturing business needed to Fast-Track into the 21st century with technology and an operating model fit for the future


The Challenge:

Build a 10 year Tech road map aligned to the 10 year business plan, with objectives to meet customer demand and reach in the future and to directly improve business development and margin. The challenge

was to develop a phased Tech roadmap to meet all objectives.


They needed to build a tangible plan of optimization, transformation and Digitalization. Ensuring the end objective met requirements in an agile and phased way due to the huge 10 year duration (in IT terms that a long long time!). Making sure the baseline infrastructure was scalable and adaptable for the future. Ensuring IT product selection and vendor selection was agile to meet changing business needs over the period. Making sure resource skills within IT (and the rest of the business as required) where aligned to the plan.


Objectives Met:

  • Deep understanding of the current state, issues, risks carried our by the Consultancy service
  • Future plans consulted on and mapped out, including all technical elements and resources, by our Consultancy Service
  • Business case created and approved, supported by the Leadership and Consultancy Service.
  • Early life planning, governance, infrastructure delivery, key enterprise application rollout/integrations completed. An initial operating model outline consulted and advised on for future deployment. This project pulled on most of the services you see here and was a huge success.


IoT & Smart lighting:



Another Manufacturing business recognised an opportunity to extend its market into Smart lighting solutions and Data services, as an additional service within its already existing manufacturing portfolio of commercial lighting solutions.


The Challenge:

As an early adopter in IoT Smart Technology/Smart City industry, it was critical to source a suitable, non-proprietary sensor family. With the ability to be a bolt-on to existing product range (with minimal adaptations). To re-sell the solution and Data to B2B customers. These sensors would gather environmental data and also detect motion and enable full remote control of light output from a dashboard. The reason, focus on sustainability, cost reduction and safety. The system


Designed to Visualise and alert on failed lights, lights staying on during the day, adjustments required during dark seasons across large geographical area, Smart Cities. Environmental statistics could also be chosen and used for a number of reasons, like cold/ice/pollution etc. Information was used for analytics in BI tools to show patterns and trends.


The Project:

Ensure that the 3rd party and the Data ownership where as required (contract). Source a product that would be secure and reliable, using mesh technology. Making sure that API access to systems worked and that dashboards were designed and accessible for customer. Ensure Data pulled via API landed into an appropriate system and presented analytics as required, using a BI tools.


Objectives Met:

  • IoT products marketed and sold as part of the product range, working with design & engineering for manufacturing inclusion.
  • BOM's and configurators changed to accommodate selling channels for new products and services
  • Sales teams supported and trained with new Tech
  • As a Service" service created internally for billing change to subscriptions. Supported by the Consultancy Service.
  • Consultancy and technical architecture provided to support all hardware choices, processes and IT as mentioned. Supported by the Technical/Consultancy Service.
  • Contracts & Licensing supported, verified and signed off, via the Advisory and Consultancy services.


data stack, data mdm & analytics



European business with 8 core plants, built by acquisition over the years and run de-centralised in the past. The business needed to enter the analytics world for insight and optimisation of inventory, supply chain and production. The ultimate goal however was to baseline infrastructure, process and governance for application data ingestion, data re-use and master data single source of truth. This architecture would scale and deliver low latency to allow for IoT sensor data retrieval, iIoT I4.0 future plans and predictive maintenance when required.


The Challenge

With Data siloed across the region, in various systems, latency was a concern, especially for near realtime application data ingress. Data resided in many legacy systems and within proprietary and non proprietary ERP systems, plus of course in many spreadsheets at the department level.


The Project:

Create a central data stack and a process to guarantee clean and de-duped data. Build cleansing process and rules, as required, to complete data sets. Ensure coding repository was used, documentation of all workflows, translations, rules and sources where complete and kept up to date. Added a role based permissions layer to all connected analytics. Onboarded a small team of specialists to deliver and support this internally. We ensured transition to BAU and a support processes was put in-place.


Objectives Met:

  • Business case, justification and sign-off completed, supported by the Consultancy and Advisory Services.
  • Product selection, Technical architecture and Security model all signed-off. Supported by the Technical and Consultancy Services.
  • Cloud platform built, ETL tool and process deployed and systems integrated successfully. Fully covered by the services we offer including recommendations, architecture, deployment, testing, BAU and support model (SDLC).
  • Resource onboarded, contract project team created & disbanded as transitioned to BAU. Supported by the Advisory and Consultancy Service.




d365 sales



CRM Deployment (B2B Business Across Europe)


The Challenge

The end objective was to deploy CRM across Europe for 20 countries with four different market sectors (different workflows & Forms). To be used by Sales teams, Production teams and specific leadership teams within sales. The deployment would be mainly Greenfield, with two legacy CRM systems to replace. The new CRM application needed to be integrated into an existing Datalake and many other applications also. Data flows and MDM needed to be factored in, and so did GDPR, as always.


The Project

After identifying ”the need” and consulting with leadership teams outside of the project to gain CRM buy-in, after business growth/roadmap discussions to assess scalability and future requirements, a new CRM application was selected and deployed successfully across the business. It included in-house contractor Dev work (avoiding vendors as per remit), project management, testing, business analysis on process, training and delivery.


Objectives Met:

  • Justification, spend and project signed off, supported by the Consultancy Service
  • Use case study completed, initial buy-in sort via leadership teams, via the Consultancy Service to ensure alignment
  • Architecture and security model finalised and agreed with Technical teams.
  • Resource onboarded and Dev work started, including Business Analysis process.
  • Project plan finalised and published, along with Project Governance, meetings, Steer Co's and RAG/RAID workshops, via the Consultancy, Advisory Service and Leadership services.
  • Deployed CRM using an Agile method, to include full SDLC process and user training plans, by the Consultancy and Advisory Service
  • Service transition, Service Design and BAU support models put in place for BAU with internal and external vendors, supported via the Consultancy Service.


Data Analytics for O.T. mes



The requirement for a Manufacturing facility across Europe to initiate the roadmap towards iIoT, starting from the ground up and adopting a cultural shift in thinking towards a data analytics and sustainable future through empowerment of information at all levels.


The Challenge

Centralising a data set, pulling OT (Operational Technology) Data from different machines in-order to build analytics to identify per machine run-time, production rates, up/down-time, maintenance etc.

The Production machines ran a variety of O/S, a high number of these where tailored legacy windows platforms embedded to run the machine, which inherently where not secure enough. This required a water tight security solution to enable connectivity to corporate networks, for data consumption.


The Project

After establishing OT O/S types and in-turn designing the security model, an architectural solution was approved. Connectivity to the machine was created using a MES/MOM application and connectivity to a central Data source was created (pipelines). A multi-layered BI report was created to pull data from a central SQL source for visualisation and analytics in real-time on a per machine, per site and per country basis.


Objectives Met

  • Security architecture signed-off. Supported by Technical and Consultancy Services
  • ETL tool & BI Application finalised, configured and deployed. By internal services and supported by the Advisory Service
  • Data extracted to central repository, tested and linked to BI. By internal services, supported by Consultancy services regarding Data Quality and process


About Centric IT Consultancy





Centric IT Consultancy was founded in 2016. We have 30 years of experience in IT and have worked from the ground up to Exec level in SMB's and Global businesses (across various industries). We operate across all industries, with the exception of FSA regulated businesses. This is due to the specialist experience needed within that sector.


One of the major success factors for Centric IT is our understanding of Business and Customers, bridging that gap that is so regularly apparent in many cases, where IT & “The Business” struggle to translate into a tangible and affective delivery. Sometimes its lack of resource, sometimes its Opex Vs Capex, maybe its FTE staff overhead constraints or maybe you need short-, medium- or longer-term support for a large project like Digitalisation or an optimisation/transformational project.


Centric IT Consultancy offer Leadership teams a focused set of services around four key disciplines; Advisory, Consultancy, Strategy and Delivery. Offering a number of services and resource solutions to support your business.


We have a flexible and tailorable service model and we're happy for you to call on us for interim, occasional or longer term engagements. We have specifically designed our services so you can "Cherry Pick" what you need support with.



Centric IT Consultancy



Centric IT Consultancy is a trading name of Centric IT Solutions Ltd, a registered company in England & Wales Co. No.07748280


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