Discovery Audit

One of the foundational services that ONQU Offers is a Discovery Audit. It is a defined methodology that helps to define key requirements and aspects of the project or service that need to be implemented or changed. Key drivers or deliverables are identified and confirmed with stakeholders.

What is an ONQU Discovery Audit?

ONQU delivers Discovery Audits, to gather information about an organisation’s planned projects, technology estate, IT infrastructure and systems. It involves assessing the current state of an organisation’s project deliverables or technology assets, to create either a Statement of Work (SOW) or a Statement of Service (SOS).

The purpose of the discovery audit is to provide organisations with a comprehensive understanding of their project deliverables or technology landscape. The audit will identify any project or service vulnerabilities, risks, or inefficiencies within the scope of the project or environment.

This information is crucial for an organisation’s stakeholders to make informed decisions about their technology investments and develop a project and resource plan or a strategic services roadmap for current and future support.

Why Conduct a Discovery Audit?

There are several reasons why organisations choose to conduct a project or services discovery audit:

Fully understand the technology estate including versions, dependencies, technologies, awareness, resources and skills.

Define key outcome metrics and desirable that can be used to measure the success of the project or service outcome.

Identify security threats: A discovery audit can help identify any potential vulnerabilities in the systems and provide recommendations for strengthening the security measures.

Improve efficiencies: In today’s fast-paced business environment, technology plays a critical role in streamlining processes and improving productivity. By conducting a discovery audit, organisations can identify any inefficiencies or bottlenecks in their IT systems estate and make necessary improvements to enhance efficiency.

Mitigate risks: A services discovery audit can also help organisations identify any potential risks, such as data loss or system failures. By understanding the current state of the technology assets, organisations can proactively take steps to mitigate these risks and prevent any disruptions to their operations. ONQU will produce a RAID Log and Change Request process to support this.

Plan for future growth: As organisations continue to grow and evolve, their technology needs also change. An IT discovery audit provides valuable insights into an organisation’s current technology landscape, helping it make informed decisions about future technology investments.

How is an ONQU discovery audit conducted?

The process of conducting an IT discovery audit involves several steps:

Requirements must be gathered during the Discovery Process across all main stakeholders including Executive, Managerial and User Groups.

Once identified the key requirements ensure that the key functionality areas of the new system can be delivered and catered for across all user groups.

Determine what applications and data sources are needed to empower users and maximise workflow efficiency. Note that edge applications (such as CPQ tools, field service, or contract management) integrated into a CRM can deliver more than four times the ROI of core CRM applications.

Working with department heads to develop revenue and productivity opportunities at each stage helps ensure deliverables are aligned with requirements and strategy.

Once requirements are identified as opportunities are flagged, part of the development process is to study them for the ROI potential, compare them, and prioritise the systems functionality or service options that will provide the greatest value and best organisational ‘win’ scenario.

Technical architecture is a key component of the systems/services selection and development processes. Part of the design considerations will include:

  • Architecture
  • On-premise or In-cloud
  • Post ‘Go Live’ Support
  • Data Management
  • Data Control
  • Ongoing Development Costs
  • Ongoing Support Costs
  • In-house or Outsourced Skills
  • Data Migration
  • Security
  • Subscription (Op-Ex)
  • Version Delivery (Cap-Ex)
  • Release Timings
  • 3rd Party Product Integration

Other considerations are the availability of development skills and resources and how easy switching suppliers would be in the event of a required move is an important factor.

The Discovery Exercise will deliver the following report outputs:

  • Understanding of Corporate Strategy and Alignment with executives and stakeholders
  • Detailed requirement list from Executive, Management, and Users
  • Technical Requirement List for Architecture and Design
  • Process Map for current and future processes
  • Customer Journey Map
  • Security, Governance, Financial and Budgetary Requirements
  • Post Go Live Engagement and Support model
  • Confirmation of win metrics and measurements

Conclusion

With complex project delivery exercises, discovery audits have become a crucial methodology for organisations to comprehensively understand their technology assets. ONQU helps identify the scope of the project or service including vulnerabilities, risks, or inefficiencies within the host systems and provides recommendations for improvement.

By engaging with ONQU and our Discovery Audit methodology, organisations can be assured that all of the technical considerations are defined, and discussed, risks are mitigated, cost savings are identified, potential efficiencies are communicated, and plans for strategy and future growth are understood.

ONQU highly recommends that organisations conduct regular discovery audits to ensure their technology infrastructure remains secure, efficient, and aligned with their business goals and financial budgets.

ANYTIME ROLL BACK – ZERO DOWNTIME ZERO DATA LOSS

When your Tier 1 Applications cant go down but you need to upgrade ONQU can provide the ability to perform in-situ upgrades and if it goes wrong you can roll back to the original version. This is without Data Loss.

TROUBLE SHOOTING

Whatever the question is with your GoldenGate installation we have the tools and experience to help identify and fix configuration and runtime issues. We aim to transfer knowledge to the internal teams to enable self-sufficiency.

24-7 SUPPORT & MONITORING

We support across UK Offices hours through to full 24-7 to ensure that your GoldenGate project or installation is available and should any issues arise our proactive monitoring and support team are available to fix them.

DISASTER RECOVERY AND RESILIENT CONFIGURATION

As with all enterprise class systems and applications including GoldenGate the key to keeping users and customers happy is to maintain uptime and application availability therefore make ONQU your partner of choice.

Get in touch

Please contatct ONQU Support for a free, no obligation assessment.