Azimuth has been undertaking Information Systems Reviews (IS Reviews) for Ministries, Agencies and many of New Zealand’s largest corporations for more than 25 years. Examples include Transpower, the New Zealand Stock Exchange, Fonterra, ANZ Bank, Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, Coal Corporation, Broadcasting Corporation, to name a few.

The core essence of our approach – independence and experience – means we are ideally suited to providing these reviews and offering advice which is in the best interests of our clients.

Such reviews invariably investigate and make recommendations on a broad range of specialist areas including telecommunications, development environments, technology (current state and future roadmaps), software and its integration points, operational capabilities, disaster recovery, security, governance and more recently inter-company (B2B) and Whole of Government. Most importantly these reviews must be undertaken with full consideration of the business imperatives, current and future. It is this most important requirement that necessitates the involvement of highly experienced business professionals who can tailor the approach to the specific environment.

APPROACH

There is no “standard” approach applied to such reviews as the drivers for these vary widely e.g. a merger, deregulation, a significant event, an untimely death, a core system “end-of-life”, new legislation or more commonly the Public Sector being required to do “more for less”.

The underlying common “theme” to our approach is to bring significant and appropriate experience to ensure the recommendation and advice given is authoritative, practical, pragmatic and cost effective.

Invariably, the “event” necessitating the review occurs at the most inopportune time. There is rarely the luxury of time to develop multiple scenarios and to test them. The review must be undertaken quickly with decisive and clear recommendations.