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Anne Hartley, principal Solution Consultant, assesses your technology-dependent business needs and goals - and helps determine the best way to proceed. If desired, the proposed Solution Strategy may also define the role(s) of AH Consulting to help make it happen - as catalyst or facilitator. The best value for you is that Ms. Hartley customizes the involvement of AH Consulting to best accommodate your business goals - always focused on exceptional results for clients. She never approaches any engagement with a preconceived notion or solution template. Ms. Hartley first takes time to understand what is needed, relevant history, and then focuses on solution strategies that will draw upon her experience, insight, and methodology.
Depending on the engagement, AH Consulting may work independently or be part of your team - integrating role(s) with your staff and leadership team as appropriate. In addition, Ms. Hartley may arrange to involve other service or solution providers as needed to bring additional specialized expertise and resources to the table.
Listed to the right are ideas of how AH Consulting can make a difference for you. For more details, click on a scenario of interest or continue scrolling down the page to view them in the order listed.
The ultimate goal and measure of AH Consulting's success is your success. Ms. Hartley takes great pride in bringing exceptional value to her clients. If you are looking for this kind of impact, please contact Anne Hartley to discuss your specific needs and become better acquainted. If it's a good fit, you'll both know and then decide how best to proceed.
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Best Practices:
Efficient and effective processes and workflow are integrally part of any solution. In this role, AH Consulting can help clients determine the best way to approach departmental responsibilities paying close attention to hand-offs between departments and end-to-end workflow .
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Brainstorming:
You know you need to do something - but you don't know what. AH Consulting can help facilitate brainstorming sessions or come up with some suggestions - or some of both.
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Business Development:
Help you pursue new market opportunities through solution-oriented sales approaches, OEMs, distributors, and strategic alliances. If effect, find potential customers or business partners by profiling business problems which can be solutioned through selected vendor technology deployment.
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Business Process:
Regardless of the term used - Business Process Management (BPM) or Business Process Re-engineering (BPR), Business Process Integration (BPI) - insuring that optimal business processes are defined is a critical input to determining technical requirements. There is a variety of software tools in the market today which can be used to produce effective business-oriented communication that support business process maping, modeling and simulations. However, while tools are subject to change, the analytical approach and resulting business process methodology to be reflected by the tools is independent of the tool. AH Consulting can lead initiatives or serve in an advisory capactiy to determine optimal business processes which will ultimately drive any supporting technology requirements. Selection and use of business process modeling tools can also be incorporated as appropriate.
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Business Requirements:
Whether it's for a commercial software product or a corporate IT implementation, the quality of the user (ie. business) requirements for technology-based solutions ultimately determines the outcome of the implementation. This is one of the most significant and costly gaps with technology-based business goals. AH Consulting's approach focuses on "what" the end-to-end solution needs to address, provides a framework, and incorporates business modeling and use case scenarios/models reflected in visual diagrams, that significantly improve understanding and communication among stakeholders - and ultimately a successful implementation outcome.
Business requirements are not static; they evolve over time. Having a business requirements management strategy in place is important. There are a number of good tools in the market that are designed to help management business requirements. AH Consulting can help you define and implement a business requirements management strategy and methodology with tool/vendor selection that best suits your environment.
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Business/Technology Liaison:
Serve as a channel of communication between business users and technology providers to insure clear understanding by both. This role may also involve serving as an interface between IT or Development, Marketing, Sales, Vendors, and Customers.
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Change Agent:
In technology-enabled fields, change is inevitable. Being able to bring about change in a mangeable way is the challenge. Whether it's implementing a new solution from scratch or transforming legacy infrastructure or looking for better ways to do things - finding the most efficient and effective path from where you are to where you need to be is the critical path for your success as a business entity. AH Consulting can help you discover the optimal path of change - and if desired, help you implement the strategy for change. Frequently this includes both culture change as well as technology and process change - promoting and exhibiting entrepreneurial behaviors.
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Commercialization:
Understanding the difference between "technology" and a "product" or "solution" is fundamental to the notion of commercialization. AH Consulting brings significant software commercialization experience to the table - from development implications to fulfillment and support - encompassing whole product lifecycle.
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Customer Relationship Management (CRM):
Managing customer relationships is multifaceted: pre-sales communication, post-sales customer service, technical support, help desk, problem management, fulfillment - the list goes on. While these are typically separate, discrete functions within an organization, it is essential that CRM strategies produce a unified interface with customers. AH Consulting can lead initiatives or serve in an advisory capacity to help clients develop a CRM solution strategy designed to achieve not only customer satisfaction - but more importantly: customer loyalty. CRM solution strategies encompass business processes, workflow, and selection of supporting tools as appropriate. CRM is not just for large companies. All companies who support a customer base need a size-appropiate CRM solution strategy. In today's world, CRM is a key differentiator among competitors.
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Document Automation:
Personalized mass communication is now the standard. How do you achieve this without impacting staffing levels - particularly in high volume complex publications? You automate it. There are several third-party products which address this business requirement. For example, AH Consulting has worked closely with Strategic Solutions and Document Sciences Corporation implementing DLS and CompuSet solutions for a health insurance company. The resulting solution is a data-driven scenario where all variability in the resulting publication is control by the data that is passed to a pre-defined document generator. The creation of these document "factories" is distributed: the document generators are created by the business unit who is most familiar with what the resulting publication needs to reflect in terms of content and layout. The data preparation piece is typically developed by traditional programming resources. AH Consulting can help you implement a Document Automation solution that best meets your needs.
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** eBusiness Initiatives:
Help you sort out what you need to do to have an effective web site - with visibility and appeal. In spite of the ".com" bust - Internet activity and on-line buying is strong and building. The Internet is viewed as a great source of information. The natural tendency now is to "see what you can find on the net". Even if you don't want to sell directly - but perhaps generate interest, an Internet presence is a "must-have" for any serious business operation. Having a web site is certainly the important first step - but followed closely by "web visibility and stickiness": people need to be able to find you via search engines and, once they do, want to return to your web site.
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** eCatalog Management:
Industry analysts predict that those eMarketplaces who will ultimately achieve the business potential are those who have a solid eCatalog Management Solution in place. This solution must take into account catalog data coming from disparate sources, needing to be cleansed and normalized cyclically, and made available to the eCatalog in an efficient timeframe. AH Consulting can help clients identify and implement an optimal solution.
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Gap Analysis:
Assess current processes and workflows producing a gap analysis with recommended ways to address the issues through process, increased automation, or some of both.
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Management Consulting:
Work with management and leadership teams to identify appropriate goals, strategies, and plans of action. Perhaps, serve as a change agent with respect to corporate culture or process improvement.
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Product / Program Management:
Serve as interim Product or Program Manager. AH Consulting's background includes responsibility for a number of commercial software products: BlueBolt Studio * XESS * SeerHPS * SeerMediator * CA-Tellagraf * CA-Disspla * CA-Tellaplan * CA-SuperCalc * MegaCalc * SIMPLAN. In most of these cases, the roles involved decision making in terms of product direction and tactical deployment. This involved working with sales/marketing, development, and technical support - as well as budgetary responsibility.
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Project Management:
AH Consulting offers strong Project Management support and leadership for information/business technology initiatives. Understanding the appropriate level of detail and attention to that detail along with organization, coordination, and communication within a cross-functional team and management is inherent. AH Consulting offers both small-scale and large-scale project management expertise and proven track record. This, of course, includes project plan development and tracking.
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Quality Assurance Initiatives:
Develop QA strategies for software-based systems and processes/workflow to ensure that the overall solution / deliverable works reliably. This may include test plans, tracking, quantitative measures of effectiveness, and appropriate resources (personnel, automated test environments, homegrown scripts, etc.) - and proactive measures to prevent problems from being introduced. (Nothing is going to be 100% problem free but we still have to try to prevent as much as we can.) Typically, QA is an afterthough - when in fact it does need to be in the forefront where it is cheapest to resolve issues. Fixing problems downstream becomes progressively more expensive, the longer it takes for them to surface.
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Solution Strategy:
The first step of a solution strategy is to understand the nature of the business requirement or problem and what you need to accomplish. AH Consulting works with clients to understand and assess business needs and then draws upon experience, insight, methodologies, innovative approaches and perhaps other specialized service providers to develop a solution strategy that is pragmatic and works.
A solution strategy is typically multifaceted. For example it may entail software technology development by client's team, integration of third-party products, or a combination - along with process/workflow (re-)engineering - and even sales, marketing, and business development alignment and coordination. It may also involve determining the best approaches for implementations.
Identifying and eliminating high-risk factors early and building an underlying solution architecture that anticipates and accepts change is critical for success. Finding the right balance among many business influences and constraints is also key. Historically this role has required AH Consulting to serve as key communication link between technical and non-technical stakeholders, cross-functional team building and client's staff development of new roles and responsibilities - plus managing vendor or other strategic OEM relationships.
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Startup Initiatives:
The startup phase in the life of a business is a very special time and has special challenges - and it's not for everyone! But for true entrepreneurs it is a wonderfully exciting and motivating experience. Having the attitude to "do what it takes" is the bottomline. Being entrepreneurially oriented, AH Consulting fits in very well with technology-based startup companies or organizations who are transforming business-driven technology. AH Consulting role(s) can be both strategic in helping to shape overall direction and logistical for implementation and achieving other critical milestones, finding early adopters and attention to other focused startup activities. This may also include general guidance and best-practice coaching through start-up phase, working with investors to assess investment opportunity and business status, and serving in key operational/leadership roles on an interim basis.
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Vendor Assistance:
Work with software vendors who may need onsite representation in this region. As part of this engagement AH Consulting would become appropriately acquainted with vendor's product/solution offerings and their client's deployment.
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Vendor Selection:
Research and recommend third-party products based on a thorough analysis and understanding of solution requirements. This may involve RFI (request for information) and RFP (request for proposal) development to solicit selected vendor responses. Results are tracked, consolidated, and measured using an Excel-based tool developed specifically to support this initiative.
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** Web Site Visibility:
Having a web site is an important first step; however the e-marketing value of that web site will not be realized unless your web site is near the top of search engine results. Accomplishing this feat is no small task; it gets more complex daily as more and more html pages are available to the Web. AH Consulting with help from specialized business partners can help you achieve and maintain top ranking.
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