2 page Case Study - Posted 7/2/2009
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Investing to Simplify and Reduce Cost
About the Company
Clifford Chance is one of the world’s leading law firms. It maintains its position by combining global standards with local expertise to help customers achieve their goals. It has 30 offices in 21 countries and 3,800 advisers. Its IT function is headed up by Global CIO Paul Greenwood, and reporting to him is Mark Boggis, Director of Enterprise Architecture. Mark’s area of responsibility is IT Architecture, Functional Consulting and Systems Development. He has a team of 16 in the United Kingdom plus a 20 strong off-shore development team. Mark has funded a Microsoft IT Architecture and Planning (ITAP) Advisor to support him for nearly two years.
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If Microsoft had done a better job of articulating the value that an ITAP Advisor could bring to my business, I’d have invested years ago. |
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Mark Boggis, Director of Enterprise Architecture, Clifford Chance |
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What is an ITAP Advisor?
A Microsoft ITAP Advisor is a senior Microsoft consultant, with many years of IT industry experience, who becomes embedded in a customer’s business. The consultant will be based at the customer’s offices, will take the lead from the exec sponsor at the customer, and will be the customer’s advocate back inside Microsoft, acting as traffic warden and route master for access to the product groups, development teams and resources necessary to meet the customer’s objectives. Predominantly focused on the core strategy of the customer, the consultant is able to interpret that strategy in relationship to existing Microsoft technology investments and products, and deliver the strategic priorities of that customer –whether it be cost reduction, merger, change programme or differentiation.
Why buy an ITAP Advisor?
Says Mark “I have a frustration with Microsoft in that they’ve never really done a good job of selling to me – I always feel that they can talk about their products but never really engage in solving my problems. This was also true when they spoke to me about an ITAP Advisor. They couldn’t really tell me or help me understand the value one would bring, and yet I took a leap of faith a couple of years ago, and have had a full time advisor, Tim Gregson, as part of my team now since July 2007. I have been immensely impressed with the value and contribution he has made to our business, the ideas and networks he’s been able to bring to us and his capacity to fundamentally support our broad vision and strategy. If you are in a position where you are responsible for long term strategic thinking about your company’s IT strategy and how it supports the business and you have already invested in the Microsoft stack, then the qualities and skill set that an ITAP Advisor bring to the table are indispensible. On a very simple level they can position and review Microsoft’s products relative to one’s own needs and environment, which in itself is very valuable, but there’s much more to it than that.”
What exactly then does an ITAP Advisor do?
The core principles of Clifford Chance’s IT strategy are:
- Simplification – continual improvement in making things simple and standardization
- Deliver ‘Out of the box’ functionality wherever possible
- Driving down cost
Mark expects the work that Tim does to speak to these three guiding principles, and Tim will therefore work across many initiatives and projects bring a perspective and ideas that address these principles.
One of Mark’s team, Roger Wagland, Lead Application and Data Architect gives an example of how this works. “Tim in effect paid for his first year of time here with just one transaction. By using his network and access to the product groups inside Microsoft, Tim was able to reach right into the heart of the Office product team and get changes made to Word, an indispensible application for a law firm, but one which didn’t quite deliver what we needed which then meant we paid for an additional application. By making changes to Word it gave us a whole new level of usability that meant we no longer had to pay for additional specialist document comparison products. Only an ‘insider’ at Microsoft with a detailed understanding of our business and loyalty to our needs could have effected change in a product as ubiquitous as Word and in consequence made a significant impact to driving down cost in our business.”
How to prove return on investment?
Says Mark “Quantifying the value Tim has brought to our business is hard. Yes, he has saved us by enabling us to be far better embedded and cogniscent of Microsoft’s roadmap and future technological developments. He has brought ideas to the table that we wouldn’t have come up with ourselves because of his outsider perspective. He has delivered projects and initiatives that have saved us money. It means that I have one person who gives me access to the entire world of Microsoft, thus saving me personally considerable time and effort in staying on top of things and enabling access to the right people at the right time. For instance when we were thinking about Server Virtualisation, Tim was able to secure us a meeting with the lead Exec for the Microsoft Hyper-V product so we could have all our questions answered from the source. The follow on from this was that Tim was then able to bring the right people and partners to the table, structure and deliver a very effective Proof of Concept for us, in conjunction with both Sun and Avanade. Quantifying the return is tough as we don’t measure his success, but it has certainly been significant.”
Investment for the future
“In terms of road-mapping our future, I rely on Tim to help us understand the Microsoft Cloud Computing strategy and to position this against other offerings in the market, and to help us map out where and when this might be a useful scenario for our business. Whilst any execution of this technology is probably 3 or 4 years out for us, being able to understand the implications and therefore make smart choices and investments now, for instance, our Data Centre strategy, means we’re preparing the ground and will remain ahead of the curve as technology vision becomes a reality.“
Industry leadership
“I’m also keen that we take a leadership view within our industry. Clifford Chance is a participant in the Office 14 Technology Adoption Programme (TAP). With Tim’s help we are sharing the knowledge and value from this programme within our industry – Allen & Overy spent a day with us recently working with us on the TAP. Taking a lead on encouraging forward thinking IT strategies helps our own reputation within our industry. Another example of this is the work Tim is helping us on with OpenText, which is a document management system widely used in our industry where we’re looking to seek common industry goals and therefore simplification and standardisation - back to our 3 core principles. “
The long term benefits to Clifford Chance
Says Mark “I do understand the challenge Microsoft has in articulating the value of an ITAP Advisor, as in some respects the contribution and the value they bring is dependent on the person within the customer organisation who is sponsoring them. If there isn’t a great deal of long term strategic IT planning being done and there isn’t a commitment to making the best of existing Microsoft investments, then the ITAP Advisor would be rather reduced to the level of offering knowledge and wisdom on individual product deployments or projects – which is valuable, and Tim is very good at, but it’s not where his real value to me and my business lies. The thing that is hard to define the value of, and yet is worth so much, is having someone who can access and review all the assets, abilities and knowledge of Microsoft through the lens of my business, and have real loyalty to me and my business needs in translating all of that into meaningful benefit to Clifford Chance. “
