The Consultancy: A Team Approach to Developing Partnerships with IT Customers

Abstract

One of the critical challenges facing any IT organization is the alignment of its services and technology applications with the overall goals and objectives of the institution. This alignment requires in-depth understanding of the customers' needs and an unbiased diagnosis of how information technologies can or cannot be used to meet these needs. In the Maricopa Community Colleges, the Information Technology Services division has created a new group called The Consultancy Team with the stated purpose of forming partnerships with customer departments to provide a business-oriented approach to problem resolution rather than a technical approach. This session will focus on the environmental issues that created a need for the new approach to partnering with customer groups and will explain The Consultancy Team, giving examples of how The Consultancy works with customer groups in both continuous improvement and business process reengineering efforts. Paper presented at CAUSE94, the full proceedings of which are available through this Library as PUB1094.