Situation

The CEO had grown frustrated with her head of IT, who was not providing what the CEO and business needed to serve its customers. And the CEO’s patience was running out. The IT chief had built the core business systems almost single-handedly, and was the only one who truly knew how everything worked. Sometimes the operations people would call on that head of IT directly to keep the business running because only he could do certain things inside the application. Yes, the IT chief clearly held the “keys to the kingdom” and some aspects of the operations could be compromised if he were fired. There was another resource in IT, but both IT resources had worked on their own projects. No collaboration. No cross training. No documentation. Then the head of IT gave his notice and refused to help transition beyond his final two work weeks. The CEO reached out to Lazorpoint to help her regain control of her company.

Solution

Dave became the Point Man for the CEO. He quickly assessed the situation and assembled the right team to lead and manage the remaining IT resource and the operations department through the transition. Dave leveraged the remaining IT guy and focused him on areas where he’d provide the most value. They identified the “landmines” (big issues that could kill the business, such as no backup of critical data), reviewed the core business applications, and developed a roadmap to achieve the company’s vision for its Information Systems.

Success

The CEO is now confident. Landmines have been defused. Good data backups are in place and regularly verified. Documentation is strong. The company is successfully executing its long-range IT roadmap. And most important of all, Dave implemented an IT structure to prevent the business from again being handcuffed to one internal resource.