Technology Roadmap & Audit

This page describes a representative technology audit and roadmap. The client is not named. We do not claim a score for their IT, and we do not imply that the roadmap has already been built. The work was a written picture of the systems they have, and a two-year order of what to fund, so a new system was not bought because a demo felt modern.

The situation

Leadership had a list of complaints that did not agree. Sales wanted a CRM. Operations wanted the stock system replaced. Finance wanted the month-end to take fewer weekends. A vendor had proposed a platform that would "cover all of it." Nobody in the room could say what the current systems actually did, what they cost to keep, or which complaint was the one that stopped work on a Tuesday. Approving a purchase from that meeting would have been a guess with a contract attached.

They asked for an audit. The useful version of an audit is not a red-amber-green slide. It is a list of systems, the job each one does, the data that has no owner, and the order in which change is safe.

What we took on

The engagement is the work we describe under IT systems consulting. We interviewed the people who use the tools, not only the people who sign for them. We logged each system: what it holds, who can export, how it is backed up, and what happens if it is down for a day. We marked the spreadsheets that had become systems, because those are the ones a new platform silently fails to replace.

Complaints were tied to a job. "We need a CRM" became "a lead is written on paper and never reaches the person who was supposed to call." That can be a CRM. It can also be a shared list and a rule. We priced neither in the audit. We said which class of fix matches the job, and what has to be true before the company should buy.

The roadmap is two years, in quarters, with one major change at a time. The first items are the ones that make the later items possible: an owner for customer records, a backup you have restored, a stock figure two departments will accept. A new system is later, and only for the job the early work did not remove. Each item says what "done" means, in a sentence a non-technical director can check.

What shipped

A system list. A short risk note where a backup, a password, or a single person was the whole control. A roadmap the board could fund in pieces. A recommendation on what not to buy this year. The document is theirs to execute. We did not stay on as the only people who understand it, and we did not fill it with tooling names that expire.

What we refused

We did not use the audit to pre-sell a build. Where the next step is software, we said what kind, and we separated that from this engagement. We did not score the company out of a hundred. A score looks decisive and hides which Tuesday is broken. We did not promise that the roadmap saves a percentage of cost. Cost shows up when they choose a vendor and a scope, which this document is meant to make specific.

What a similar project needs from you

Two hours each with operations, finance, and whoever keeps the server or the vendor relationship. Permission to see the tools, including the spreadsheet everyone is embarrassed by. A meeting where the roadmap can be disagreed with before it is filed. If you already know the system you need and you want it built, start at the relevant service, for example ERP or .NET development, and skip the audit. An audit is for the decision you have not earned yet.