CSMG provides strategic advisory services ranging from growth and business transformation to ecosystem and business model evolution. Our peerless industry depth and experience, signature strategy and quantitative methodologies enable our clients to make sound business decisions in a complex and ever-changing market.
TMNG Global Conducts an Audit and Benchmarking of IT Operations
Jan 20, 2011
Challenge
As part of its contractual obligations, our client, a trusted third party clearinghouse for the communications industry, is required to commission an annual independent assessment of a primary application area of its IT Environment. This independent audit process must include a comparison of the clearinghouse technology; the hardware and software infrastructure and support operations with industry best practices, as well as steps taken by the company to improve operations based on prior assessments. TMNG Global has been the client’s choice to conduct these annual reviews for many years.
TMNG Global Solution
For this assignment, TMNG Global uses our proprietary independent systems auditing methodology called Quality Systems Audit (TMNG QSA™). TMNG QSA™ is a proven methodology that uses custom-designed processes, templates, worksheets and questionnaires to provide a uniform, structured, disciplined systems audit. Our process takes a holistic approach to the systems audit by examining not only a client’s computing systems, but also related people, processes, philosophies, and relevant functional areas.
Areas for evaluation include:
- Equipment - Hardware, systems software, network infrastructure, systems administration & operation, data center environment, storage systems
- Security - Security policy documents, firewall, remote access, network security, host systems and database security, data center security
- Software Release Management - Certification and regression testing, interoperability, software defect management, complete release life cycle, requirements analysis and, system design, development, quality assurance, industry testing support, production rollout and rollback, project management, business & system expertise, trained staff, system architecture, system documentation, infrastructure and support tools
- Backup & Recovery – Technology, implementation, management, documentation
- Business Continuance – Background, philosophy, technology, management, documentation
For this client, we also include an analysis of specific hardware outages (via Root Cause Analysis reporting), and assessments of multiple operations and data centers.
The TMNG QSA™ methodology calls for a phased approach to the audit process. The first phase involves structured interviews and random inspections of the client’s systems environment. The next phase is a detailed review and analysis of systems and operational documentation. The third phase involves the conduct of primary and secondary benchmarking research. This research is used to validate the process, project and product metrics, methods and procedures identified in the first and second phases of the project and provides additional insight to the results that will be used to guide recommendations and the implementation of best practices into the client’s technical environment.
TMNG Global technology consultants review all materials including best practice documentation, questionnaires and the results of the random inspections. We then “score” the client’s performance against industry best practices and provide tactical and strategic recommendations to improve business, technical operations, and customer support, where applicable.
Benefits to the Client
Each year, TMNG Global performs an independent audit for this client and delivers the completed audit findings to their executive management and key internal and external stakeholders. The client receives an independent, unbiased review of their technology environment, infrastructure and operations and a comparison of those operations with industry best practices. They receive a professional, comprehensive audit document, with a categorized, documented assessment of operational performance, including recommendations for improvement.
Our approach ensures that client problem areas are detected and remedied, their limited capital is spent wisely, they can remain competitive and any penalties from failure to fulfill SLAs and other related contract obligations can be avoided.
