We have many tools at our disposal. Through both experience of the company's principal consultant and the skills of our associates, we can bring to bear so many skills and so much knowledge that we can help your organisation in numerous ways.
Board and C-suite advisory
CP1 Associates lead consultant, Chris Puttick, has served on boards for 2 decades, and has the rare skill of being able to help non-technical board and senior management understand how current and emerging technology capabilities can support their organisation - and how to know when a trend is more marketing hype than truly valuable. He has a track record of implementing scalable and high value systems in multiple sectors and has a knack of gaining an understanding of new sectors in a very short time, driven by a desire to learn and a willingness to ask questions.
Chris is available both to serve on boards or act in an advisory capacity during a challenging time, either to the board or to the senior management team.
Management services
Alongside our board and C-suite advisory services we also provide interim IT/IS management services and can also take on management of specific projects e.g. ERP migrations. This work can take the form of a support/advisory role working with existing (or newly appointed/promoted) staff, or be to provide FTE cover while a permanent appointment is made.
Audit and troubleshooting
We can undertake a comprehensive IT and systems audit, whether to assist updating documentation and upping team performance or to prepare for a services migration/expansion, a move to a new support model/provider or some other big change.
CP1 Associates also have a specialism in "rescue", where systems are failing or even failed and the people who understood them well enough to restore them are long gone and/or the relationship with an external provider has broken down; we help you get back to a stable position and then prepare documentation and recommendations to help your organisation move forward in a sensible manner.
Software development
CP1 has a long history of involvement in software development, particularly web applications, from simple to complex, and integration work, including AI. Through our associates we can help you automate processes, overhaul existing software or integrate existing systems to streamline processes, reduce errors and improve customer service.
Systems, security and support
While we're big fans of first line support being near to the user i.e. employed by or dedicated to the organisation being supported, we recognise that recruiting and retaining quality staff with technical skills is extremely challenging, and in addition employing high calibre people full time both expensive and unnecessary - a well set-up solution is unlikely to need all the skills on a full time basis. We have also found that 2nd and 3rd line staff who work with a range of technologies and across multiple organisations tend to develop their skills more rapidly and as a result can resolve issues much more quickly.
Our systems administration associates work with cloud technologies from multiple vendors, onsite servers utilising both Microsoft technologies and various Linux and Unix distributions as well as firewall and networking equipment from a range of vendors. They are expert both in resolving issues when they arise and working in background to continuously improve systems reliability and performance.
Creating choices
A founding principle of the company is that open beats closed, all else being equal. Closed systems are of benefit only to the supplier, increasing the difficulty and cost of moving from that supplier or diversifying suppliers, hence the term "lock-in". Adopting an "open-first" approach minimises lock-in, ideally to the point that the only reason an organisation chooses to remain with a particular product from a particular supplier is that that product is the optimal choice or so near that the cost of migration (training etc.) is such that making the change isn't worthwhile - and missing features or UX issues of your current solution is open to you to add or resolve.
Open-first has 3 primary facets: open source, open standards and ease of integration. The latter is resolved with an open API. Ideally that would an API that is openly published and fully documented, and has no cost to enable etc., but the existence is better than not existing; it's all a matter of degree. Similarly the other facets are not absolute, there's degrees of openness and few software packages would score maximum on all 3 facets. CP1 can help with the assessment of your existing solutions and in choosing replacements; the end result will be lower costs and better systems throughout your organisation.
If you are already utilising open source CP1 can help with tactics for maximising the value of those open source packages and help with license compliance via partners. We can also help you work towards OpenChain compliance.
