Strategy

The customer need may be :

• Improve business agility
• Reduce costs
• Accelerate time to market
• Enable expansion into new markets

Rigorous documentation is required and must be understandable to cloud technicians and stakeholders.

Define and document incentives

This is about answering the question ‘Why are we moving to the cloud’. A rational answer must be given. It should not be a follow-my-leader or the result of an emotion, e.g. ‘Our management is asking us to’. Motivations can be :

Motivations should be categorised according to whether they are

• a critical business event: migration should be undertaken in parallel with strategy and planning operations
• a benefit to migrate: a phased migration operation
• innovation : the strategy and planning stages require more investment at the beginning of the process

It is therefore necessary to have a clear understanding of the expected business outcomes to facilitate the conversations that need to be had with the customer that will further inform the documentation of the motivations

Documenting business outcomes

During a cloud transformation, talking about business outcomes enables transparency and partnership between departments

• cost optimisation in the cloud. The issue of finance requires conversation between different parties who have a different view:
  • Finance: profitability of the company
  • Marketing: building customer loyalty and acquisition, building brand awareness
  • Sales: accelerate sales
  • Human Resources: retain, recruit and empower consultants
  • Management: market growth and environment
  • Sustainability Manager: sustainability

The results can be categorised as follows:

• Budgetary results
• Agility outcomes: speed to respond to and generate market changes
• Reach results: compliance of the company’s geographical areas
• User engagement outcomes: meeting user need
• Performance outcomes: performance and reliability to enhance the company’s reputation
• Sustainability outcomes: environmental and sustainability objectives