Executive and Operational Management

• Start-Up Leadership
• Executive Transition

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Executive Transition

A departing executive leaves a vacancy at the wrong time.  The successor is either not yet found or not yet ready.  You are already too thinly stretched to take on the additional responsibilities.  The stakes are high and the downsides are daunting.

XD3 leaders have stepped in to guide organizations through a leadership change.  We temporarily take operational responsibilities and execute against your strategic objectives. case study.

Start-Up Leadership

Your major new growth investment is on the skids.  The product is not getting ready for launch, the revenues are way behind expectations, and the break-even point keeps moving further into the future.  You wonder if – on the current course – you will ever see that future.  Morale is declining, and the confidence is shot.  You consider how to give this opportunity one more try, one more injection of positive energy.

Or maybe you have a great opportunity but your current leadership team is not suited to drive it to success.  You are looking for another partner who can diversify your risk and bring the leadership to turn this opportunity into a success.

We at XD3, through access to capital and to exceptional management talent, are always looking to take an idea and grow it into a successful business.  We are prepared to either lead your own new startup venture, or, if the situation calls for it, acquire part or all of the business.

Strategic Planning

• Acquisition Planning
• Organizational Transformation
• Competitive Analysis and Benchmarking
• Customer Needs Validation
• Business Case Analysis
• Product Design and Roadmap
• Product Development Effectiveness
• Professional Services Strategies
• Professional Services Delivery

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Acquisition Planning

You plan to grow into an emerging Next Gen Market, or plan to consolidate your Next Gen position. But how will you really assess the strength of your target’s products and services, or the quality of their revenues and customer relationships, or the reality of their growth forecast?

XD3 will help you analyze your acquisition target’s competitive position, and provide you with real estimates of how much time and money it will take to integrate their products and services with yours. Or if you are better off rewriting their functionality into your existing solution set.

Organizational Transformation

Change, they say, is the only constant. As in life, so in business. Changing market demands, changing business opportunities, changing ownership and leadership. The way you respond to the need for change, the structure you establish, the people you charter, and the process you follow without doubt will determine your success down the road.

XD3 will help you assess your organizational needs, help you focus on your emerging growth markets, and help you through the changes. We have driven and implemented many organizational changes and transformed businesses to succeed in the new market realities.

Competitive Analysis and Benchmarking

You will get on the long list because of you excellent reputation and strong industry relationships. But to get on the short list, and to get selected, you need to better the competition on features, pricing, and services. Knowing your relative position in the market on features, pricing, and services will help you target and prioritize your sales efforts, as well as guide your development and delivery strategies.

If you are in the market to contract for Next Gen products and services, you need to know who the most accomplished providers to make sure you invite them into your selection process.

XD3 maintains a database of Next Gen BSS/OSS products and services providers which can be the basis from which you can gain a better understanding of pricing, features, and services.

Customer Needs Validation

The perspectives of your most important customers or of your most promising prospects can provide the necessary input to help narrow or finalize your product road map or the definition of your services offering. More often than not, a few in depth discussions with the right people will yield more value than cursory research with many participants. And it most certainly will be more time effective.

XD3 has relationships across the Communications and Next Gen community to help you facilitate a quick check of your plans.

Business Case Analysis

When was the last time you were skeptical of the business case presented to you, of the analysis supporting the recommendation, of the desire for funding running ahead of sound business decisions? When was the last time you rejected a business case because of “gut feelings?” How many business cases are still holding up a year after they were approved? Yes, we too see far too many business cases – the central tool to allocate investment dollars, to build new businesses, or to expand existing ones – lacking the sound research and analysis required to determine expected profitability and inherent risks.

XD3 will deliver you a sound Business Case and Start-Up Leadership; we are willing to commit to the business case and take over the business if the situation is right for you and us.

Product Design and Roadmap

Best described as “fitting 10 gallons into a 5 gallon jug”, the demands and expectations of your future products’ features and capabilities always exceed your budget and your time. Finding the right balance of customer demands, competitive responses, and strategic direction is difficult at the best of times, yet critical to the future success of your business. And these issues begin to spin further out of control in multi-product, multi-technology environments where your market and cost position will benefit from an integrated product roadmap. The roadmap is only a part of this – concurrently a road mapping process which balances certainty of releases with flexibility to respond to immediate opportunities and threats needs to be implemented and maintained.

XD3 believes that your integrated product roadmap is your most powerful business lever. We have developed both product roadmaps and road mapping processes to help you stay ahead of your customers and your competition.

Product Development Effectiveness

On the one hand, you are exploring low-cost development geographies for some of your product development steps – adding complexities to the development process. On the other hand, you are frustrated with the delays and quality issues of your product releases – which are threatening your revenue stream and customer loyalty. You wonder how to deliver a high quality product to the market with competitive costs and acceptable quality.

XD3’s product development experience, both domestically and overseas will help you address development methodologies, development planning, dealing with multiple development locations, release testing, roll-out and transition.

Professional Services Strategies

Providing the services which underpin the installation and implementation of your products drives customer satisfaction, time to market, revenues, and profitability. Unfortunately, many small and large professional services organizations are challenged to maintain growth and profitability in the face of typical services organization pressures: recruiting and training, underutilization, sub-scale skills specialization, geographic dispersion, price erosion, high indirect costs, and fierce domestic and overseas competition.

We at XD3 have led services organizations from 100 to 2000 people, and we have the tools to assess all aspects of your professional services organization, and to determine specific actions to improve your operation and margins.

Professional Services Delivery

Your Professional Services are the key interface to your clients. Your ability to deliver on spec, on time, on budget provides your most powerful marketing leverage: client satisfaction, follow –on business opportunities, and positive client references. The most important elements which will allow you to deliver on spec, on time, on budget are: scope agreement, client commitment and participation, project planning, phasing, delivery tools, leadership, and quality and skill of the delivery team.

XD3 will help set up your professional services organization with the right delivery structure, project tools, and leadership processes to help you deliver your engagements with confidence

Call us for details on our expertise in Next Gen Architectures.

Project Turnaround

• Status Assessment
• Start on Track
• Project Mission Control
• Back on Track

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Status Assessment

The project manager of your key project just informed you that the delivery date needs to be delayed and that the costs are going to be greater than expected.  You approved a similar change request the previous month.  The users are revolting, a critical customer is getting uneasy, and the CFO wants to discuss the status of the project with you.  You need a quick, accurate, and independent assessment of the project status.  Where do you turn?

XD3 project management specialists have directly managed and overseen programs with hundreds of resources on multiple continents.  We have directed projects of strategic importance to companies ranging from Start-Ups to Fortune 100 companies.  We have the experience and knowledge to quickly understand the many intricacies of a complex project and to pinpoint its strengths, weaknesses, and flaws.  We can quickly deliver accurate information that you require to make critical decisions.

XD3’s comprehensive 42 point Status Assessment Scorecard will help to pinpoint the trouble areas and potential failure points within your project.  Our Scorecard prevents the tendency to focus on the symptoms rather than the true causes of project problems.  Recognizing the need to assess the project status quickly but accurately; we will work with your project team to quickly review the project across all key areas and provide an independent assessment that will provide a map for project recovery.  XD3 will not only provide you with the  targets of opportunity within the project;  we will help your team identify potential solutions for the critical problems and trouble areas.  Your project team can use the combination of the Status Assessment and recommended solutions to begin the process of Project Turnaround.

Start on Track

You’ve received approval for a complex and critical project.  The success or failure of this project will have a lasting impact on your organization and your career.  Your organization has mixed results with delivery of highly complex projects, and you are not sure if everyone is up to date on the latest development tools, methodologies, training, and quality processes.  What can you do to ensure that the project has the highest chance for success?

XD3 project management specialists believe that the majority of project failures result from poor project initiation despite existing methodologies and quality processes.  There are many factors which lead to poor initiation but the net result is the same.  The typical project never gets “started on track” and never has a chance to be successful.  It is much easier for a project management team to keep a well initiated project “on track” than to constantly battle a project that did not get properly initiated.

Our experience has proven than an extra investment at the beginning of a project can dramatically increase the potential of success for that project.  XD3 can assist your project manager with the launch of a critical project by ensuring that key elements such as a communications plan, document repository, change control, issue resolution process, and deliverable review and approval process are properly established.  Our specialists can provide the experience, expertise, and support necessary to ensure that your critical project gets “Started on Track”.

Project Mission Control

You've recently attended a Steering Committee meeting for Project A, a key project within your business group, that you helped to successfully initiate many months ago.  You're pleased with the progress of the project and the obvious benefits that are being reaped from the solid methodology and strong project initiation program.  However, you were stunned to hear that  Project X, upon which Project A is critically dependent, had implemented an extensive change in design and schedule several weeks ago.  Project A was aware of its dependency on Project X but the same couldn't be said about Project X.   In a seemingly unrelated event, you learned that several projects had recently decided to adopt their own methodologies and hardware/software platforms despite words of caution from the Quality Assurance and Architecture groups.  How did this happen?

In today's world,  the problem of Project Islands is an increasingly dangerous issue for businesses.  A Project Island is a project which believes that it can exist and be successful without any or limited communication with or adherence to the standards of the mainland community.  The Project Islands can result in major disconnects between various initiatives and wasted money spent on unapproved training, software, and hardware.

XD3 can help you to establish a strong Project Mission Control (PMC) or repair/fortify an existing PMC which will help to prevent Project Islands from developing and to join existing Project Islands to the Mainland.  Project Mission Control will ensure that all projects are utilizing approved methodologies, software, hardware, tools and vendors.   The dependencies between projects will be identified, tracked, and verified through the PMC.  Quality Assurance and Architecture groups will be given greater leverage through the support and follow through of the Project Mission Control.  Our clients typically experience positive feedback and results within a few short weeks of the establishment or repair of a PMC.

Back on Track

We all know about them. We call them “The Project from H---“ or “The Deathmarch.”  The project is not where it needs to be, and there seems to be no way that it can get to where it needs to go.  You’ve received an independent assessment which confirms your fears that this project appears out of control.  You risk alienating your users even further and creating irreparable harm to a key client.  Where do you turn to get this project “Back on Track” with a plan that everyone including yourself can believe in and manage to success?

We at XD3, have the skills and experience necessary to guide a troubled project “back on track”.  An ongoing project can be further traumatized by wholesale change and lose any momentum which it has achieved.  The key is to identify the critical changes which are necessary for success and to implement them in aggressive manner without destroying the morale of the project team.  Our project management specialists can act as the catalyst for this change and ensure that the project is put clearly on the path to success.

XD3’s seven step Project Recovery Program will provide the framework for guiding your troubled project Back on Track towards successful completion.  Following the completion of the first step, our Status Assessment Scorecard, our project management specialists will guide your project team through the process putting your project Back on Track towards success.  We will help your team identify the appropriate targets of opportunity, determine solutions for critical problems and touble areas, and re-launch a project prepared for success.