Customer profile: A winning cloud strategy

One of the 10 largest credit unions in Canada approached Thinkwise with a tall task: in 30 days, come up with a strategy for moving their business to the cloud. The client was looking to make a major business shift in the following to years and they knew the wouldn't be able to accomplish it without harnessing the power of cloud technology.

The client’s existing IT strategy did not support a major business shift that was being planned over the next 2 years. Their IT leader decided a cloud strategy was imperative to support their planned growth. With constant pressure from competition, the client needed to be ready to take advantage of the economies of scale, rapid flexibility, and improved security that cloud technology offers.

It was no simple task to approach this engagement: high organizational complexity and the extremely nuanced nature of the financial services industry made it difficult for the client to ascertain their readiness for large-scale cloud adoption. Also, as a result of resource constraints, a significant portion of IT resources were being spent on maintaining basic infrastructure, project requests, and a growing list of vendor relationships.

“We were under tight timelines to deliver a comprehensive Enterprise Cloud Strategy in support of our corporate strategic plan. Thinkwise was very quick to respond.  In short order they gathered requirements, worked to understand our business and factors driving our long-term business goals, and worked side by side with our tech team to deliver a product that easily met our expectations.  Probably as important is that Thinkwise’s expertise and professionalism gave us peace of mind that we were moving the strategy forward in the right direction. I would definitely recommend Thinkwise to others who are looking for an independent party to assist with delivering critical IT strategies.”

--Senior Manager, Infrastructure Operations

To develop the cloud strategy, Thinkwise conducted a series of workshops with key stakeholders to identify areas of IT and business alignment, and co-designed a 3-5 year cloud strategy and tactical implementation plan. 

The new cloud strategy aligned IT projects and technologies with the organization’s transformation goals. The result was a decrease in time-to-market, global scalability, enhanced security and centralized IT management.