Over the last many months we've been engaged in a fairly comprehensive, multi-dimensional, sustainability project. Serving in the capacity of overall Engagement Manger I've overseen everything from strategic planning through various data entry activities. This has been a terrific learning experience. It's also been very rewarding from the perspective of making things happen, getting good things done, and delivering a lot of value to our client. Without delving into the specifics of where this was done or who it was for, it's an experience that's led to many key insights. And as my heading states, a great opportunity to connect many of the dots inherent in this domain. I anticipate this may take more than one installment, thus the reference to Part One.
Adding interest to the mix, this engagement leveraged the products and services of two of our partner firms. These are rapidly evolving software vendors in the environmental and energy management (EEM) arena and data center power optimization domain. With the client engagement focused on organizing, uploading, and understanding energy consumption data as well as a deeper dive into the power consumption profile of their data centers, these were ideal vendors to partner with. And, indeed, they played significant roles in the connection of major dots.
The project engagement served as what I believe will be the typical sustainability project initiative. Rather than any one vendor/service provider satisfying the entire breadth of a given client's needs and objectives, solutions will be cobbled together; leveraging the unique offerings different providers bring to the table. This is certainly an important realization for anyone involved, or planning to be involved, in this arena. Providers of sustainability consulting services certainly can bring value. Software providers certainly have their place in the bigger picture. But neither alone is sufficient to adequately address the bigger picture. Nor is it safe to assume that either party can hope to do their own part well and rely on the client to address the other.
A key first step was understanding the client, their current capabilities and activities, and goals and objectives for the future. As might be expected, some of this is obtained easily while other aspects were developed jointly. Perhaps most important in the early stages is truly understanding the client's big picture context and the world they operate within. Without this fundamental understanding the odds of being successful are truly slim and none. Personally, I would place a bigger wager on "none".
Having a good understanding of the client and "their world" led to the identification of needs and opportunities. Once fleshed out and prioritized, determining what the appropriate solutions to meet these needs and make the most of opportunities was the next step. One might note that a considerable amount of work has been done to this point yet no solution providers have been involved. I can't emphasize enough the need to get this first major part done properly and resist the temptation to prematurely engage with, and introduce, other solution providers. Time and a place for that.
Shaping ones thinking about the solutions to consider and pursue, having a good idea and definition of "the ends" in mind is invaluable. Gaining client input and acceptance of this vision essentially defines where the goal posts are and what success looks like. It's at this point in the game that one goes looking for the appropriate partners and solution sets to engage. In our recent engagement that led to the selection of the two partners referenced earlier. Certainly, getting to this point had it's share of challenges. As you might suspect, that was just the beginning.
Partners selected and assurances obtained that identified goals and objectives would be attained, the effort shifted to active engagement of the partners and integration of their respective solutions into the client environment. Among other considerations, this is where the world of software as a service (SaaS) and the more traditional, installed on client premises solution became interesting. Perhaps challenging is a better word. The SaaS EEM was implemented and ready for our use in very short order. The data center optimization solution, by it's nature needing to be executed on the client's data center environment, raised considerable attention and concern. The net result was a need to take a plan that called for several streams of activity being done concurrently to one that was more serial in nature. On the plus side, this served as another important entry to my "notes to self" log. It also enabled us to more effectively handle the other challenges that lay ahead.
In my next post I'll provide the next installment of this engagement recap, activities performed and lessons learned. Stay tuned.
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