When one of Australia’s leading energy suppliers needed to rethink its approach to managing legacy systems, it asked Thoughtworks to assess its technology estate and recommend ways to reduce costs, optimize applications and drive better business outcomes.
Legacy systems consume too many resources
Like many large energy suppliers, the organization has numerous internal and customer-facing systems that are critical to the business but are aging. These legacy systems loaded the organization with technical debt, requiring internal architects, developers and infrastructure engineers to devote precious time to low-value maintenance tasks, which diverted them from value-adding innovation activities.
To achieve its goals of providing more sustainable and intelligent energy solutions and better engagement experiences for its customers, the organization needed to either find more resources for innovation projects or free up its existing team members and budget.
While working with the organization on another technology transformation project, the Thoughtworks team suggested that switching to a managed services approach might help solve some of the entrenched issues.
The organization could see that DAMO™ Managed Services from Thoughtworks could offer more effective and efficient management of legacy systems, and allow it to pivot internal resources to more valuable activities, such as creating new products. However, to make a compelling business case for the switch to managed services, the organization needed a clearer view of the opportunity that would allow leadership to make data-driven decisions aligned with strategic goals.
A rapid assessment pinpoints cost-saving opportunities
We conducted a Portfolio Optimization Rapid Assessment to evaluate the current state of the organization’s IT assets and surface the best opportunities to reduce costs while optimizing technology performance and capabilities.
This 10-day process prioritizes areas for improvement by assessing applications on numerous criteria, including incident quantity and severity, lifecycle stage, security vulnerabilities, and business considerations such as revenue impact and number of users.
After evaluating the operational status of the organization’s applications and the skills required to manage operations, we provided a report detailing:
- The estimated year-over-year cost savings Thoughtworks could deliver with DAMO™ Managed Services
- Recommendations on which systems to prioritize for transition to managed services
- Architectural recommendations — aligned to the business strategy — for future adaptability and new technology adoption
By combining our technological expertise with a deep understanding of the organization’s business strategy, we provided an evidence-based business case that identified opportunities to reduce costs by up to 60% (~AUS$5 million) over three years. This allowed non-technical leaders to make decisions based on a clear view of the commercial benefits and strategic alignment.
The assessment identified opportunities to reduce costs by up to 60% (~AUS$5M) over three years.
“Thoughtworks’ approach to managed services offers a unique opportunity for the organization to achieve year-over-year efficiency gains through increased automation and tech debt reduction,” says Simon McEwen, New Client and Strategic Sales Director at Thoughtworks. “With predictable — and shrinking — costs, the organization will also be able to redirect internal resources toward the innovation initiatives that can help it accomplish its strategic goals.”
Freeing internal resources to add value
Based on the evidence presented by the rapid assessment, the organization decided to begin moving systems to DAMO™ Managed Services. We’ve already started transferring the first five applications, prioritizing those that were high-touch for internal resources and that require significant capability uplift that in-house resources don’t have the capacity to manage.
As the transition progresses, the organization is set to quickly realize cost reductions and free people and budget to do the value-adding work that will drive competitive advantage.
It was a productive assessment and we’re very excited about the upcoming DAMO engagement.
To learn more about Thoughtworks’ unique approach to managed services, and how we can help you dramatically reduce costs while improving performance and capabilities, visit our DAMO™ Managed Services information hub.
