IT Cortex consulting services rest on the theoretical foundation of strategic simplification which applies to businesses of all sizes, in all economic sectors and at whatever stage of their lifecycle.

However there are privileged moments in the life of an organization when a strategic simplification engagement can or should ideally take place. These privileged moments are typically associated with a significant business mutation. These induce the necessary motivation to question business options, streamline business processes and knit IT and organizational processes tighter together. Examples of such business mutations are:

• implementation of an integrated IT package at corporate level
• merger and acquisition
• downsizing - decided or forced by business contingencies

Since simplification usually goes against the ingrained tendency in organizations (see complexity drivers) an external event can become the necessary catalyst of that preventive approach. The three business mutations listed above lead respectively to the following types of consulting engagements provided by IT Cortex:

• Business Pre-automation : preparing a organization for the implementation of an integrated package. This typically entails that the "spirit" (i.e. the design options) of the package is respected and making sure that the organization will work in a synergetic way with the package.
• Pareto Merge : merging two companies while keeping the overall complexity down and achieving Pareto efficiency for the combined organization. This typically entails that subtantial compromise need to be made on the merged organizations' culture (or idiosyncrasies).
• Pareto-sizing : selectively downsizing to increase the overall Pareto efficiency. No organization is inclined to this but many organizations might have to do it under the pressure of events.

More often than not IT Cortex is called upon when a strategic IT project gets bogged down. Even though we are delighted to assist you under those circumstances it is always preferable to act preventively rather than curatively. Our IT project recovery services are an important part of our consulting activities - and an outstanding showcase to demonstrate the interest of strategic simplification - but our unmitigated recommendation is always to favor prevention. 

A questionnaire is provided on this web site to highlight the relevance that strategic simplification has on the commercial or public organization that you run.

Should you be interested in implementing our approach a standard stepwise process is highlighted together with the key tasks to be performed. However, self-starters should be aware of the critical success factors and should have read the frequently asked questions over self-implementation.

We would of course feel honored if you contacted us to discuss those matters.