Mercy Corps, a global humanitarian agency, has selected Dell Services to evaluate its IT strategies to support its mission of helping people build secure, productive and just communities, while keeping its overhead costs low.
Dell Services’ consultants assessed Mercy Corps’ field activities, which are often in challenging conditions. A key consideration was leveraging Mercy Corps’ extensive reliance on “shadow IT” — IT delivered and managed directly by its field locations and business departments — as a key strategy to support decentralized decision-making.
Dell Services’ consultants undertook the assessment using Dell’s IT Effectiveness Framework, assessing the four factors that drive IT organizational performance and value enablement: business integration, process maturity, technical architecture and human performance.
Dell completed the assessment in five weeks and developed a recommendation for a multi-year program to improve Mercy Corps’ use of technology. The program includes a shift in business system priorities from information management to business process support, to increase the impact on Mercy Corps’ operational effectiveness and efficiency.
It prescribes improvements to the IT investment decision making process to ensure all investments have maximum impact, without discouraging or inhibiting the innovation driven by the agency’s shadow IT activities.
“Helping Mercy Corps gain a broader view of their IT assets is essential for developing the best possible understanding of what is possible in support of their humanitarian missions. Through this assessment phase, we have set the stage for Mercy Corps to take effective action for the future,” says Raman Sapra, executive director, Strategy and Business Innovation Services, Dell.
