Back online ...

Its been a long time since my last post and a lot has happened in that time (sadly one of those things is not the completion of the off-road buggy – but more of that in another post!).

A key change is that I've now started an IT Project & Business Management Consultancy (www.Dei-Lucrii.com) and I've also set up a small web design business (www.ThinkBoxDesigns.com) to offer professional web sites and deliver outstanding service to help people who'd rather not do everything by themselves online!

Clearly my sanity must have been affected by something, because starting two businesses in a credit crunch is not the best recipe for a stress free life!

The main business is the IT Project & Business Management Consultancy, Dei Lucrii Ltd. We've got a set of services defined and also offer interim services. The key services are focussed around three areas:

• Project Start-up - Make sure your project or programme starts up in the correct way. This is the 'PMO-in-a-Box' service that ensures everything is in place to get the project or programme started in a controlled environment.

• Project Governance - Having started off on the right foot, these services provide in-flight checks to ensure the project or programme is still on track. These services cover planning, risk & issue management, opportunity management, change management, configuration management, documentation management, supplier management, stakeholder management and reporting.

• Project Rescue - These services are tailored to the specific project or programme, and follow our methodology of evaluating the project against a set of criteria tuned for the specific project. This highlights key areas of concern, which are then looked at in more detail. Processes are amended to address areas of weakness and governance is put in place to manage the project more closely.

We can also provide a project team to manage a specific project, leaving the client to focus on its core business. An example of where this is useful would be where a product oriented company has a requirement to implement a solution, but does not wish to maintain an in-house capability to provide this service. We can ensure that the customer demand is met without the expense of taking on the ongoing cost of a project business. This is a way of outsourcing the project expertise to enable the client to pursue specific opportunities, without taking on the cost of the team or maintaining the project infrastructure behind it

The web design business (ThinkBox Designs Ltd.) is focussed on the SME market, Clubs & Societies and Individuals (Small sites, low customer expertise) The objective is to provide outstanding service and a personal approach in contrast with the many 'build it yourself online' offerings that seem to be driving the low cost web development market.

I've also developed the business to leverage a non-traditional labour pool (Students, New mothers, HomeMakers, etc.) to try to tap into a rich seam of expertise that simply can't manage to work in a traditional regular work pattern.

I'll keep you posted on the progress of these companies as they develop and mature ...

Thanks for reading and please comment and come back for more!!

Best regards,

Nigel.