Independent Quality Assurance - Invictus Partners

Independent Quality Assurance Services

De-risk your ERP implementation with Independent Quality Assurance (IQA).

Why IQA?

No one marks their own homework: Your SI, vendor and internal team all have a reason to report good news. An IQA partner sits outside the project and tells you what’s actually happening.
Catch issues early: Systems modernisation is risky. Independent reviews surface risks while course correction still costs weeks, not millions.
Confidence for the Board: An independent risk rating gives your executives and Board a transparent view of program health – one that doesn’t rely on the project grading itself.

Why now?

Vendor end-of-life: Certain vendors are ending support for core ERP and/or pushing organisations to adopt their next-gen cloud-based platforms. Make informed choices ahead of end-of-support.
Avoid expensive decisions: Problems often stem from biased sourcing processes and contracts that are difficult to unwind once signed. The earlier IQA starts – ideally before vendors and SI partners are selected – the more risk it removes.

Why Invictus Partners?

Proven results: We’ve saved our clients more than $1.2 billion in enterprise software costs since 2014.
Fiercely independent: We don’t resell, audit or implement software. No vendor or systems integrator relationship shapes our advice – we answer only to you.
All sides of the table: Our team of 30+ year industry veterans has worked for the vendors, integrators, and clients.

Chat to an expert

IQA manages ERP implementation risks across every dimension of your project.

Independent Quality Assurance (IQA) is a specialist external team reviewing your ERP or enterprise software program throughout its lifecycle; a partner who isn’t embedded in the delivery team, isn’t paid by the vendor or systems integrator, and reports to you on how the project is actually tracking.

Systems modernisation programs span strategy, governance, people, process and technology. IQA looks across the whole program to identify gaps, challenge assumptions and surface emerging issues that can be difficult to see from inside the project.

Most organisations don’t run transformations every day, so they often can’t see the risks ahead. As your IQA partner, we identify where the risk sits, tell you plainly, and give you the evidence-based findings to act before small problems become expensive ones.

Set your ERP modernisation project up for success.

IQA is a discipline that can directly set your project up for success. The earlier risks are surfaced, the cheaper and easier they are to resolve. Rather than
waiting for problems to force their way into view, we actively look for them, assess their likely impact, and feed clear recommendations into a risk mitigation plan you can act on. That turns risk from something that derails a modernisation program into something you can proactively manage from the outset.

Focused reviews

Our team conducts focused reviews throughout all stages of the program, giving you an evidence-based view of program health. By testing areas such as risk, scope, quality, schedule, cost and resourcing, IQA gives executives and the Board a clear picture of what is working, what isn’t, and where intervention is required.

Course correction

Identifying risk is only useful if you can do something about it. IQA translates findings into practical remediation and risk mitigation actions, helping you course-correct while issues are still manageable, rather than after they have become costly delays, overruns or failures.

Stakeholder confidence

A transformation is only as strong as the confidence behind it. By giving executives, sponsors and the Board a transparent, independent read on program health, IQA builds the trust needed to make hard decisions early, and keeps everyone aligned on where the program actually stands.

How our IQA Services work:

Invictus Partners’ approach to an IQA engagement involves two key stages – Establishment and Ongoing Assurance, with the ongoing assurance activities
being conducted over the entire program lifecycle, as illustrated below.

Phase 1

Establishment

We start by putting the foundations of independent assurance in place: agreeing on the operating rhythm with your stakeholders and establishing a reporting line that sits separate from the delivery team. We then build a clear picture of your program’s current state, which grounds the assurance and defines where the first reviews should focus.

Phase 2

Ongoing Assurance

Assurance then runs across the full program lifecycle. We participate in your governance forums, interview key
personnel, and review program artefacts to develop an overall risk rating – testing the program across risks, scope,
quality, schedule, cost and resourcing. Findings are fed back while they are still actionable, so issues get remediated
and risks mitigated before they can derail delivery.

Download our Independent Quality Assurance datasheet

Need to know where your enterprise software project stands now? Start with our fixed price, fixed term Program Health Check.

AUD$49,995*

Fixed price

~30 days

Our Program Health Check is a short, sharp, fixed-fee engagement designed to proactively identify areas of risk and to assess what plans should be put in place to make your program more robust and resilient.

Think of it as a pulse check for your program that identifies preventative
measures that will drive higher quality outcomes, minimise delays and overspend, and keep your Board and stakeholder confidence high.

What’s included:

A one-off program review using our IQA framework, which defines the focus areas for the health check.
Interviews with key program personnel, to check the pulse of the team and to identify potential areas of concern.
Review of program-related artefacts, to assess which artefacts are in place and whether they have adequate detail.
Attendance of governance forums to observe how the program is being managed and governed.
Creation of a report which provides a health assessment rating, based on the risk profile of the program.
Provision of recommendations on how to mitigate the identified health risks.
Presentation of findings to executives and the Board.

* Pricing based on standard assumptions around existing documentation and internal resource availability.

ERP Case Study:

Invictus Partners helps utility provider reset a high-risk project to avoid ERP implementation failure

The situation
An NZ Utility was pushed into an ERP modernisation program after
SAP withdrew support for the core system. A small team began
planning what they assumed was a short-term fix. When the Risk &
Audit and Business teams started asking questions, it became clear
that:

The approach
Invictus Partners first conducted a review of the program’s current
state, then ongoing assurance across the strategy, planning, sourcing
and delivery phases. This included:

Interviewing key program personnel to identify consistent areas of concern and risk.
Reviewing program artefacts to find significant gaps and assess fitness for purpose.
Actively participating in the governance forums, raising concerns as required.
Documenting the program's risk profile with clear remediation recommendations in a formal report.
Presenting findings directly to the risk and audit committee, executive sponsor and Board.

The result
Objective, evidence-based findings – given without fear nor favour – that gave the organisation a defensible basis to change course.
Specifically, the engagement:

Isolated biased vendor advice, as well as the decisions that had been built on incorrect assumptions.
Led the organisation to pause and reset a program that carried a very high risk of failure.
Prompted a restructure of the program team where capacity fell short.
Reframed the effort from a technology migration into a business-focused program built on real requirements.
Delivered enough value that the client retained Invictus Partners as IQA partner for a second major transformation program.

Are you getting screwed by your software vendor?

Get back on top.

The Invictus Partners difference: ERP project governance and assurance specialists.

Assurance is only worth what its independence is worth. Vendor and systems integrator relationships naturally shape the advice a firm gives, and can push a project down a path that isn’t right for the business – with consequences that last for decades.

Invictus Partners is a specialist enterprise software advisory firm. We don’t
resell, audit or implement software, so we have no such relationships to
protect and no agenda beyond your project’s success. Our team of 30+ year industry veterans has worked on every side of the table – software vendors, systems integrators and the client side – with skills spanning strategy, architecture, sourcing, implementation and optimisation.

We bring that experience to your program with open, honest advice about
what’s really going on and what is right for you. It’s this independence that
lets us challenge thinking, share the hard lessons of past programs, and help you avoid the surprises that sink so many ERP implementation projects.

Our IQA experts

Russell Sands

Partner

Russell is a 25+ year veteran of the IT industry holding numerous account director roles spanning major software vendors including IBM, Oracle, and Computer Associates, as well as start-ups, ISVs, local system integrators, and service providers. The most recent projects, where he was ultimately responsible for the outcome of the project and ongoing relationship with the customer include:

ERP recommendation & feasibility study – public sector
Audit defence and Microsoft review – utility
Ongoing SAM and advisory – global manufacturer
Design, development, launch and support of mobile app – large country-wide NGO
Complex data projects – major bank
Integration & data project – social insurer.

Talk to our IQA experts

Janine Burns